The recent state of economic emergency may not be the right counsellor for reasonable decisions in politics and society. While Edward Hugh thus proclaims that without immigration the countries were supposed to “…die, as the economy shrinks, and the young people leave” the solution to certain death seems evident – get more skilled people from outside to work in the troubled country – problem solved!

Well, my work and life experience from Germany, France and the UK (countries which suffered all of these problems at once in the 1950s and 1960s) tells me that the issue is far more complex and what seemed to be good for a short-term quick solution then in the long-term turns out to cause a variety of problems now. There are similar cases in many other states like Spain, Switzerland, Netherlands or Belgium.

It thus showed that immigration is a sword with two edges only partly capable to solve short-term economic and demographic problems of a host-country. Becoming an “immigration country” (used to be a buzz-word in Germany in the 1990s) not only means having foreign people coming to work it also means foreign people coming to live. In parts of Western Europe that concept has not been fully understood in former times. Everybody thought that immigrants would return to their home countries after the work had been done or would easily integrate into society. Everybody thought that only highly skilled experts would immigrate. Therefore local societies did not bother much to integrate or qualify their “guest workers”. So some immigrant groups also including asylum seekers and refugees have never really arrived in society or in the labour market.

No doubt, if applied correctly immigration is a powerful tool to boost an economy. Successful examples like Canada can work as a role model here. Still, if only applied for economic reasons and without a convinced society I do believe that immigration thus is subject to certain failure and is not sustainable.

I believe there is no reason to despair neither for Estonia, nor Latvia or Lithuania.

You should keep in mind the extraordinarily beneficial situation in which the Baltic countries are. The region constitutes a unique, diverse and one of its kind link between the European, Scandinavian and Russian cultures – making it an important hub for regional development and interconnection.

Thus, what the Baltic States should do is to use their abilities to connect and interlink between these diverse cultures, working like a facilitator for regional economies while at the same time strengthening their own local profiles.

Your diversity and smaller scale is not your weakness it is your strength.

We do not need to raise productive capacity but rather efficiency. The total number of people in a country is not that important. By such logic we Estonians should be in the biggest trouble of all Baltic states as we have little over half the Latvian population and roughly third of Lithuanian population.

There are easy (but not easy politically) solutions – to reduce unemployment – ease the firing of people even further. That makes it easier to hire people. Also abolish the minimum wage to allow more people (especially minorities) to take part of workforce.