IMMIGRATION TO THE CZECH REPUBLIC, BENEFITS AND IMPACTS FROM THE VIEW OF LABOUR MARKET FUNCTIONING

Migration in the sense of people moving from place to place (in the narrower sense, most monitored today, movement of migrants from one country to another) is a feature as old as mankind itself. The reason to do so has always been overpopulation, whether absolute or relative, shown as a lack of opportunities for making one's living in a given region, or in one's home country respectively. Currently, EU countries are hit by a very unfavourable demographic development. The worsening age structure of the population, which can be seen even in the Czech Republic, is starting to limit labour reserves in long term perspectives and is threatening the funding of social and health care systems. This unfavourable development can be solved either by efficient population policy or by immigration, whose development, however, can't be left unmanaged and spontaneous. The immigration must be well managed and selective, otherwise the current problems will not be solved, but on the contrary new ones will join them.