who had been authorized to work but work beyond the authorization period or take jobs for which they lack authorization. In comparison to the French and Germans, the Swiss seem to have experienced very little of the first kind of immigration law violation while what problems they have seem to involve primarily the second and third types of violations. The policy context of employer sanctions in Western Europe, then, differs considerably from country to country in Europe and between Western Europe and the United States. Countries like Belgium, the Netherlands, Great Britain and France' have permitted adjustment of status or have decreed amnesties for illegal aliens as part of broader policies aimed at reducing illegal alien populations while other countries, such as Germany and Switzerland, have not. Most continental European countries have some form of national identity card for citizens while legally admitted foreign workers and their dependents are required to carry residency authorization at all times. Among major Western European states, Great Britain is exceptional in that it resembles the U.S. situation of not requiring citizens to obtain some sort of national identification card. As in the United States, the British see identity papers as a potential threat to civil liberties.

There are several other factors which generally serve to facilitate efforts to thwart illegal immigration and illegal alien employment in the European context as opposed to the United States. In several Western European countries, police forces and other authorized officials have much freer rein to conduct identity checks aimed at discovering illegal aliens than in the United States. Until the recent change of government in France, for example, the police regularly checked identity papers in the Paris metro and, less frequently, cordoned off entire neighborhoods thought to contain large numbers of illegal aliens while systematically demanding identity papers from individuals suspected of being illegal aliens. In 1980, a law was passed in France that would have enabled the government to computerize records pertaining to national identity cards and alien work and residency permits. According to recent press reports, however, the new French government intends to abolish the law which would have permitted the storage of such information in a nation0-82--14

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wide computer system. In many European countries, such as in Germany, Switzerland and France, official monitoring of aliens is facilitated by regulations which require aliens to report to the local police when they take up residency in a town or city and then to report any change of address. In countries like Belgium and Switzerland, special police forces have been created to regulate inflows and outflows of aliens. More generally, most Western European countries do not have immigration traditions and are more ethnically homogeneous than the United States, especially if one can disregard for the purposes of this presentation so-called national or regional minorities such as the Scots in Great Britain or the Bretons and Corsicans in France.

European

The relative ethnic homogeneity of European countries facilitates
administrative control of aliens in general and detection of illegal
aliens in particular as compared to the United States.
countries with significant minority populations that could suffer
prejudice as a result of random identity checks or an obligation to
prove citizenship before taking a job include France, which has a

sub

large population of citizens of North African, Saharan African and

West Indian descent, Great Britain with its large immigrant citizen populations from India, Pakistan and the West Indies, and the Netherlands with its citizens from former colonies in the Caribbean region and from Simmering resentment over frequent identity checks actually seems to have been a factor in the recent British disturbances and French

Indonesia.

identity controls also have resulted in incidents between the police and 6 citizens of North African background who feel they are being harassed. In countries like Norway or Germany, by way of contrast, there are relatively few citizens who physically and linguistically resemble major resident populations of legally admitted aliens and illegal aliens. Although it is widely believed here in the United States that our almost 2,000-mile long border with Mexico presents a unique problem in regulating alien inflows, it should be pointed out that Western European countries also must regulate huge inflows of aliens who come as tourists, visiters, workers, students or in transit. In France, for example, it was recently estimated that 500,000 aliens enter the country each day.' Other countries, such as the Federal Republic of Germany, have special

7

problems in regulating alien entry. Due to the special status of West Berlin, for example, it is quite easy for aliens to fly to East Berlin and then to enter West Berlin on the subway that links the divided halves of that city as there are no identity controls.

Large numbers of aliens

from the Near East, India and Pakistan have been able to take up illegal
residency and employment in West Berlin, and from there throughout West
Germany, due the peculiar status of Berlin. The permeability of Western
European frontiers to potential illegal aliens, the impossibility of
stopping all would-be illegal aliens at national borders because of
international and bilateral travel conventions, tourist industries,
foreign student admissions and visiting rights accorded families of
legally admitted aliens, together with the reluctance of democratic
societies to inhibit the free circulation of individuals, have been
decisive factors in European decisions to adopt employer sanctions
as a primary means of preventing illegal alien residency and employment.
Hence, one should not exaggerate the putative uniqueness of the U.S.
immigration situation arising from our long border with Mexico.
countries also have enormous problems regulating alien inflows.

European

3

A Comparative Summary of Employer Sanctions Across Europe Penalties against the employers of illegal aliens in Western Europe became important features of governmental policies toward migrants only in the 1970s. Two major factors seem to account for the European-wide emphasis upon employer sanctions by the mid-1970s: (1) the adoption in 1975 by the International Labor Organization of Convention 143 pertaining to migration in abusive conditions and to equality of opportunity and treatment for migrants and; (2) the general economic recession brought on by the oil crisis. A third contributory factor would appear to be the politicization of postwar foreign labor policies and resultant pressure to stop or more closely restrict additional foreign worker employment.

Part I of Convention 143, among other provisions, requires each ratifying government to seek systematically to determine whether there are illegally employed aliens on its territory. Governments are required to take all necessary

measures to suppress clandestine movement of aliens and their employment, in

cluding measures against employers of illegal aliens.

ratified, have the force of international treaties.

ILO conventions, if

Although no Western

European states have as yet ratified Convention 143, its adoption by the ILO meant that member states would be asked to report on what measures, if any, they had taken to comply with the provisions of Convention 143. Generally, Western European states are responsive toward ILO instruments, especially if key domestic interest groups embrace them. Organized labor, among other in

terest groups in Western Europe, generally supported the idea of employer sanctions enunciated in Convention 143 as well as approving penalties against traffickers of aliens. In addition to employer sanctions, legislation stipulating harsh penalties for persons involved in smuggling aliens, or otherwise abetting clandestine entry and residency by aliens, has become a key element of European policies aimed at stemming illegal immigration.

8

In 1978, the European Economic Community (EEC) Commission announced its intention to seek a joint European policy against illegal immigration." The EEC, now more appropriately referred to as the European Community, is composed of ten Western European states, including France and the Federal Republic of Germany but not Switzerland. The EEC Commission wished to see employer sanctions resembling those of Germany adopted by the entire community. At present, employers of illegal aliens in Germany are subject to fines of up to 50,000 Deutsch marks (roughly $20,000) and/or prison terms of up to five years. The EEC Commission's statement concerning employer sanctions, however, was an advisory opinion only. Nonetheless, it added momentum to the now nearly uniform movement by Western European states toward adoption of employer sanctions.

Table 1, listing the types of employer sanctions adopted or not adopted by ten Western European states, indicates that most European countries have adopted some form of employer sanctions. Fines and jail terms for convicted employers of illegal aliens generally are stiff, although Austrian law does not permit imprisonment of employers of illegal aliens. In Great Britain, where there are no employer sanctions per se, employers can be punished if it is determined that they are abetting illegal alien residency. In Switzerland, provisions of the legislation governing alien employment and residency do not explicitly include penalties for illegal alien employment but de facto employer sanctions (fines and prison terms) exist. In Germany, where 9,335 employers were fined in 1976, a government-backed bill which currently is in committee and likely to be adopted as law, would raise the fine levied on employers of 9 illegal aliens to 100,000 Deutsch_marks or roughly $40,000.