Mobility between Cape Verde and EU to be facilitated beginning in January 2009

Circular migration between Cape Verde and the European Union will effectively begin in January of 2009 and will last, in its initial phase, for three years, at a cost of 1.3 million euros, according to the site

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According to the on-line economic and financial news portal, European Commission officials and government ministers from Portugal, Spain, France and Luxembourg interested in a partnership aimed at facilitating the mobility of people between Cape Verde and the European Union signed a joint declaration in order to make the circulation of people within the EU space more flexible.

Through these mobility partnerships, according to the site, the European Union will engage in the coordinated management of migratory flows that is expected to allow both the EU and its partners to better confront the challenges they face in the area and take better advantage of existing opportunities.

"The partnerships for mobility, which are still in their pilot phase, are the new instruments aimed at lending concrete expression to the partnership between the EU and third countries aimed at assuring the shared and responsible management of migratory flows in the interest of the Union, its partners and the migrants themselves."

Cape Verde and Moldova are the first two countries with which the EU is embarking on the initiative, which, in the case of Cape Verde, reflects expectations that were not included in the Accord for the Special Partnership with the European Union.

The president of the Portuguese Development Support Institute (IPAD), Manuel Correia, says that Portugal is coordinating the project and will create a program to facilitate mobility. This "facilitation" will not mean the elimination of visa requirements between Cape Verde and European Union countries, nor an extraordinary legalization of illegal immigrants in those countries. "The idea id to help allow Cape Verde to take advantage of opportunities for the placement of qualified personnel in other countries or for Cape Verdean émigrés currently living in European countries and who wish to establish themselves temporarily in Cape Verde and return to the European country in question when they want to," he explains.

The partnership also calls for initiatives aimed at taking advantage of the possibilities offered by migration in order to promote development and, in particular, favor the Cape Verdean diaspora's contribution to the development of the islands by facilitating the transfer of capital and circular migration

Source: cabonet.org

Is it possible to develop the same kind of mobility with the USA?

I guess you have no idea about the current controversy around immigration is US, do you?

there is also a lot of controversy in Europe, but it is possible to allow some flexibility for some countries. The problem is that you don't have ID cards in the USA and then once a foreigner enters the USa he can stay there as an illegal and never be controlled by the police...that's why there is 11million illegals in the USA.

Cape-verde doesn't represent a treath because it is a very small population.

You said:

"The problem is that you don't have ID cards in the USA and then once a foreigner enters the USa he can stay there as an illegal and never be controlled by the police...that's why there is 11million illegals in the USA."

The issue in the US is not with "illegal" immigrant (people that entered the US legally but their visa expired which is the case with some Cape Verdeans). The issue is with people that comes in through the "Border" either Canada or Cali. These are the people that they have hard time tracking because there are no reference of them entering the US. That is what they need to work on and I believe it is much hard to do these days after 9/11.

yes, I aggree witrh you, the problem is the people coming from canada and mexico, that the usa doesn't have any information on them, and therfore cannot follow them.

and this cv-EU mobility agreement is just an agreement for short term stays. Cv people go to work in the EU for some years and then have to go back.

The USA could do the same with cape-verde. cape-verdeans would be allowed to work there for 3 years and then go back to cape-verde.

I also agree that Cape Verdean immigrants are not the in main core of the current immigration controversy in the United States. Actually the exacerbated or so called controversy is not the big elephant in the room as it is projected to be. The whole immigration issue has been blown out of proportions.

Going back to your question, why would the US government give a special break or treatment to immigrants from Cape Verde especially when some of our youth have given some local authorities a heck of headache with gangster criminal activities and killings? In another hand, by doing that, the US Government would be favoring Cape Verdeans over other minority immigrant ethnic groups. That would open a door for accusations of discrimination and favoritism by other countries and governments that would also want something like that for their people. In my opinion, unless the US would gain something by signing a special immigration treaty with Cape Verde, there is few incentives for Washington to do that. For example, I can see the US wanting to buy Santa Luzia island from CV and use it as a military base to better monitor the Atlantic and Africa. In that case it can use that treaty as an incentive to gain the public opinion of the Cape Verdean public. They wouldn’t need to work hard to convince the CV government. Money would dot that by itself. The only other reason for a special treaty to be signed between the two countries is if a major catastrophe happens in Cape Verde such as one of these disastrous hurricanes decides to go in eastbound towards the CV islands. That would ignite the generous and humanitarian side of the United States and they would open the door temporarily to a mass immigration from Cape Verde to help build the human and economic capital that can go back later and help re-build the country.

