POPULATION-SPAIN: Unstoppable Immigration Stirs Up Parliament

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Alicia Fraerman

MADRID, Aug 9 2000 (IPS) - The Spanish government is drafting a new law on foreigners to put the breaks on immigration, even though the phenomenon is unstoppable, says Federico Mayor Zaragoza, former director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Thousands of would-be immigrants have died trying to get to Europe, Mayor Zaragoza pointed out, so it is vital “to get to the roots of immigration and help people to remain in their own countries.”

“Reducing the number of emigrants (and) enabling people to live decent lives in their places of origin is the best solution,” said the Spaniard, who headed UNESCO from 1987 to 1999.

But Spain, for centuries a major source of emigration – especially to the Americas -, is now preparing to shut its doors, or at least leave them only partially open, as it attempts to control the number of immigrants coming from the developing South.

The current Law on Aliens, the modification of which is slated for parliamentary debate in early September, was passed in December 1999 on the last day of session in Parliament, which itself would undergo changes in the March 12 elections.

The governing centre-right Popular Party (PP) was the only one to oppose the law last December, but it did not have enough votes to obstruct the bill’s passage. Now, however, the PP has an absolute parliamentary majority and proposes to push through an important reform of the law.

Based on the existing law, the government – under the re- elected José María Aznar – began the process March 12 of normalising the status of immigrants residing in Spain who did not have a visa or residency permit.

When the project concluded four months later, some 50,000 immigrants had been excluded from normalisation and therefore faced deportation.

The Spanish government’s representative for immigration, Enrique Fernández-Miranda, attempted to soften the blow by announcing that “there will be a certain number of people who will not be able to remain in Spain.”

There are currently more than 800,000 foreigners living in the country of 40 million, with 44 percent of the immigrants coming from other European countries, 27 percent from Africa, 21 percent from the Americas and eight percent from Asia.

The new Law on Aliens, approved by the Council of Ministers and sent to Parliament, has already been rejected by the parties of the opposition, labour unions and human rights organisations.

But while the stickier aspects of the bill echo in public debate – in the media, seminars, or political events – the flow of immigrants grows stronger as more and more people from developing countries attempt to get to Europe, even if it means risking their lives.

On Aug 7, the National Police and the Civil Guard launched an operation that detained 333 Moroccan men, women and children who tried to enter European territory illegally by attempting to cross into the Spanish city of Ceuta, an enclave on the northern coast of Africa.

The immigrants were travelling hidden in the ceilings and interiors of trucks heading to a major fair in Ceuta. The detainees were immediately deported back to Morocco.

Nevertheless, operation ‘Feriante’ (fairgoer), responsible for the arrests, continues in effect as officers look for new quarry.

Sandra, an immigrant from Sierra Leone, took months to cross Africa as she fled war and famine. The 20-year-old woman reached the Spanish coast pregnant, giving birth days later to a boy in Algeciras, a city across the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco.

Her case is not unique. In her quest for a better future, Sandra’s Spanish-born son insures she will be granted a residency permit and the possibility of getting a job. Others who attempted to immigrate like she did, however, have died, drowning as their flimsy boats capsize in the crossing.

A woman wrote of her immigrant experience in an anonymous letter to the ‘Al Ahdat al Maghbrebia’ newspaper in Morocco, which was later published by the Madrid daily ‘El País.’

“My testimony, perhaps, is revealing about the crisis of an entire generation. I am a Moroccan woman, nearly 30, graduated in English literature,” she began, and then told of the several years she tried to find work in her home country.

Finally, a friend living in Spain offered her a work contract. “Strangely, it was easy for me to obtain an entry visa (…) because I would be working as a ‘hostess’ in a bar,” she wrote.

The woman says in her letter that when the official at the Spanish embassy accepted her application for the visa he whispered to her, “No problem, because our market needs this type of merchandise.”

Her fate was prostitution, as it is for many women. “I will never forgive those who have forced us to sacrifice ourselves on the altar of women kidnapped by the European sex market.”

Many women thus risk death, humiliation and exploitation in their attempts to build a new life in industrialised Europe, as their families remain on the other side of the border, waiting for them to send money back home.

But Spain’s labour market only has low-paying jobs for them, often work that Spanish-born citizens themselves refuse to do.