Supposedly the EU member nations operate much like US states, land borders are simply markers there are no customs and border guards etc. Any one can travel freely without the need for a passport from one member nation to the other, same with employment.
But then I still see people apparently immigrating between EU member nations, what is the point of permanent residence if movement is free? I don’t immigrate from Texas to New York if I am a US citizen.
I see things about illegal workers from other EU member nations?
In fact I was just listening to a guy here in Trinidad relate how on a European vacation he had to apply for a visa in every country, why? If there are no border guards and no restriction of movement why would you need a visa for every country?
Kind of. The lack of regular immigration controls is because of the Schengen Agreement. New EU member states are required to (eventually) implement it, but the United Kingdom and Ireland weren’t ever required to, and several countries that aren’t EU members have joined.
In the US, you automatically get state citizenship as a result of being a US citizen living in a particular state. In the EU, you’re the citizen of a particular country and you’re a citizen of the EU because of that. If French citizens move to Germany, they’re still French citizens and they’ll always be French citizens unless they’re naturalized in Germany. Just living in a country isn’t quite the same as being a citizen; for example, EU citizens have a right to vote in local elections and elections to the EU Parliament wherever they live in the EU, but any voting rights other than those are up to the individual countries.
IIRC, after a country joins the EU, other member countries have several years before they’re required to allow its citizens to work.
What countries did he visit and when did he go? There’s only one visa for the whole Schengen Area, but if he went to any other countries he would have been required to meet whatever requirements they have.
Vacation wise, it probably depends on where you’re coming from; being an American, I’ve been to the EU 3 times and visited 7 countries total, and never had to get any kind of visa or anything other than the usual immigration stamp in the first EU airport that I landed at. I’ve taken trains and planes across borders, and haven’t been so much as looked at funny as we crossed the border. You can walk out the customs/immigration area at say… Schiphol airport and go to the train station attached to the airport and catch a train to just about anywhere in the EU with no passport or anything.
As far as the immigration stuff goes, I think it’s because the EU member nations have retained a lot more sovereignty as far as citizenship is concerned when compared to US states.
In a sense, you are actually immigrating to Texas from New York if you move; there are things that require state residency, which does have specific requirements. Typically, they’re based on a time limit of living in the state though. The ones that come to mind are eligibility for in-state tuition at state-funded colleges; you can’t just move from New York to Texas and go to UT and get in-state tuition, unless you meet the requirements. Residency is a sort of citizenship in a way, I think.
Country of residence is important because all of Europe doesn’t pay into a single tax pool. And all of Europe don’t vote for a single European parliament. The pay taxes according to their own countries rules and they vote for representatives from their home country.
There are other important national differences even though free movement is allowed.
There are a lot of possibilities invented by the mind of man in between the single unified independent nation-state—such as, say, Japan—and the voluntary coöperative debating society of the United Nations. The United States and the European Union are at different places on that spectrum.
I don’t immigrate from Texas to New York if I am a US citizen.