By the way, the EU did signed that treaty and has been courting CV in other fronts lately because they have a lot to gain from our islands:

- The strategy Geo-positioning for military purpose that Cape Verde's location offers by being the intersection within 3 of the world's major continents: Europe, America, Africa.

- An excellent backyard for tourism, 360 days a year without the Europeans having to travel all the way the way across the Atlantic to the Caribbean in a world where energy cost and fuel shortage is a major cause of headache for many governments.

- And new market to dump products that can't sell in EU like the Portuguese goods such as Vinho Dão and Azeite de Oliveira.

I think you are talking out of context. you are not following the events and the discussions on a dailybasis as I do.

here are my observations:

1) cape-verde wants to be integrated somehow into the EU, even into a light inclusion

2) the EU main leaders were not aware of the existence of cape-verde or of its pretentions.

3) the support of portugal to the cape-verdean pretention to be included somehow into the EU is proving to be the fuel of these partnerships.

the EU is being exposed the arguments of cape-verde, and without the fact that Portugal is the one relaying the cape-verdean requests the partnerships would not go further.


The EU GDP is higher than the USA GDP, so just guess that the cape-verdean market represents peanuts for the EU, the main thing is to have a nation that is some kind of link between europe and sub-saharian africa.

The mobility partnership is only one side of the EU patnership,

-There is also the support of the EU to help cape-verde to have biometric passports.

-The EU gives 70 million£ to cape-verde for the next 4 years.

-The European bank of investment gave last week 60 million$ to cape-verde to update the port of Palmeira in sal

-The EU allowed cape-verde to join the world trade organisation (it is clearly stated in the EU communication in november 2007 that this will be a goal)

-The EU has allowed cape-verde to acces the EU funds for the macaronesia islands

- Because the EU allowed the escudo cv to be pegged to the EU, the cape-verdean is growing steadily without having peg problems as it is linked to the most stable currency of the world.

cv2k,

I know that the us dollar is much more important than the euro. Mainly because saudi-arabia, the opec, china, japan and india will in priority ask to be paid in dollars.

It will take decades, or a very big war on American soil to change this situation. I don't see this happening.

In the other side, the euro is very stable because the ECB priority is the stability of prices, and has imposed on EU members to respect criterias such as not more than 3% of deficit on the government budget, not more than 2% inflation and less than 60% of debt compared to the whole GDP.

Because the cv escudo has been pegged to the euro, the cape-verdean economy has been protected against external schocks, no more fluctuation of the exchange rate makes the investors confident as well.

St_Antao,

What say you about these two paragraphs from Time Magazine article below?

How We Became the United States of France
Sep. 21, 2008

"This is the state of our great republic: We've nationalized the financial system, taking control from Wall Street bankers we no longer trust. We're about to quasi-nationalize the Detroit auto companies via massive loans because they're a source of American pride, and too many jobs — and votes — are at stake. Our Social Security system is going broke as we head for a future in which too many retirees will be supported by too few workers. How long before we have national health care? Put it all together, and the America that emerges is a cartoonish version of the country most despised by red-meat red-state patriots: France. Only with worse food.

Admit it, mes amis, the rugged individualism and cutthroat capitalism that made America the land of unlimited opportunity has been shrink-wrapped by half a dozen short sellers in Greenwich, Conn., and FedExed to Washington, D.C., to be spoon-fed back to life by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. We're now no different from any of those Western European semi-socialist welfare states that we love to deride. Italy? Sure, it's had four governments since last Thursday, but none of them would have allowed this to go on; the Italians know how to rig an economy."
(link:

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interesting,

but Mitterrand did all the nationalizations 30 years ago and it lasted only 2 years before he understood that it was not a good idea.

I think that the USA is completely into another scheme. These are not really nationalizations but some kind of temporary nationalizations. Americans are smart, capitalists are smart, those who run after money are not saints and they think carefully before doing things.

What we are seeing in the USA, is what it is called pragmatism. The goal of pragmatic people is to take the shortest way to success, usually the shortest way is free market but if for 3 years the shortest way is nationalization so they do it.