COLUMN ONE : No Longer Welcome in Europe : As the rich democracies close their doors to refugees, critics say the nations themselves may be hurt. They warn of illicit worlds created by foreigners trying to survive in newly hostile lands.

His new blue suit pressed, his lone suitcase perched hopefully nearby, the man who called himself Kanda Koso patiently awaited his fate.

After trying to get through immigration at the sprawling Schiphol Airport with a false Zairian passport, the self-described 26-year-old shoemaker promptly declared that he wanted political asylum. Now he sat in a corner of the empty immigration area as Dutch authorities discussed his fate and tried to determine if he really was from Zaire.

“I like it here,” he said in barely audible French. “I want to stay.”

Although he had traveled far and gambled much to reach the threshold of a new, glittering world, it seemed unlikely that Koso would taste more of it than the airport--and the sandwich and soda that the airport police brought him a few hours into his wait.

Koso was about to run into a hard new truth that confronts the would-be migrants who continue to stream into Western Europe from the former Soviet Bloc and developing nations: Rules governing both routine immigration and political asylum have tightened drastically. And, increasingly, the stories that once were enough to spirit them into a land of affluence and opportunity do not work anymore.

As Europe’s rich social democracies close their doors, one of the primary destinations of global migration and one of its oldest political sanctuaries is being choked off.

And as Western Europe’s border police forces grow, a murky industry now works to spirit foreigners around them. A worrisome subculture has sprouted that by definition exists outside the law, forcing illegal immigrants to survive on black market income or crime.

“All (West European) countries are restricting asylum procedures and the right of entry,” said Petra Catz, who deals with refugee questions at Amnesty International’s office here.

The tightening mainly grows out of political pressure from a public frightened that the influx of outsiders threatens prosperity as well as social cohesion.

Recession and high unemployment have only strengthened these feelings.

More than ever, residents of Europe’s rich countries believe the German right-wing anti-immigrant slogan, “The Boat Is Full.”

Reacting to this mood, the German government last year ended its once-cherished policy of open asylum and began turning away--for the first time since the Weimar era--foreigners claiming to be victims of political persecution. Interior Minister Charles Pasqua has created a new police force to patrol France’s borders and lead a crackdown on illegal immigrants. Sweden has tightened its visa requirements and its definition of a political refugee.

When developments in these countries shifted pressure to smaller nations, such as Belgium and the Netherlands, they too acted.

Social scientists here claim that this regional clampdown carries with it two serious dangers.

First, accelerated measures for dealing with asylum-seekers are effectively limiting access to one of the oldest and most important havens from political persecution.

“To put it bluntly, the rights of refugees are being undermined,” Swedish Parliament member Hans Goeran Franck told the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly last month in Strasbourg, France. “There is an urgent need for action.”

The fact that the crackdown in Europe comes as anti-immigration sentiments gather force in North America has only magnified its impact.

Said Amnesty International’s Catz, “We’re worried that people are being sent back to persecution.”

Second, social scientists argue, the crackdown carries the seeds of a major social problem for Europe itself. They are convinced that new government measures will not stop migration but merely force it underground. That development, they say, is bound to create a spawning ground for crime, drugs and other illegal activities.

“We’ve argued against closing the door, because you just replace one problem with another that’s even worse,” said Dennis Dejong, a specialist on immigration policy at the European Commission in Brussels. “What’s not understood is that this whole issue can undermine the fabric of society.”

Many argue that this is already happening.

While there are no reliable figures on the number of illegal immigrants in Western Europe, there is little dispute that it is rising.

In the Netherlands, few were even aware of the problem until an El Al jumbo jet crashed into an Amsterdam apartment house in October, 1992, and many victims on the ground turned out to be illegal residents.

Much as illegal immigrants do in the United States, Western Europe’s “non-people” find low-paying, black market jobs, often as restaurant kitchen help or farm laborers, or they are forced into petty crime.

“In many parts of Europe, the agricultural sector can no longer function without cheap illegals,” Dejong said.

Human rights advocates argue that the new tightening of legal entry will further alter the region’s demographics.

Frits Florin, a senior policy adviser to the Dutch Refugee Council here, talks of an invisible line that now runs through Western Europe. It separates a group of mainly Mediterranean countries, which have given up trying to regulate access and simply slammed the door even on most forms of legal immigration, from nations farther north that still struggle to sort legal from illegal migrants.

Portugal, Greece, Spain and Italy are already behind this line, Florin claims.

“In Lisbon, the slums are full of illegals from Angola and Mozambique, many of them de facto war refugees in need of protection, but they don’t ask for asylum because they know they won’t get it,” Florin said.

Portugal, a country of 10.5 million people, has registered about 2,600 requests for political asylum since 1991.

