POPULATION-SPAIN: Immigrants Threatened with Deportation

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Jan 24 2001 (IPS) - A new immigration law took effect Tuesday in Spain just as thousands of foreigners face expulsion, hundreds of people reached day four of a hunger strike and the government announced migration accords with seven countries.

The law, passed a year ago despite strong opposition from leftist parties, deprives undocumented immigrants of their basic social rights, such as the freedom to gather, protest, join a union or engage in a strike.

A million immigrants reside in the country legally, with 400,000 of originating from other European Union nations. Most of the rest are Moroccan (200,000), Ecuadorians (30,000), Chinese (30,000) and Poles (10,000).

An estimated 100,000 to 150,000 immigrants live in Spain with “irregular” status, lacking a residence permit or a job contract. The government gave notice to 27,000 people in this situation that they must leave the country, announcing that the residency permits they had requested were denied.

Other foreigners in the country illegally have not applied for residence because they lack one or more of the government’s requirements, such as being able to prove they have lived in Spain for at least two years.

Kamal Rajmouni, president of the Association of Moroccan Workers in Spain, proposed opening a process for regularisation of immigrants who have not applied for legal documentation, most of whom work without a contract and in exploitive conditions.

Ecuadorian immigrant Roberto Panamá recounted how he arrived without a job contract, worked six months as an agricultural labourer, and later as a waiter and in construction, sometimes earning a third of what labour contracts establish.

Since the end of 2000, he can breathe easier because he was one of 200,000 foreigners whose status was normalised last year. Now he holds a residency permit and a job contract.

But those who arrive aboard flimsy boats crossing the Strait of Gibraltar from North Africa usually face quite a different situation. On Tuesday, 50 people were nearing the Spanish coast when they were spotted by a patrol boat and arrested. None held a legal entry visa. One of the would-be immigrants carried her five- month-old baby in her arms.

In such cases, the government calls for expulsion, except for the mother and baby. Those the authorities discover to have entered Spain illegally may also be deported if their country of origin will accept them. Immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, however, do not face that situation because their countries have not signed migration accords with Spain.

The government announced the signing of special agreements on the matter with Colombia, Ecuador, Morocco, Poland, Dominican Republic, Romania and Tunisia. It is an attempt to ensure that every person arriving in Spain as an immigrant does so with a job contract, according to the government delegate for migration affairs, Enrique Fernández Miranda.

He told the Madrid daily ‘El Mundo’ that the Spaniards who emigrated always left “with their papers in order” and that “nobody emigrated to go work clandestinely.”

Interior minister Jaime Mayor Oreja flew to Morocco on Tuesday, accompanied by Fernández Miranda, to sign the first agreement. He will sign an accord with Ecuador on Wednesday, and the rest of the treaties will be finalised after Feb 12.

Spain’s two largest union organisations, the pro-socialist General Union of Workers (UGT) and the pro-communist Workers’ Commissions (CC.OO.), have promised to admit all immigrants who request to join, including those who do not hold legal residence, even though the law prohibits unions from accepting illegals.

The CC.OO. has asked the Executive branch to negotiate with social workers to hammer out a comprehensive immigration policy, not one that is simply a policy for public order.

Meanwhile, protests are underway, such as the hunger strike of immigrants in Barcelona, on the Mediterranean coast. The 400 began their fast four days ago to demand recognition of their rights. Their banner reads: There are no races or castes, only humans.

Among the political opposition, the secretary general of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, called the law that took effect Tuesday “reactionary,” stressing that the immigrants are human beings and denouncing the “moral hypocrisy” of the government headed by the centre-right Popular Party’s José María Aznar.

Amid the tensions over the immigrant question echo the words of Felipe of Bourbon, heir to the Spanish Crown, during a visit to Murcia, an area where immigrant-related incidents often occur because there are many jobs attracting them to work on the farms there.

In his speech during an official visit to the region in early January, Prince Felipe exhorted humanitarian treatment for all immigrants, reminding Spaniards that, until relatively recently, their ancestors and compatriots were part of the waves of immigrants to other countries of Europe and the Americas, and that they were generally well received.