“No Work, Just Visiting …..”
Suffice it to say that the placement system is bursting at the seams: in 1960, 93,000 Italians came to the Federal Republic with legitimation stamps from the German foreign offices, and an additional 43,000 came via the “illegal route.” Of the 16,000 Spaniards employed in the Federal Republic, at least 6,000 are “illegals” who immigrated disguised as tourists. In total, around 66,000 unprocessed requests are with the German commissions. At the same time, however, scenes that are as turbulent as they are disgraceful take place daily at the main border crossings. They also affect our relationship with the transit countries of Austria, Switzerland, and Belgium, and quite delicately so. Let us pick a random eyewitness account. The brackets are our insertion:
“I no work in Germany (!), only visit friend!,” hundreds of wildly gesticulating Italians kept shouting in the ears of the border officers. But the border officials had the suitcases opened and looked inside. Inside they found mostly work clothes (!), and the peculiar visitors also had no money on them (!), only a one-way ticket. The cases were clear: the Italians wanted to get into the Federal Republic to work (!). But they had no visas that entitled them to work. (But we have 500,000 unfilled jobs, 150,000 of which are in construction alone). And so they had to (!) be turned back again. […] For the most part the Italians who entered the Federal Republic illegally were “guilty of something,” say the border police. “For anyone who wants to work in the Federal Republic can certainly register properly with one of the two branches of the Federal Office for Labor Recruitment […].”
Let me make only two observations about this policeman’s logic, as logical as it is unrealistic: Italy extends for nearly 2,000 kilometers. Second, the deeper one gets into the south, the more the local authorities – not only the Italian ones – are operating as a version of the incomprehensible Fate. The issuing of the necessary papers can go quickly, or it can take months. We know on good authority that it has at times taken up to a year. To no small degree it depends on how one is connected “at the top.” Of course, the illegal migrant might have committed some crime, but not necessarily so. At any rate, it is worth reading the above-mentioned report carefully and twice in all its stupidity. For the time being, this is what the march toward freedom of movement for workers and toward the European Economic Community looks like. Regulation of immigration is indispensable of course. If it doesn’t stay in balance with the housing options, slums of the worst sort emerge and an illegal trade in humans that God may protect us from. The core question is this: how does one link together the official placement system, which is legally grounded and probably also indispensable, with the proclaimed individual recruitment and freedom of movement?
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