Attacking the cause

Last week, the European Parliament voted to adopt a new law that imposes very tough penalties on employers who engage immigrants illegally. Its message is clear: such employment is and must stop once and for all.

The prospect of working illegally in Europe is a key attraction for would-be illegal immigrants, motivating them to embark on a perilous journey to reach Europe. By attacking illegal employment we are therefore combating illegal immigration.

Thousands cross to Europe illegally every year hoping to find a job in the black market economy, typically in the construction, agriculture, cleaning and the hotel and catering sectors. The prospect of finding an undeclared job is a key motivator, a pull factor.

But apart from being a pull factor for illegal immigration, undeclared employment also gives rise to exploitation of migrants. Immigrants employed in this way are often exposed to abysmal working conditions. They are exploited in what is effectively a modern day slavery.

Illegal employment also distorts labour markets because it puts local workers at a disadvantage as they find it difficult to get a declared job with good conditions, putting everyone on a downward social spiral. But it also negatively affects businesses that play by the rules because they too find it difficult to compete against those that keep their costs down by resorting to illegal employment.

A lot is also at stake for government revenues through lost taxes and social security contributions.

So illegal employment is a lose-lose situation and it only benefits greedy employers who should know better. But combating it, we can turn this into a win-win situation because it helps us make illegal immigration less attractive, improve conditions for workers, whether local or foreign, support law-abiding businesses and increase government revenues. It is only businesses that hire workers illegally that should start getting worried.

Many EU countries already impose penalties and so do we. But, quite frankly, the penalties are a bit of a joke as they are too light and enforcement is also lacking. By introducing a European law we are now imposing tougher and dissuasive penalties and we are also helping enforcement because this now becomes a matter of European, not just local, concern. In other words, if enforcement is lacking, the European Commission will have to make it its business to intervene. And MEPs have a role in making sure that EU law is respected.

Illegal employment will be punished with severe financial, administrative and even criminal sanctions. Financial sanctions include tough fines, the payment of unpaid tax and social security and the cost of the return of the immigrants concerned. Administrative penalties include the disqualification from public tenders and the recovery of EU funds and state subsidies.

And in the most serious cases the law also provides for criminal sanctions along with the naming and shaming of employers. These are envisaged for repeated offences, in the case of the employment of a number of illegal immigrants or of minors and in cases where conditions are particularly exploitative.

As the EPP's negotiator on this initiative, I have followed the making of the law very closely and we have worked for more than a year to get to a suitable text, resisting some bad ideas along the way.

For instance, I resisted the socialist insistence to introduce a clause that would have allowed the regularisation of illegal workers and the automatic granting of residence permits. I did so because this law was never meant to regularise illegal situations but to present a deterrent to prevent them in the first place. I also consider that matters such as granting immigrants a temporary residence permit should be left to national authorities depending on their particular circumstances.

Thankfully, both these points were left out of the final compromise text without losing the support of the socialists. It is only a small minority composed of Alternattiva Demokratika's greens and the communists in the European Parliament that voted against the law.

The law helps us do so by sending a clear message to would-be illegal immigrants that Europe is not free-for-all and risking your life to end up in modern day slavery is just not worth it. Equally, we are sending the message to employers that illegal employment can no longer be tolerated.

Whereas this law does not stop the consequence of illegal immigration, which we see in the form of arriving boats, it does attack the cause that motivates people to embark on an illegal route in the first place.

Now that it is adopted, the law must be transposed into national legislation within the usual two-year period. I know that, locally, the ETC is already looking very closely at this new legislation and I hope that it can act swiftly and take a proactive approach to tighten our law and to step up enforcement sooner rather than later.

In particular, the ETC should address the shameful practices at Marsa where immigrant workers are hired on day jobs in something akin to a slave market. This should be stopped once and for all.

Readers who would like to ask questions to be answered in this column can send an e-mail, dentifying themselves, to contact@simonbusuttil.eu or through www.simonbusuttil.eu.

Dr Busuttil is a Nationalist member of the European Parliament.