MIGRATION-SPAIN: Doors Closed – By Right and Left

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Jun 7 2004 (IPS) - Spain’s socialist government under Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is maintaining the immigration policy of his predecessor, the conservative José María Aznar, in refusing to legalise the status of hundreds of thousands of foreigners living in the country without residency or work permits.

"Papers for everyone" is no more, said Consuelo Rumi, secretary of state for migration, after around a thousand immigrants were forced to leave the Barcelona Cathedral on Sunday, where they were staging a sit-in to demand that their situation be legalised..

Zapatero said the police did the right thing in clearing out the Catholic church.

>From amongst the ranks of civil society came words of protest and of support for the police action.

Early Sunday a half-dozen immigrant associations and representatives of the main trade unions (the UGT and CCOO), political parties and the Roman Catholic Church signed a document condemning the sit-in.

The signatories said they did not consider the move "opportune" because the Zapatero government had announced it would make "improvements in the regularisation of immigrants."

According to official and unofficial estimates alike there are around one million people in Spain whose immigrant status is considered "irregular", most of whom are working in the informal economy, without social security benefits or labour rights.

The new socialist administration, which took office in April, blames the Aznar government for failing to confront the problem in a serious way, as there are 374,749 files of foreigners who have applied for their legal immigration documents, even with work contracts.

Rumi said "the number of pending files speaks clearly of the absolute lack of attention given immigration policy in recent years."

But the president of the non-government Social Forum of Madrid, Milagros Hernández, said in comments to IPS that "it is unacceptable that a socialist government is in this situation."

Problems like the occupation of the cathedral will continue to happen if the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers Party) government does not seriously confront the matter of regularising the immigrants already in Spain, she said.

The immigration problem requires "European treatment" by the 25 countries that now comprise the European Union, said Hernández. They must make a commitment to immigrant acceptance and employment, and implement specific and "solidary" legislation, Hernández added.

Begoña Sánchez seemed to agree. Head of the group SOS Racism in Catalonia, whose capital is Barcelona, she told IPS the people who occupied the cathedral are living a "desperate" situation as they "see themselves continuously deprived of the basic rights of a democratic society."

Sánchez reckons that as long as there are no realistic channels for legal immigration, the irregular channels will continue to flourish. In the immediate term, the status of the foreigners working in Spain should be legalised because they are contributing to society "in a country where the informal economy represents 25 percent of the total."

As for the sit-in at the cathedral, she blamed the organisers and not the people inside, described the police action as "regrettable", though applauded the fact that there were no arrests and no immigrants were expelled from the country in the end.

The occupation was organised by the Assembly for Regularisation without Conditions (ARSC), which emerged from a similar sit-in three years ago that last 47 days and ended after negotiations won legal status for 94 percent of the protesters who took part.

The president of the non-governmental organisation Caritas, Nuria Gispert, played a key role in those negotiations – and she signed the document Sunday condemning the sit-in because, she said, "any action of force at this time undermines possible negotiations both at the regional and national level."

About half of the protesters responded to that call and left the cathedral, and the rest were cleared out by the police. All took part in street protests in Barcelona and announced that if they do not receive a favourable response from the government by Wednesday they will stage another occupation or new protests.

Zapatero, meanwhile, said he wants "orderly immigration" and said his government will apply all legal mechanisms so that "the situation of disorder is converted into a situation of order."

To achieve that, he is calling for a broad and urgent accord involving the business community, trade unions, regional and municipal government and even the opposition parties.

When asked in a press conference if that meant a generalised legalisation of immigrants, he denied that was the case, saying "things should be done correctly" and that the relevant laws would be implemented.

Rumi also referred to the laws, announcing that a system would be launched allowing foreigners with a visa to look for work and that agreements with other countries would be honoured – agreements "that have been signed but not fulfilled."

In particular, said the immigration official, with that visa for seeking work, valid for three months, "from the time they enter Spain the immigrants will have all rights and obligations, not as tourists, but as people looking for work."

As it stands today, most undocumented immigrants enter as tourists and stay in the country after the visa has expired, working without a hiring contract in the underground economy, she said.

The organisation Justice and Peace, associated with the Catholic Church, said the police action constituted "repression". The group’s president Arcadi Oliveres said he was indignant that "the Church permitted the police to enter a holy place, and I therefore criticise the bishop and the national government, although (the protesters) should have given the government more time to act before staging the occupation."