An ancillary but groundbreaking aspect of the ongoing influx of hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern, African, and other migrants into the EU is the sudden irrelevance of decades of European visa policies. Obscured by the spectacle of the sudden rush of arrivals is the fact that almost all of those who stream into Europe daily would have been denied visas or barred from entry had they sought to enter Europe via long-established legal means. European visa regimes have quickly been rendered largely obsolete, so European nations are, at the very least, faced with overhauling their procedures for legal entry. They will probably also have to re-imagine how they handle travelers who by tradition– and law– require visas for entry.
Consider the basic fact that all of the migrants in the current surge fit the profile of “intending immigrant”—in other words, the very travelers European visa systems were designed to prevent from setting foot on the continent. Even more of a shock to the system is that the poster boys for almost automatic denial of visas– young, unemployed, under-educated, unmarried males—are extremely well represented among the flood of migrants.
European visa policies officially consider these young men, as a demographic subset, to represent the highest category of risk to overstay tourist or other non-immigrant visas because they usually cannot prove that they have strong enough incentives to return to their country of origin or residence. Without a convincing combination of wife, children, well-paid and/or or long-term employment, or significant social/family status to bind them to their country of residence, they are routinely denied visas. It is assumed that young, untethered men without sufficient reason to return to a poorer country where they have less opportunity will choose to stay—even illegally– in a richer country with greater opportunity.
Now we are witnessing tens of thousands of these young men blithely crossing border after border of countries that would have almost certainly refused to grant them legal entry. Moreover, when interviewed by the media, these young men quite openly proclaim that their migration was motivated by desire for education, employment, and the social benefits of living in European society— exactly what European visa systems were crafted to prevent them from accessing. Almost any of the quotes we read and hear every day would have automatically disqualified the speaker as a viable visa applicant to any EU country had he said such a thing on a visa application or in an interview for a visa. What has transpired, therefore, is nothing less than the de facto crumbling—in a matter of months– of the foundation of European non-immigrant visa policies.
Political, security, demographic, and social judgements aside, it is impossible not to consider the wholesale disregard of Europe’s borders a bureaucratic nightmare of unprecedented scale. What has become of the mighty European visa system? Are European embassies’ waiting rooms still full of visa applicants, or have all former aspirants to legal entry chosen to head for Turkey, foregoing the expense, long waits, and potential humiliation of applying for visas?
Almost every migrant in the current wave also has a family that s/he hopes will be permitted to follow her/him to Europe. That, too, represents a tremendous challenge to visa regimes. Family reunification is a common goal of legal migration, and is always provided for in some way, but usually after a long wait and a lot of bureaucracy. How are European countries going to manage the family reunification expectations of hundreds of thousands who themselves bypassed existing formalities to gain their immigrant status?
What does this mean for the future of European visa regimes? Should we expect to see a wave of Asians and South Americans who have been denied a visa joining the hundreds of thousands on the migration footpath who have skipped the application process altogether? Are bureaucrats in Brussels and every European capital scrambling to come up with new visa rules? If so, will they be tougher or more lenient? Might they even be transformed into something entirely different from the traditional visa—something disruptive to local law and prevailing practice in migration?
What will probably emerge from this upheaval is, in the short- to medium-term, a significant relaxation of de facto—if not de jure– rules on overseas visa issuance by European countries. If nothing else, loosening legal means to access to Europe is more efficient and cheaper than dealing with tens or hundreds of thousands arriving illegally, en masse, and requiring immediate and sustained help. This recognition– if not embrace– of the inevitable will be accompanied by much stricter enforcement of rules for residency and benefits. We should also start to see widespread information campaigns designed to educate recent arrivals, native populations, and potential intending immigrants about asylum, refugee, immigration, and residency rules– and about the authorities’ commitment to enforcing them. This dual approach might have the effect of mitigating some of the unrealistic expectations on all sides and could buy time to develop and begin to execute a new visa and immigration system.
For the moment, however, there’s no turning the migrants back—which means there is no turning back from the immediate requirement for new and realistic European non-immigrant visa policies.