China and the US are far away. Turkey is in the same time zone and is within trucking distance. That means that they can compete in markets the Chinese and Americans can’t

No, it isn’t. What are your estimates based upon, though? And why would this Turkey be so much more determinative outside the EU than inside, when compared with other trading partners like China or the US?

True, but it is the largest. And it has a legitimate interest in having a significant say in questions affecting its important interests, such as a question so large a percentage of the resident population is personally interested in. Making immigrants feel welcome is important in the long run and neglected for too long.

In addition Germany and Austria, being the eastmost of the western states have a large interest in all of eastern Europe improving its standard of living. It is true that there have been calls to delay the joining of Romania and Bulgaria to better keep out the cheap competition, but that is shortsighted and not really in the national interest.
Germany (Austria is better off still) can live either with closed borders or with a near abroad richer than it is now. The pressure to do something about the wage pressure from the east would become too large to resist.
Now Croatia is not really large enough to be vital, but the principle interest should not be overlooked.

The same would apply to Spain or Italy if they saw this matter in a similar way with respect to Romania. The EU must be ready to yield to some special interests of the members if it wants to keep inner peace. Eg. the CAP can be reduced only slowly and only if France agrees.

The Croatian diaspora is concentrated in Austria and Germany; the Serbian one is there too, but also includes large numbers in France, Britain and the Scandinavian countries.

Per capita, Serbs have sent about twice as many emigrants abroad as Croats in the last 30 years.

[Romania]

I’m surprised there are that many; Germany is not a favored destination for Romanians. But there are more than half a million of them in Spain and Italy.

Doug M.

For Germany the numbers are
Serbia/Montenegro: 568.240
Croatia: 236.570
Bosnia/Hercegovina: 167.081
More or less proportional to the populations except for a surplus of Bosnians.

Turkey: 1.877.661
That means that Jugoslavija is overrepresented per capita. (Not as grossly as the raw numbers suggest because Turkey’s population has grown quicker)

Turkey’s potential to generate more immigrants in the future is of course larger, but they find less approval among the general population than other potential immigrants.

In fact if we want immigrants we could look eg. at South America, India, China …
The supply is large. What we do care about is integrating the immigrants already here. Having large numbers of people not able to vote even in local elections is a problem.
Compounded still more by an unequal geographic distribution.

ps:
Romania: 89.104
Underrepresented

See
http://www.zuwanderung.de/tabellen/1_02.html

They should be so lucky. I just checked with the prb 2005 data sheet, it’s 1.3. And the median age is 39.97, if that means anything.

No, actually, it hasn’t. Fewer than Serbia or Bosnia, both per capita and in absolute numbers. Not even close to Romania, never mind Turkey.

That Croatian community in Munich dates from the 1960s and ’70s. It’s the largest group of recent Croatian emigrants in the world. But it’s not getting any bigger.

They are still alive and have children

The 25 year old who went off in 1970 to lay bricks in Germany is now a 60 year old living in a suburb of Split. He’s not going off to work abroad again.

Quite possibly, he *doesn’t* have children — Croatia’s TFR is around 1.5. The birth rate declined after 1980 and then nosedived dratically after 1990.

Croatia is a country with fewer 18 year olds than 40 year olds… and nearly twice as many 40 year olds as 5 year olds. There’s just no way it’s going to generate significant numbers of emigrants to the rest of Europe.

Look, don’t take my word for it. Compare and contrast neighboring Slovenia, which is demographically very similar. Slovenia has been in the EU for 16 months now. Do you know how many emigrants it’s sent out?

Doug M.

Croatia has produced a lot of emmigrants. Enough to make a plurality of foreigners eg. in Munich.

Croatia did produce modest numbers of gastarbeiteren in the ’60s and ’70s, but that was a while ago.

They are still alive and have children.

“Croatia is unlikely to produce many immigrants. It’s a small country to begin with, and it’s demographically stagnant”

Well Doug, it’s nice to see you fielding these issues for a change rather than me :).

I agree, of course. In fact I tend to think that the countries joining the EU are only really net exporters of migrants in the run-up to accession (and maybe the first couple of years after). This was the history with Spain, Greece and Portugal, and I don’t see why Poland, Hungary etc should be any different. So of course now there are lots of ‘undocumented’ persons from Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia etc.

Indeed I suspect thatin 10 - 15 years from now when Turkey is a member there will be very little inward migration, just like people are pointing out in your other post about the French Dom Toms.

I think, when given a realistic choice, people far prefer to remain nearer home.

David Miller, in a very interesting book on nationalism, suggested that the world may be divided into two kinds of people.

Those for whom the world is like a supermarket, where they use a kind of rational choice model and go and live where it suits them best.

And those for whom family, belonging and identity are the main determinant, and they make choices driven by the importance given to these. ie they only move with difficulty, when they feel forced to.

I suspect that your case and mine have more to do with the former, but that the vast majority of people belong in the latter group.