BRUSSELS, July 12 (Reuters) - Global economic recovery should start producing enough jobs to spur a rebound in immigration to developed countries next year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said on Monday.
The OECD published a report on international migration showing inflows of immigrants fell by about 6 percent to 4.4 million people in 2008 and continued to decline in 2009, reversing five years of average annual increases of 11 percent.
As developed countries rise from recession in 2010, job creation has yet to pick up, OECD officials said.
But an expected rise in employment after this year should encourage more people to cross borders to seek work, the Paris-based think tank funded by governments from 30 mostly wealthy countries said.
"In all likelihood we would expect a further decline this year … in labour flows," John Martin, employment chief at the OECD, told a news conference in Brussels.
"If our projections for overall recovery are right … we may expect a pick-up in 2011," he said.
The OECD said restrictions on immigration had risen broadly since a financial crisis enveloped the world in 2008. It urged developed countries to make more effort to prevent social tensions from translating into discrimination against migrants.
"There is an enormous need to educate," the organisation’s head, Angel Gurria, said.
OECD findings showed, he said, that granting citizenship to immigrants increased their participation in the labour market and improved their ability to integrate in host countries.
The think tank reiterated that over the long term, labour migration to the developed world would continue because of the ageing of populations and the availability of jobs in several sectors, particularly care for the elderly and children.
According to its forecasts, without an increase above current migration rates, the working-age population in OECD countries will increase only by 1.9 percent over the next decade, compared to an 8.6 percent rise in the last 10 years.
In the 27-country European Union, an ageing workforce was a particular problem, the bloc’s commissioner for internal affairs Cecilia Malmstrom said during the OECD briefing.
"Labour migration is the future. (We will need) to fill labour gaps and meet demographic challenges," Malmstrom said. (Editing by Jon Loades-Carter).
