Immigration law continues to be an issue of substantial interest in the European Union. The institutions and the Member States are formulating the type of immigration law which the Union will have following the substantial move of competence in the field from Member State level to the Union with the amendments to the EC Treaty introduced by the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1999. This is a particularly important period within which to take stock of the existing immigration law of the European Union and how it has been developed. In order to understand the current law and lay the foundations for the...

Every day newspapers in the Western world carry articles about illegal immigrants, asylum seekers and other migrants. The focus of these articles varies greatly from migrants as a threat to one or another important social or societal interest, to migrants as an important asset to those same interests. The tone is most often emotional - whichever way the focus goes. The overall impact is to confuse: is migration good or bad? In this book Guild and van Selm seek to investigate these value assessments regarding migrants in Europe, the USA, Canada and Australia. While looking at issues such as...