Grass looks greener, but welcome cools

BORDER GUARDS earlier this week on the German-Polish boundary stopped a truck filled with 76 illegal immigrants from Ukraine and Moldova headed for the Netherlands.

Except for its human implications, the story might inspire a yawn. In essence, a similar story happens almost daily on some border around the world. Millions from poor countries are striving desperately to enter rich nations. International migration has become a hot topic in the US and in many other countries.

"It is a very big issue," says Joseph Chamie, director of the Population Division of the United Nations in New York. And he expects migration to become even more of a political issue in the years ahead.

These migrants are not only the poorly educated, creating job competition for lower- income workers in industrial nations, some have postgraduate degrees. Just last month, several American engineers, some with doctorates, paraded with picket signs outside a convention of engineers in Dallas to protest H-1B visas given high-tech workers. "Bill Gates Unfair," one sign read.

Engineers parading on picket lines are relatively rare. However, Microsoft, headed by Mr. Gates, is one of many United States companies that bring in foreign engineers to do programming or other mostly technical jobs under a special visa program that has become highly controversial.

Today, 175 million people reside outside their country of birth. That's about 3 percent of world population, and more than double the number in 1970. With the world's population at 6.3 billion and growing by 77 million a year, pressures to migrate, mostly from poor nations, are increasing.

Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the UN, has made international migration a "priority issue." Over the next few years, the UN will likely devote more money, more discussion, and more meetings to immigration issues. When the General Assembly meets in October, it will discuss the problem and possible ways of dealing with it.

A new UN report carefully sums up the problem: "The vast majority of migrants are making meaningful contributions to their host countries. At the same time, however, international migration entails the loss of human resources for many countries of origin and may give rise to political, economic, or social tensions in countries of destination."

Because of their growing numbers, immigrants - legal and illegal - became an election issue recently in Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and Austria. Australia was widely condemned last summer for keeping Afghan, Iranian, Iraqi, and Palestinian asylum seekers in deplorable conditions.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, US Attorney General John Ashcroft announced policies rolling back protections enjoyed by immigrants, even those legally in the US but not yet citizens. Some of those policies were reversed after protests by civil rights groups and American Muslim and Arab groups.

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