After examining the factors causing fear toward immigrants in most Europeans, the paper addresses the following question: who should benefit from immigration? Is it the host country which is in need of immigrant workers, or is it the immigrants themselves who are in search of a way to escape economic poverty or other situations? The argument is made that neither the thesis that says immigration should be functional only to the host country's interests, nor the opposite thesis, which sees only benefits for the country of emigration, can be accepted from either an economic or a moral standpoint. The paper defends the position that a sustainable immigration policy should be able to reflect the interests of both parties: immigrants and resident citizens. In turn, such a stance raises the fundamental issue concerning the so-called model of immigrant's integration into the host society. Granted that neither the assimilationist nor the multiculturalist strategies are effective under present-day conditions, a better strategy, it seems, is the transcultural perspective, which maintains that confrontation and dialogue are possible, indeed necessary, among cultures sharing a common core of values and principles, which are the universal human rights.

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immigration policy migrants experience Europe migrant worker immigrant population