LABOUR-SPAIN: Hundreds of Immigrants Refuse to End Sit-in

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Jun 12 2002 (IPS) - Hundreds of African immigrants are staging a sit-in at a university in the southern Spanish city of Seville, demanding that the government grant them residency status and work permits.

A spokesman for the rectorate of the public Pablo de Olavide University in Seville, 528 kms southwest of Madrid, told IPS Wednesday that around 150 people had joined the 350 immigrants who began the protest Monday, most of whom are men from the North African countries of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

The undocumented labourers, who also include immigrants from Cameroon and Mauritania, say they will not leave the university until they are given residence and work papers.

But the government refuses to do that, and the secretary of state for immigration and foreigners, Enrique Fernández-Miranda, urged them to “go home” – to their countries of origin.

The labourers have traditionally harvested strawberries in the province of Huelva, around 80 kms west of Seville, the capital of Andalusia, one of the 17 autonomous communities that make up Spain.

But this year they were mainly replaced by workers from eastern Europe, especially Poland and Romania, who were hired in their countries of origin.

According to spokespersons for the protesters, the eastern Europeans are paid lower wages than the African labourers were earning, “even though we earned less than the Spanish workers who accept seasonal farmwork.”

Andalusia ombudsman José Chamizo has been recognised as a mediator by the government and the immigrants. The official told IPS that no solution was in sight if the two sides refused to budge from their positions. “There must be concessions by both sides,” he underlined.

The Pablo de Olavide University, like all of Spain’s public universities, is autonomous, which means the security forces cannot enter the campus without authorisation from the rectorate, unless a crime has been committed.

Rector Rosario Valpuesta allowed the immigrants to stage their protest in two sports arenas.

The protesters have organised themselves to maintain order and hygiene and prepare their own food. The Red Cross has sent in an ambulance in case medical assistance is necessary, and hygiene products have been distributed. Trade unions, non-governmental organisations and one company have donated food.

The conservative government of José María Aznar has posted police around the university to keep any more immigrants from entering the campus, and has set up checkpoints at the points of entry to the city, especially train and bus stations, with the same aim.

Around 50 immigrants have been arrested as a result of the police controls. According to Decio Machado, with the Organisation of Support for Immigrants, the detainees are being held in “overcrowded conditions, and in a quite tense situation” in a police station.

If the ombudsman’s mediation efforts are fruitless and neither side yields in its position, the sit-in could throw a shadow over the European Summit that will draw the leaders of the 15 European Union member countries to Seville on Jun 21.

Fernández-Miranda said Tuesday that the Seville summit would decide on the direction immigration policies are to take in Europe.

Referring to the protesters, he said that “in Spain there is not work for everyone who simply decides to come and work here, and much less for those who want to do so under illegal conditions.”

The immigrants staging the sit-in “have chosen the worst possible route for coming to an arrangement with Spanish society,” he said, urging them to “go home.”

Chamizo said strawberry growers and other businesses could not just choose immigrants from one region over those from another region.

“We are getting used to ‘workers a la carte’,” he complained. “We can’t just say ‘oh, North Africans won’t do, we’re going to hire Ecuadoreans,’ and ‘Ecuadoreans won’t do so now we’re hiring people from eastern Europe’.”

One of the handful of protesters who have their papers in order, Mohammed Sidi, said the labourers are people who “live here, work here and are contributing to the economy of this country.”

Federico Noriega, a leader of the General Confederation of Workers, one of Spain’s smaller central trade unions that is powerful nonetheless among farmworkers, said laws like Spain’s immigration legislation, which ignore the situation on the ground, are destined to fail.

The European leaders will apparently have a concrete reference point of the demands of immigrants very close to the place they wlll be meeting next week, he added.