A/50/476 English Page 30 105. Alongside this discrimination in hiring, in some countries there are legislative and regulatory provisions prohibiting foreigners from engaging in certain occupations or limiting their number, reflecting in some cases the fear of foreign influence in areas supposed to be sensitive but more often a desire to protect the economic activity of nationals against foreign competition, or, in other words, protectionist concerns. 106. Within companies, discrimination, which is hard to prove, influences conditions of employment, wages and career development, and determines who gets laid off. Racism is encountered daily in companies where the atmosphere may be marked by jokes in poor taste and by widespread stereotyping. It is believed that this kind of racism does not entail any real danger of exclusion or discrimination, and, as a result, it is tolerated. That is why those who sometimes make racist remarks and those who are on the receiving end of such remarks are not aware that a crime is being committed. Growing job insecurity and fear of unemployment often lead victims to accept humiliating situations and witnesses to abdicate their responsibilities. Some say that the legal framework in the closed world of a company does not provide adequate guarantees of effective protection. 107. Many studies by ILO 52/ identifying the forms of discrimination to which migrant workers are subjected emphasize that they are concentrated in certain branches of economic activity: those in which seasonal variations in demand are greatest and in which there is the least scope for acquiring job skills. All the conditions are present therefore for a systematic avoidance of the use of labour contracts, particularly through resort to the employment of illegal workers. 108. The nationals of a country, especially in times of unemployment, focus their attention on immigrants, who are accused of taking jobs away from them. These fantasies are fed by the spectre of illegal immigrants, to whom the press gives a great deal of coverage. This is the result of a situation which one observer has described in the following terms: "The old law of classical economics has not aged one bit: competition for jobs drives down the level of wages. It is useful in some situations to give employment to some categories of the population which have traditionally been paid less than the historical level of wages, while at the same time creating the impression that these workers are interlopers." 53/ 109. The laws enacted in the Western countries, sometimes prompted by xenophobia, have not succeeded in stopping immigration or in significantly reducing the number of aliens in their national territories; rather they have helped to marginalize many of these aliens by changing their status from legal to illegal. Since immigration was suspended, France’s policy has focused on controlling flows and checking illegal immigration and on integrating the legal immigrants. France has rallied the group of European countries linked through the Schengen Agreement in support of stepped-up controls along Europe’s borders. On 22 August 1995, France’s Minister of the Interior announced the intention of increasing expulsions of illegal aliens by 50 per cent by resorting to /...