Prague, July 2 (CTK) – The Czech Republic cannot pretend that the modern migration of the nations did not concern it or that it can avoid a better control of its border, and top politicians should approve a long-term immigration strategy, Bohumil Pecinka writes in the latest issue of weekly Reflex.
He writes that President Milos Zeman has indicated its possible outlines when he started up the project of return of Volhynian Czechs who feel threatened in the war-stricken Ukraine.
Some 20,000 ethnic Czechs live in Ukraine. Czechs moved to the area in the second half of the 19th century. Several thousands of them were repatriated to Czechoslovakia in the aftermath of World War Two, others after the collapse of the Communist regime in 1989.
Further expatriates joined them recently within the project initiated by Zeman. The Czech state has offered them temporary accommodation and it helps them find jobs.
In addition to the Czech expatriates, the Czech Republic has provided shelter for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians seeking work in the country in the past 25 years, Pecinka writes and adds that most of them have integrated with Czech society very well.
The money these “Gastarbeiters” earned in the Czech Republic has supported millions of people in Ukraine. If the current trend where the Ukrainian economy slumped by 25 percent in two years continues, thousands of Ukrainians will turn westwards, Pecinka writes.
If the Czech Republic has a well prepared asylum and immigration policy, it can gain lots of educated people as well as construction workers and tradespeople, who are precisely the groups that are missing on the Czech labour market, Pecinka writes.
The country would thus become on European level a country offering asylum to a group of Christians from the East having a similar culture, and it would not have to experiment with mandatory quotas for the export of communities of African Muslims, Pecinka writes.
The area of the present Czech Republic has had a certain type of culture and ethnic composition for more than two millennia and Czech politicians should not be afraid of endorsing certain values and an asylum policy based on them, Pecinka writes.
He writes that when Western states were opening their doors to Czech refugees after the communist coup in former Czechoslovakia in 1948 and after the Soviet-led occupation of the country in 1968, they automatically presupposed a couple of things.
They supposed that the Czechs will be riding their cars on the right, live in monogamy and that they will not consider women second-rate citizens, Pecinka writes.
Those who want to actively apply the Sharia law should seek refuge in countries with a different culture than the Czech one. A signal in this respect sent out from official places would avert many misunderstandings, Pecinka writes.
