By IPS Correspondents
MADRID, Sep 4 2003 (IPS)

Many immigrants seeking a better life in Spain must first go through hell, only to live on the fringes of society once they make it, although there are notable exceptions.

The number of people who drown in their attempt to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa to the coast of Spain in small boats climbed from 39 in 2002 to 91 so far this year – and that is just the recorded deaths. Human rights groups put the total even higher.

But many of those who survive the crossing do not even make it past the beach. In late August, around 250 undocumented immigrants were seized in the town of Tarifa at the southern tip of Spain, a number that completely overran the local refugee reception centre.

And more than 300 were recently intercepted on the coasts of Spain’s Canary Islands, located off the shoreline of the North African country of Morocco.

But once the immigrants make it to Spain, there are places where the future looks bright, like in the town of Talayuela in the western Spanish region of Extremadura, on the border with Portugal.

In Talayuela, a town of 11,000, 40 percent of the population consists of foreign nationals from at least 20 different countries, including mixed-nationality couples whose children attend public schools that provide bilingual education for those who are still learning Spanish.

”The future of the immigrant population lies in the schools,” says the principal of the Talayuela public school, Manuel Vivas.

Many of the 650 children who ended the school year this summer were the sons and daughters of Moroccan immigrants.

A similar situation can be found in other towns in Extremadura, as well as Aragón in northeastern Spain and Galicia in the north.

But many immigrants, especially recent arrivals, face extremely difficult conditions, said Claudia, a Brazilian woman who studied to become a school teacher in her home country, and has been working as a domestic after coming to Spain through France.

Only 250,000 of the more than 600,000 foreign nationals in Madrid have legal documents, according to the Interior Ministry.

In the Spanish capital there are 16 temporary reception centres with space for 15 people each, which permit a maximum stay of three months.

Claudia’s search for a ”decent future” for herself and her daughter started in Britain, from where she was deported to France.

To the question posed by IPS: ”Why risk the little you have?” Claudia responded: ”To find work and provide a better life for my 16-year-old daughter,” who stayed behind with her grandmother in a town in the southern Brazilian state of Parana.

Claudia, who preferred not to give her last name, said that while she looks for another job more in line with her training as a teacher, she is working as a domestic and living with four roommates, three women and a man, in a one-room apartment that measures just 10 square metres.

Although it is not easy for immigrants from Latin America to make it into Europe, it is perhaps even riskier for North Africans, who come to Spain in small, shallow fishing boats known as ”pateras”.

Immigrants who brave the dangerous sea crossing risk the possibility of their boats capsizing in the middle of the Mediterranean sea or the Atlantic ocean.

There are people who make the crossing in larger boats, like a 16-square-metre patera that was intercepted near Tarifa in July, while others brave the journey on precarious rafts.

One North African immigrant recently made it to the coast of Spain by sitting on a tire and rowing with a paddle. But he was arrested by the police and held in a refugee centre while waiting to be served deportation papers.

An investigation carried out on the Moroccan coast by journalists with the Spanish newspaper El Mundo found groups of young men building rafts on the hillsides, where they construct visual barriers using tree branches to hide their work, and build rickety watercraft in just a few days.

But building a patera with the capacity to hold 30 people can take up to a month. Once the boats are ready, they are sold to the ”mafias” that organise the trips across the 12 kms separating Morocco and Spain.

The immigrants pay around 15,000 euros (13,500 dollars) each for the one-hour ocean crossing to Spain.

Even pregnant women set out on the journey. Many of them time the trip for just before they are to give birth, because if the baby is born in Spain, neither mother nor child are deported.

In the past two years, 200 pregnant women or mothers who had just given birth were seized as they set foot on Spanish soil.

The Movement for Peace, Democracy and Freedom (MPDL) provides assistance to immigrants

The head of MPDL, Francisca Sauquillo, an activist who fought the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco (1939-1975), is a member of the European Parliament, representing the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE).

The MPDL’s offices were raided by the police on Aug. 26 in search of evidence of illegal activity on behalf of undocumented immigrants.

Police sources said they acted on reports that the MPDL falsified work contracts for immigrants, to help them apply for legal residency in Spain.

But MPDL activist Esteban Navarro told IPS that his organisation provides advice to foreign nationals, assists them in preparing their documents, and helps them find a place to stay while they wait for a response on their applications for residency, and in no case issues job contracts or any other kind of document.

”There is a political interest in discrediting the non-governmental organisations that are most critical of the government’s immigration policy,” said Navarro.

The Interior Ministry declined to respond to IPS’s queries about the raid on the MPDL offices.

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