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Immigrant Workers, Feared ElsewhereIn Europe, Find an Open Door
By MARC CHAMPION
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 7, 2005; Page A11

OBAN, Scotland -- At McTavish's Kitchens in the Scottish highlands, the cooks who prepare the traditional haggis -- a round sausage
boiled in the lining of a sheep's stomach -- are German, Swedish and Slovak. The waitresses are largely Polish. The restaurant's
manager, Bill Matthews, is delighted.

Until last year, Scotland had one of the fastest-declining populations in Europe, a region already challenged by low birth rates. Getting
enough people to wait tables, drive buses or plumb the nation's toilets became difficult, creating a potential drag on economic growth.
But unlike others in the European Union facing similar demographic problems, Scotland is trying to lure as many foreign workers as it
can get.

"Immigration is good," Mr. Matthews said, as he watched Lidia Rygielska, one of his Polish workers, bus tables in his restaurant. "Last
year was the easiest we have ever had recruiting staff."

The EU's older members are deeply troubled by the prospect of increased immigration, especially from nations to the east. While
demographers say large-scale immigration is essential for developed economies from the U.S. to Japan to sustain their work forces
and growth rates over the coming decades, most governments in Europe are putting up barriers to immigrants because of popular
fears of job competition and erosion of their national cultures.

Those fears are strong in Scotland, too, but unusually, the Scottish Parliament, which handles most regional issues, has launched a
campaign -- called "Fresh Talent" -- to advertise for as many migrant workers as will come, especially in the U.S., India and Poland. In
fact, says Scotland's First Minister Jack McConnell, the nation's most powerful executive, he would even like to see the tens of
thousands of protesters expected to descend on Scotland this week for the summit of leaders from the Group of 8 countries stay on
and settle.

"Politicians in Scotland have been planning for population decline for 50 years," Mr. McConnell said in a recent interview. "We are going
to reverse that decline."


The different approaches of EU governments to immigration were clear when the 15-nation bloc expanded last year to include Cyprus,
Malta and eight East European countries. Most of the existing EU countries -- including France, Italy and Germany -- blocked workers
from the new member states from crossing their borders to work for a transition period of as long as seven years.

Along with Ireland and Sweden, the United Kingdom -- of which Scotland is a part -- took a different approach. It opened its doors to
workers from the new EU states immediately. Before the May 1 enlargement last year, the U.K. government had said it expected just an
extra 13,000 people from the new members to come to the U.K. to work over the following year. In fact, government figures released at
the end of May this year show that 176,000 people from the new EU countries registered to work in the U.K. in the first 11 months after
enlargement.

But so far, confounding opponents of immigration, the impact has been benign. The U.K.'s unemployment rate remains among the
lowest in Europe at 4.7%.

To be sure, Britain's unemployment rate is less than half the figure in France, making foreign job seekers less threatening. But East
European workers coming to the U.K. generally have taken low-wage or semiskilled jobs for which there are shortages even in
high-unemployment countries such as France.

According to Robert Wright, a professor of economics at Stirling University in Scotland who specializes in demography, even the past
year's surge of mainly East European immigration represents a small number relative to those routinely recorded by traditionally
high-immigration countries such as Canada and the U.S.

"What's happened since May of last year shows there are lots of people in Eastern Europe with skills that are needed in the old 15," Mr.
Wright says. "All of the old EU countries would be better off if they came."

Especially Scotland. In November, managers at Glasgow's First Bus PLC, one of the U.K.'s largest bus companies, arrived at work one
morning to find seven Polish bus drivers waiting at the gates with their suitcases.

The company decided to teach the Poles how to speak enough Glaswegian English to take bus fares, familiarized them with driving on
the left side of the road and put them to work. The same day, First Bus hired Ewelina Masterton, a 29-year-old Pole who recently had
married and settled near Glasgow, to look after the new drivers. Four days later, Adam Florek, a 38-year-old Polish former policeman,
arrived from Italy. "My cousin called and said there was a legal job here and much better access to housing, so I could bring my family,"
Mr. Florek said.

Stuart Render, a spokesman for First Bus, said the company now has 10 recruiters in Poland, together with a pair of double-decker
buses for training. Today, First Bus has 120 Poles working in Glasgow, and an additional 280 East Europeans recruited under the
same program working throughout the U.K.

Scotland's remote highland hotels and restaurants are largely staffed by East Europeans now. Business lobbies say the construction
and fish-processing industries also have hired aggressively from the new EU countries. Even the five-star Gleneagles hotel, where
President Bush and other leaders from G-8 countries will be staying this week, has a substantial East European staff, according to a
hotel spokesman.

Mr. McConnell, the first minister, says he wants more. Government actuaries predict Scotland's population will fall by 10% to 4.5 million
in 2043 from five million in 2003. Ten thousand of the workers registering in the U.K. from the new EU states over the past year did so
in Scotland, helping to boost population growth last year to the highest in decades, but it isn't clear that will continue.

Mr. McConnell's biggest hurdle in attracting more immigrant workers may be the U.K.'s central government, which promised to
increase controls on immigration after the issue played a prominent role in May's general-election campaign and signs that the
economy is starting to weaken. Mr. McConnell already has negotiated to allow foreign students to stay on in Scotland for two years after
graduation, compared with three months elsewhere in the U.K. And as the central government in London prepares to introduce a
Canadian-style points system for immigrants, he is negotiating for applicants to get more points for saying they will move north of the
border.

--Hillary August in Brussels contributed to this article.

Write to Marc Champion at marc.champion@wsj.com