In Italy, requests have dropped from more than 26,000 in 1991 to fewer than 2,000 last year.

What is happening, Florin argues, is that the line is moving north.

Under pressure from a sullen public and a right-wing extremist backlash, Germany’s mainstream political parties last July agreed to scrap the right to unconditional political asylum granted under the post-World War II constitution.

In tandem with this move, Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s government beefed up its border police and hastily negotiated arrangements with neighboring Poland and the Czech Republic to take back rejected asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants who try to enter Germany through those countries.

Virtually overnight, Germany, the main destination of those seeking asylum in Western Europe, removed its welcome mat.

The results of the change have been abrupt and dramatic.

The number of applicants registered by Germany’s Interior Ministry during the first three months of this year fell by more than 70% from the same period last year.

Some argue that in an election year, Kohl’s government is content to ignore any rise in illegal entry and to point instead to its success in reducing asylum-seekers.

In France, Pasqua has won public applause for tough measures aimed at controlling the influx of foreigners, including the formation of a police force, the Directorate for the Control of Immigration and the Struggle Against Illegal Employment.

The job of this new police force will include tightening border checks and tracking down illegal residents when it begins operating this spring.

The new force is part of a broader crackdown that includes mandatory police interviews before any marriage involving a foreigner. This change prompted last summer’s celebrated case involving Fabienne Bricet, 24, who duly went to the police with her Algerian fiance, only to see him expelled six days later because his residence permit had expired.

The case burst into the headlines after he was barred from re-entering the country and the French consulates in Algeria refused to marry them because they were not both French. It was resolved only when the government intervened to allow the marriage.

Figures gathered by the European Council for Refugees and Exiles show that across the region, these and similar measures in other countries are having an impact.

The number of asylum-seekers in 16 West European countries dropped significantly last year from a 1992 high of 672,000 to 544,000.

These numbers are likely to drop further as other openings are gradually closed.

In January, the Netherlands, renowned as one of Europe’s most tolerant societies, became the latest West European nation to tighten its frontiers. The moves came in an election year.

New Dutch regulations to deal with asylum-seekers make it possible to telescope a review procedure that once took years down to seven months for difficult cases and to just six weeks or even less if authorities are sure that the applicant’s case is “manifestly unfounded.”

Further, those migrants suspected to be clearly economic rather than political refugees are sent immediately to a detention house in Amsterdam, where they wait until their case is heard.

With Justice Ministry officials now stationed at the airport, non-asylum-seekers suspected of trying to enter for illegal, longer-term stays can be expelled immediately.

“On simple visa requests, we can now turn them around on the same day,” said Hilbrand Nawijn, director of the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service. “They don’t even leave the airport.”

New measures to control the country’s land borders with Belgium and Germany--borders where the march to a unified Europe has led to the removal of routine immigration and customs checks--reflect the sense of desperation.

This month, Nawijn has started deploying a series of flying squads a few miles behind the frontier to swoop in on suspected illegal immigrants as they are picked out by spotters stationed at the border crossings.

Where possible, the plan calls for those suspected of entering illegally to be photographed as they cross the frontier. The photos, Dutch authorities say, would prove where the would-be immigrants came from and, therefore, show which country must take them back.

Human rights advocates are appalled.

“What this all means is that if the police see a car full of blacks cross into the country, they send out the flying squads,” Florin said. “This isn’t what modern Europe is about. We’re going backward.”

Increasingly, those dealing with the problem are convinced that only a coordinated effort among all the region’s countries can contain the problem.

Dejong, the immigration specialist, talks about harmonizing procedures among the 12 European Union states, sharing information and even coordinating foreign aid to help stem the flow at its source.

But he acknowledged there is a long way still to go.

“By definition, it’s a slow process,” he said. “Civil servants are trained to defend their nation’s sovereignty.”

Welcome Mat Revoked

As West European countries toughen their rules, the number of those seeking asylum has dropped.

NUMBER OF ASYLUM REQUESTS

1991 1992 1993 Belgium 15,173 17,647 26,892 Britain 44,840 24,600 22,370 Denmark 4,609 13,876 14,347 Finland 2,137 3,634 2,023 France 46,545 28,873 27,564 Germany 256,112 438,191 322,842 Greece 2,572 1,972 789 Ireland 31 39 91 Italy 26,472 2,600 1,646 Luxembourg 238 120 225 Netherlands 21,615 20,346 35,399 Norway 4,569 5,238 12,876 Portugal 233 688 1,659 Spain 8,138 11,708 12,615 Sweden 26,500 84,018 37,581 Switzerland 35,000 17,960 24,739 Total 494,784 671,510 543,658

Source: European Council for Refugees and Exiles