The Swedish MEP Abir Al-Sahlani of the Centre Party has led the work on a bill that will facilitate labor migration of the low-skilled and self-employed to the EU, which will undoubtedly drive down wages for European workers during a time of economic uncertainty. The European Parliament has now adopted the proposal, Nyheter Idag reported.
“We must make it more attractive for labor migrants to come to Europe,” Al-Sahlani said after the vote in the European Parliament.
The European Parliament adopted the legislative initiative report on labor migration on Nov. 30, with 497 votes in favor, 160 votes against, and 38 MEPs abstaining from voting, the European Parliament announced in a press release.
The proposal includes an entry program for third-country workers with low or medium-level education and “a framework for recognizing their knowledge and qualifications,” making it easier for self-employed workers to enter the EU. For them, the number of years required to obtain a long-term residence permit in the EU will reduce from five to three.
The European Parliament’s work on the legislative report has been led by the Swedish Center Party member Abir Al-Sahlani. She was elected to the Parliament in 2019 as a second name on the Center Party’s list of candidates and served as a member of Sweden’s Parliament from 2010 to 2014 and in 2019.
Demographic solution?
“Europe is facing demographic and economic challenges. To address these challenges and ensure that Europe can be strong and competitive, we need labor immigration. That is a fact,” Al-Sahlani said after the vote in parliament.
Other countries disagree with her stance. Hungary, for instance, is pushing to raise the birth rate instead of relying on mass migration, which has provided cheap labor in some instances, but has also led to a number of societal ills in countries like Germany, Sweden and France.
“In all of Europe there are fewer and fewer children, and the answer of the West to this is migration,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in 2018. “They want as many migrants to enter as there are missing kids, so that the numbers will add up. We Hungarians have a different way of thinking. Instead of just numbers, we want Hungarian children. Migration for us is surrender.”
Despite a push for more low-skilled labor to Europe, the results have often been poor, including the massive financial costs of integrating migrants. As Remix News previously reported, new automation breakthroughs, artificial intelligence, and pro-natal policies, such as promoted in Japan, may be a far more successful solution to Europe’s labor shortfalls.
Low-skilled migration also drives down wages for workers, and as Bernie Sanders famously said in a 2015 interview, open immigration harms American workers.
Sanders even went on to say an open borders immigration agenda was a “right wing proposal” funded by the “Koch brothers.”
“I think from a moral responsibility we’ve got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty, but you don’t do that by making people in this country even poorer.”
Sanders’ claims are backed by research from Harvard, which found that immigration lowered the wages and economic clout of millions of lower-income Americans.
Now, Europe is looking to emulate the same programs that have contributed to much of the poverty seen in the United States.
Europe moves forward on demographic replacement
Nevertheless, the EU, which is dominated by pro-migrant political forces, is moving forward with a slew of policies to open up Europe to even more mass immigration from non-EU countries.
“We must make it more attractive for labor migrants to come to Europe, and we must clean up the system to ensure that the rules are followed,” she added.
Al-Sahlani was born in Iraq in 1976. She then came alone to Sweden from Bulgaria. After the US invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, she joined her father Abid Al-Sahlani, a former member of the Iraqi Communist Party, in Iraqi politics and received support from the Centre Party.
In 2007, she was employed by the Centre Party as a political expert. In 2013, Al-Sahlani was investigated for fraud after the Centre Party’s international foundation discovered major accounting gaps in democracy projects in Iraq, which supported the National Democratic Alliance led by her father.