Immigration up only for highly-skilled

However, there is a risk that well-qualified immigrants would end up in lower-skilled jobs.

PARIS: Legal immigration into some of the world's richest countries is rising sharply but host states should guard against cherry-picking only highly-skilled workers, an OECD study showed.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said nearly three million long-term immigrants enter the 30 nations that comprise the OECD legally every year.

"With ageing populations and falling interests in certain occupations in OECD countries (sciences, building trades), it is expected that there will be need for more worker immigration in the near future,'' the Paris-based group said.

It said many countries had adopted measures to attract highly-skilled workers or foreign students, but added such moves might be short-sighted.

"Is there a need for more professional, highly skilled workers? In certain professions, probably yes. You can see that for instance in the need for more health professionals,'' said Martine Durand from the OECD's labour department.

"But countries will not only need skilled workers. There are shortages in a number of sectors, which require ... not just brain surgeons but people in the construction sector or the catering sector.''

Durand said there was a risk that well-qualified immigrants would end up in lower-skilled jobs. "We all hear about people being well-trained and well-qualified who end up as taxi drivers, or who enter a sector that does not correspond to their qualification and who are trapped in that sector,'' she told a news conference.

The OECD's "International Migration Outlook'' said migrants' over-qualification compared to the national population was significant in southern European countries, such as Italy and Greece, as well as in Norway and Sweden in the north.

In 2003-2004, immigrants in the majority of European OECD countries were also relatively harder hit by unemployment than the native population. Several OECD members have set up selective migration rules, while others are planning to follow suit.

Britain plans to introduce a points-based system under which immigrants' skills, qualification and age would be classified. In France, conservative Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has presented an immigration bill setting tougher conditions on foreigners seeking to work in France. Germany has tried to lure skilled foreigners with a "green card'' programme.

The report said the number of asylum seekers arriving in OECD countries declined by more than 20 per cent in 2004, continuing a trend that has seen a 35 per cent drop since 2000.

This fall might be partially explained by the fact that some countries, especially within Europe, had made the asylum process more complicated. A decline in regional conflict had also helped slow the flow.