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Why not just offer citizenship to illegal migrants who volunteer to fight in Ukraine? The US already more or less does this with our military and the French have their foreign legion. It will get a decent number of problematic young men out of your country for the time being and most of them will probably be killed. As long as your army still has a high enough fraction of natives the survivors will forge bonds of fellowship with their new countrymen that will prevent fragmentation of the state after the war. This strategy worked for the Romans and Chinese for centuries, only failing for the former after a period longer than our present political system has existed.
Economic migrants moved to the West for economic advantage. This incentive ends during wartime and is compounded by the risk of death in fighting a war. Wouldn't it be easier for economic migrants to just pack their bags and move to greener pastures (either their country of origin or a third western nation) rather than risk death fighting for a country for which they have little affinity?
If you can create a situation where every military-age migrant who doesn't love your country enough to risk life and limb for it leaves, that sounds like a great outcome to me.
Some will stay, I admit. Many will go.
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What use do they have for citizenship?
Presumably citizens have an easier time getting a non-shitty job, accessing healthcare, education and other services, and not being harassed by the police for their immigration status if they're picked up for something else, but not being European I couldn't tell you the specifics. If there's truly no material or procedural benefit whatsoever to being a citizen there as opposed to an illegal migrant, then Europe is a hell of a lot more fucked than America is.
Not in the UK, not really. Illegal immigrants who claim asylum (i.e. who get caught) get free accommodation, healthcare, spending money and the right to take any job after one year of their 'claim being processed' (rejections can be appealed almost indefinitely). Non-citizens can vote if they are Commonwealth citizens (about 1.8 billion people globally). Illegal immigrants can study at our universities, in some cases for free. If they are granted asylum, they get all the rights of citizens, including the ability to import their relatives. Their children can go to school here.
The government is currently bragging about deporting 19,000 illegal immigrants, in a year where more than 100,000 came across from France in boats.
There are countries with functional immigration systems, but they are few and far between. The Social Democrats in Denmark have realised that left wing politics is actually pretty popular if you don't allow foreign criminals to free-ride.
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