- The crisis in the area of care for the elderly is quite well known, as is the role of foreign healthcare workers, primarily in the private sector. Up to now it has not been so intensively investigated. At the moment we have an ongoing project in which we are examining migration and illegal employment in Austria.

- Migration and working in the black economy in Austria cannot be directly equated with illegal migration. Illegal residency status can be a component but does not have to be. A prime example is the case of nurses from Slovakia and the Czech Republic who, since 1 May 2004, are EU citizens and are legally allowed to stay in Austria, but not to work here. Things are not as simple in the health care and nursing sector as depicted in the media. Recruitment takes place through organisations that claim to be organisations made up of members who pay contributions, and this is a grey area.

- We have examined illegal migration in a variety of areas. The most important one is certainly the building industry in which one must expand the term. It ranges from those who work in construction as a second job to private sector conversions in the blossoming suburbs of Vienna, where people are having swimming pools, arbours and the like built. Here the network and recruiting function more on an informal basis through acquaintances and friends and people they recommend.

- Our prosperity is not based on this alone. It is also based on the productivity of the Austrian economy, which is much higher than that of the surrounding countries. But the small extra luxuries that we allow ourselves, that are not absolutely essential except in the area of nursing care, are indeed at times based on these people's work. Naturally somebody profits from the cost advantages of irregular work: this can be businesspeople in the catering trade, in industry, or in farming or, indeed, private households.

- Of course the wage difference offer incentives to migration. However, – according to previous research experience and the results of migrant interviews – it is mostly not the under-qualified unemployed who are mobile, but other groups, mostly mobile, young, moderately to highly qualified people who see no prospects at home and view migration as a temporary measure. They all want to go home again. But whether this will happen is uncertain, generally returning home is an illusion

- I don't think one can compare them directly. Back then foreign workers were recruited for certain specific branches of industry in Austria. We have had a recruitment freeze since 1974. There also are quite important differences between the migrants. The new migrants are, to some extent, more proactive, better educated and are not primarily brought in for lower qualified jobs. Whether the classic fate of the "Gastarbeiter" awaits them, remains to be seen. However, we shouldn't forget that many foreign workers from those times returned home. Only some have remained. But those who stayed brought their families to join them. This represented an important decision to remain in Austria. The point is this: if children grow up here, it is extremely unlikely that the families will return to their native country.

- To everyone's surprise migration since the expansion of the EU is surprisingly low – above all in comparison to migration from the traditional migration countries. People from the former Yugoslavia and Turkey still make up two thirds of the migrants living in Austria and of those who migrate to Austria. Despite the opening up of the East, the number of people coming from the new member states of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic has been minimal.

- The transition periods are mainly there to protect the labour market and have only an indirect effect on the immigration rate. It is certainly true that the regular labour market has been protected to a certain extent. At the same time the grey area in the irregular labour market has grown as a result of divorcing the right to settle in a country from the right to work there, as well as through the restrictions on the labour market. We see this not only in the case of nurses but also as regards those known as the "new self-employed". The transition periods had certain protective effects and were therefore appropriate. But now we should be planning how we can gradually dismantle them. Eventually they must be removed, in 2011 at the latest, perhaps as soon as 2009. It would be a bad thing if we found ourselves unprepared in 2009. It would be better to relax the transition periods for certain sectors where there is a high demand for workers.

- During the healthcare and nursing debate it was discussed whether in that sector the income limit for key workers (i.e. the minimum salary that someone must earn to qualify for "key worker" status) should be further reduced, although it is already considerably lower than for key workers in general. That really was a faux pas as it looked as if pressure was consciously being put on wages. One could just as well have said immediately: We will take them out of the key worker section, and make a quota especially for nurses – just like with harvest workers and seasonal workers, whose quotas were also greatly increased. At present in certain areas of the labour market, where there are glaring discrepancies and where migration is restricted while granting the right of domicile thus leading almost inevitably to large-scale evasion, I would also go in this direction.

- We must see that certain segments of the labour market are already under great pressure, primarily jobs at the lower end of the spectrum, that is already dominated by immigrants: the building trade, industry, retailing and tourism. These must still be protected for a certain period. Otherwise there is the danger that resident immigrants with legal access to the labour market will be replaced by more recent immigrants.

- One must distinguish between highly qualified people who are sought through the Green Card model, and those who, for example, are much in demand in England at the moment, such as Polish plumbers, who have even started an image campaign of their own. These are not the best workers in the sense of key workers but are well trained, especially the manual workers who are young, hard-working people from Eastern Europe. 350,000 Polish workers have been registered in England since the expansion of the EU, far more than initially expected. England has opened its labour market and thanks to its booming economy been able to absorb the new workforce. Germany and Austria have grown much more slowly during this period. Therefore we cannot make a one-to-one comparison. Naturally, once immigrants enter a country, they stay there. If Austria opens up its market now, those in England would not come here. So there is competition for well-trained workers but not for the best ones. If it is wished to engage in competition for the best minds, then students and graduates would have to be targeted, and that is a very different sector.

- Our neighbouring countries do not look exclusively to Austria. We have missed a number of opportunities here. They look rather to Brussels or across the Atlantic. Nor is immigration such a major topic in the new member countries. The proportion of immigrants is one to two per cent of the population. Emigration is a more important topic there. This is also reflected in institutions. The issue is not just the Brain Drain, but the positive contributions emigrants make to their native country – primarily in the form of money that they send home. At the same time, people are learning very quickly. Several new member countries already have a more modern migration policy than Austria. The Czech Republic, for example, has developed pilot projects to attract highly qualified people to the country.