The two-tiered regime for immigrant workers is a form of apartheid, a migration expert told a seminar in Dublin yesterday.
Mr Piaras Mac Einri said differences in the rights of high-skilled immigrant workers and other categories were overtly elitist and indefensible.
Mr Mac Einri, director of the Centre for Migration Studies in NUI Cork, was speaking at a seminar on immigration policy organised by the Government advisory body, the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism.
He contrasted the entitlements of immigrant workers under the general, one-year renewable work-permit scheme and the fast-track two-year work-visa scheme. The latter was introduced last year for specialist categories of workers needed to fill key skills shortages in the economy, such as information technology professionals and nurses.
Immigrant employees with work visas are free to change employers and have the right to have their families join them after three months. Employees on the work-permit scheme are not free to change employers. Those on the work-permit scheme from countries which require entry visas must have worked in the State for one year before they are entitled to seek family reunification. Both categories must show that they can support their families financially.
Mr Mac Einri said it was "difficult to defend an overtly elitist distinction between the high-skilled few who can seek a work visa and the rest, the great majority who must apply for a work permit".
Neither category has the right to free education, medical care or social welfare entitlements. Last year 18,000 work permits were issued, compared to 6,000 in 1999. The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment expects to issue a further 32,000 work permits this year.
Almost 1,400 work visas were issued last year and more than 1,000 this year to date. The visas and permits are necessary only for employees from outside the European Economic Area, which includes the 15 EU member-states, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
It is estimated that some 200,000 workers are needed to meet the demands of the economy in the next five years.
Mr Mac Einri said the work permit regime should be replaced with work visas. "I see no reason how we can justify the continuance of this effective two-tier regime which is a form of apartheid between those who have greater rights under the work-visa scheme and those who have fewer rights under the work-permit regime," he added.
He said the status of work permit holders could most closely be compared to Gastarbeiter or "guest workers" in Germany in the early 1960s before reforms were brought in, particularly to allow family reunification.
"What you have is a status which repeats and recycles the types of policies and practices in place in other immigrant countries, but 40 years ago. It's as if the various changes and reforms and new thinking which has come into place in other EU countries has not happened," he said.