Rich world "needs more foreign workers"

The International Organization for Migration (IOM( says that despite the downturn, wealthy states like Switzerland will continue to need foreign workers to fill jobs their shrinking workforces cannot or will not do.

Switzerland hosts the third-largest number of migrants in Europe relative to population size, the Geneva-based intergovernmental body says.

"Switzerland, with its bilateral agreements with the EU, has chosen a specific way of the kind of immigration it wants and needs for the country to continue to prosper," Erika Laubacher of the IOM in Bern told swissinfo.

"One can't just say that Switzerland closes the doors, because this is simply not correct," she said, pointing out the various bilateral accords, migration partnerships and labor opportunities in place in Switzerland.

"At the same time it's wrong to say that Switzerland will open its doors – it just has a very regulative, well thought through mechanism of what kind of immigration it would like to have in the years to come."

According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, in 2005 Luxembourg and Liechtenstein had the most migrants relative to population size (37.3 percent and 33.5 percent respectively), followed by Switzerland (22.9 percent) and Latvia and Estonia (19.5 percent and 15.2 percent).
Financial crisis

In the IOM's fourth World Migration Report, it said there are more than 200 million migrants around the world today - two-and-a-half times the number in 1965.

Developed countries compete for highly skilled immigrants, but there is also a growing need for low-skilled workers in rich countries, it said.

Planning immigration is "especially important during downturns in the global economy such as the one we are witnessing today," said Gervais Appave, one of the editors of the report.

Appave said the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s demonstrated that the need for immigrant workers continued even during times of economic hardship.

Laubacher believed it was too early however to say how the current financial crisis could affect immigration in Switzerland.

"At the moment we just have to see how things develop. We also have to look at different regions - what might affect the irregular migration movements in Southeast Asia might be different from Switzerland," she said.

The Federal Office of Migration also told swissinfo it was too early to speculate on the impact of the economic crisis on illegal immigration.

"Complex"

The IOM's report said Europe hosted the largest number of immigrants, with 70.6 million people in 2005, the latest year for which figures are available.

North America, with over 45.1 million immigrants, is second, followed by Asia, which hosts nearly 25.3 million.

Most of today's migrant workers come from Asia and demographic data suggest that by 2030, China and India will provide 40 percent of the global workforce, the report said.

"There's always jobs that the host population don't want to do," said IOM spokeswoman Jemini Pandya, adding that in many countries, the demand for workers in health care, domestic care and service industries would continue to grow.

Regarding illegal immigration and employment, Laubacher said both were "taken very seriously" by the authorities and measures existed to combat them.

"But it's very difficult - irregular immigration can include people who stay after their visa runs out or who move on to France, for example, in the asylum process," she said.

"It's a very complex phenomenon."