By Saskia Sassen

The majority of the contemporary European public would seem to be dead set against immigration, fearing they will be swamped by floods of immigrants they don't really need and cannot accommodate.

And yet contrary to popular perception, Western Europe does need, and will continue to need, increasing access to foreign workers
-- for high-tech jobs, for global financial positions, and also for a proliferation of low-wage service jobs and other manual work.

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Saskia Sassen is professor of sociology at the University of Chicago. Her books include "Guests and Aliens" and "The Global City 2001."

By Stephen Dearden

Since the early 1990s, immigration into Western Europe has risen dramatically, both as a result of the political changes in Eastern Europe -- in 1992 Germany alone received 1.2 million migrants -- and increased migration to the southern states of the European Union.

During the same period the number of asylum applications has also risen dramatically. In 1985, for instance, Germany received only 73,832 applications. By 1993 this figure had risen to 322,600. In the UK, likewise, the number increased from 5,000 in 1985 to 80,000 in 2000.

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Stephen Dearden is an immigration specialist at Manchester Metropolitan University in Manchester, England.