ABSTRACT
This chapter documents the history of immigration, briefly for the long period before 1940, in greater detail for the period after 1945, with a gradual shift from unskilled Mediterranean labour to family migration and refugees and an increase in education levels of labour migrants. The development of legislation and actual policy-making is described and analysed in detail, from initial dominance of restriction on labour market access to priority of general legislation on immigration, the shift from rather open access to national interest as a criterion and the loss of autonomy to EU and asylum regulation. Policy-making has been a constant struggle between different interests, weak implementation of regulations (deliberately or from impotence), dishonesty and unintended consequences. Population density was never a serious argument in immigration policy. Implementation of the criteria in the three-quarters of a century after World War II has been a constant struggle with unintended effects, as befell the sorcerer’s apprentice who only half mastered his art: he could set forces in motion, but controlling them afterwards was beyond his skills.
