Immigration is good: but what about those already here?

European Commission Vice President Franco Frattini has been in Portugal this week, outlining his upcoming proposals for a "blue card" for skilled migrant workers who can come to work freely in the EU. On the other hand, the Vice President has been keen to be tough on employers who hire staff without a residence permit. This also needs re-evaluating.

There are many thousands, in fact many tens of thousands, already here. They could be doctors, drivers, economists, lecturers, botanists, geologists, camera operators, banking experts, translators, opticians and anyone else but they are instead cleaning floors, driving taxis, picking fruit, working in bars and restaurants, or just sitting in detention centres waiting for someone to finally say yes, they can stay, or no, their application is not strong enough. What about these people first? These are the ones who need immediate attention. These are the ones who should be filling our job market first.

I have an Australian friend, a lawyer, who came to Belgium to visit and decided to stay. She is highly qualified and has ten years' experience too. I took her to the city hall and they told her if she wanted to set up an independent practice she would need to either go back to Australia and apply from there, or declare her arrival date, get a police criminal clearance paper within 40 days from Australia and the country where she lived prior to arriving, China (which will be a nightmare), fill in a form in Dutch, which includes a section where she needs to write 300 words on why she wants to live here, and then she should wait nine months. Oh yes, she cannot leave the country. Surely she would be an asset to the economy. Why then must she go through all this administrative upheaval? And to think, she is even from a country with strong diplomatic ties to the EU. What must it be like to come from Moldova, Mozambique or Myanmar?

Why is the system set up in a way which encourages those with fewer scruples to take part in people trafficking? In fact, if you look more deeply into it, the system is set up to discriminate against those who genuinely come here to work or to escape persecution and favours the economic migrants and those interested purely in social security, benefits and a life of peace paid for by the taxes.

We should be advertising our vacant positions in foreign newspapers but at the same time matching jobs to those already here. Lots of migrants don't want to sit about doing nothing, but they have to, because they are unable to work whilst their paperwork is being looked at, and that can last a very long time indeed, including appeals, re-schedulings and new evidence, all which can mean the process must start all over again. This is a ridiculous waste of precious time, paper and talent. It also creates tension between those who have arrived and the local residents, who without the necessary knowledge of the immigrant's predicament, immediately place them in a negative light.

We should do more to drive away the people traffickers by making it easier to come and work in Europe, especially those with needed talents and qualifications. If you make it legally impossible for those who arrive unannounced to stay, whilst opening quota-driven employment centres in embassies and cultural centres abroad, people trafficking would be rendered useless, especially if the EU makes that clear to the appropriate people.