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Introductiondraconian immigration rules, which could potentially harm such cooperation, are lesslikely to be implemented. Nevertheless, such arguments remain speculative and mustbe subjected to more rigorous examination.Playing politics with migration is dangerous but dangerously attractive in today’sclimate of European malaise. The chapter by Tito Boeri and Herbert Brücker examinesthe case for more coordinated and forward-looking migration policies in Europe. Thecase rests on three key points. First, uncoordinated national policies are not the right wayto govern migration in an area as economically integrated as Europe. Uncoordinatedpolicies create prisoner’s dilemma situations with every member spending inefficientlylarge amounts on border controls, sub-optimal asylum and humanitarian policies, andinefficiently restrictive policies on illegal immigration. Second, the resulting zeroimmigration policy vis-à-vis northern Africa has backfired. Now migration is basedon family reunification, humanitarian migration, and illegal migration. This meansimmigrants are, on average, less educated than economic migrants and natives, do notgenerally achieve native language proficiency, and typically have a poor performancein the labour market and education system of the host country. All this feeds back intonegative perceptions thus making economic and social integration even more difficult.Finally, the authors point out that today incomes in northern African are not muchlower than those in central and eastern Europe at the time of the 2004 EU enlargement.Moreover much of the north African youth urban labour force is, at least on paper,relatively well educated. The authors estimate that north African immigration couldcreate EU economic gains that are larger than those experienced from east Europeanmigration last decade. The key would be to adopt more realistic restrictions vis-à-visnorthern African countries. This skilled immigration would reduce pressures for illegalmigration while creating substantial economic gains in both the receiving and sendingregions.13