Keep calm, carry on

Even as the global economic crisis wore on in 2011 and conflicts in the Arab world pushed boatloads of immigrants to seek a better life abroad, attitudes toward immigration have remained stable in Europe and the US, according to the fourth annual Transatlantic Trends survey, released this week.

The public opinion poll looked at perceptions of immigration in the US, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK and was put together by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Italy's Compagnia di San Paolo, the British Barrow Cadbury Trust with support from Spain's Fundacion BBVA.

"Policymakers should pay attention to [these] results," said Craig Kennedy, president of the German Marshall Fund, in a statement. "The survey reveals that, even in tumultuous political and economic times, Americans and Europeans have stable feelings about immigration but are still frustrated with how their governments are handling the issue."

A greater role for Brussels?

Perceptions of immigration as a problem or an opportunity have apparently changed little since the study was first conducted in 2008.

A majority does see it as a problem - 52 percent of Europeans and 53 percent of Americans. However, a majority also remain optimistic about immigrant integration, with some 52 percent of Europeans and 56 percent of Americans are hopeful about the success of immigrant integration.

Germany was the only country polled in which a majority did not think immigrants were a burden on social services.

But respondents were less positive about the performance of their countries' leaders on the immigration issue. The vast majority - 68 percent of Europeans and 73 percent of Americans - said they thought their government was doing a "poor" or "very poor" job in dealing with the issue.

In Italy, where thousands of North Africans fled to the tiny island of Lampedusa as trouble broke out, criticism of the government was especially high. Of Italian respondents, 83 percent believed their government was doing a poor or very poor job managing immigration, up from 70 percent in 2010.

Amid debate in the European Union about whether southern European countries bore an unfair burden when it came to processing undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers, the survey found that there was growing support for a more centralized EU approach to the North African crisis and to immigration in general.

For Arab Spring-specific migration, 80 percent of respondents were in favor of EU countries sharing the responsibility, while an average of 42 percent of respondents wanted to give Brussels more say in setting national immigration numbers. While not a majority, that figure increased for all five EU countries surveyed.

Author: Holly Fox
Editor: Ben Knight