KARACHI, Dec 13: Berlin wall falls. Iron curtain is lifted. The World Trade Centre is destroyed. It’s these events that gave birth to new conflicts and ultimately made people of the developed world re-evaluate their relations with the developing world, said the speakers at a workshop on Friday.

Tough visa and immigration regimes in the countries of the developed world. Protests and complaints against the restrictive policies in the developing world. These are the responses, respectively, in the developed and developing world to the historic events, according to them.

Prof S. Sikander Mehdi said the Islamic countries particularly made loud noises against the tougher immigration policies. However, it’s generally the countries of the developed world that provide financial assistance towards resolving the immigration problems, not the Islamic countries.

Prof Mehdi said in the post-9/11 world the immigration issues were viewed in terms of “lifting a burden” as opposed to “sharing a burden”. The problem had become “security-related” rather than being a “humanitarian” one.

In effect the issues in immigration had been dehumanized, said the workshop director. Contingency laws were being formulated in almost all the countries of the developed world in view of the “new realities”.

“Now almost every developed country is making its policies unattractive in an effort to make itself unwanted to the would-be migrants.”

Prof Mehdi said the situation was not altogether hopeless, though. Some humanitarian agencies — like UNHCR and Red Cross — had mounted positive responses to the immigration problem. Similarly, the civil societies in Europe and North America were also doing their best to thwart the xenophobic, and exclusionary, policies from being formulated and implemented.

He stressed the need for serious dialogue between the developing and developed countries and said seminars like Friday’s — organized jointly by Karachi University’s international relations department and Hanns Seidel Foundation, Islamabad — must be held in all the concerned regions of the world.

“The issues in migration shouldn’t be compartmentalized. A holistic view should be taken to resolve the problem because it’s a global issue.”

Presenting the European perspective, Dr Steffen Angenendt of the German Society for Foreign Affairs stated that due to its demographics, Europe badly needed migrant labourers. However, the continent is toughening its visa and immigration regimes.

Prof Steffen pointed out that Europe’s prosperity, to an extent, depended on the “import” of labourers, including those from the Asian countries. And there were strong indications that the demand for them will increase over the years.

“There is a likelihood of eruption of new conflicts. Similarly, the income disparities between the first and third worlds mean that the pressures will increase tremendously by 2050.

“However, in recent years there’s been a shift in the European policies and the recent ones are rather restrictive in nature,” said the academic.

Prof Steffen said some of the governments in the developed world used delaying tactics to keep even the number of legal immigration cases to a minimum. “For instance, migration is legal when a family is to be reunited.

“But we know that some governments use delaying tactics to keep the number of such cases within certain limits.”

He said the leaders in the developed world had not been able to sell the migration of people from developing world to their electorate. In addition, some leaders were fuelling xenophobic sentiments to forward their narrow, parochial interests.

Prof Steffen said most European countries had mounted initiatives to help resolve the problem. In some countries the illegal immigrants were being regularized. In others employment opportunities were being offered which allowed the unskilled and semi-skilled labourers to move legally there.

He was of the view that 9/11 had injected a new issue in the debate — that of security. The debate had become so heated that even the idea of a common EU policy on immigration was being challenged.

However, the professor added that the EU policy on immigration was “a work in progress.”

Meanwhile, speaking at the seminar entitled “Fourth International Workshop on Forced Migration: Challenges and Responses”, Dr Talat A. Wizarat, Prof Zafar Saeed Saify, S.M. Shifaat Zaidi and Dr Abu Zar Wajidi said many people were forced to leave their countries owing to economic and political problems.

They were of the view that the developing countries must create conditions conducive for economic and political progress. This was the only way the problem could be contained.

Dr Andreas Rieck of the Hanns Seidel Foundation, Islamabad, also spoke on the occasion.