Proposed by Juana C. Camacho e-mail:fagonca@fsie.esr
From SAFA. Linares. Spain

IMMIGRATION

Old Europe should open its frontiers if it still aims at keeping its present rate of economic growth. Falling figures in the birth rate of the countries in the EU, added to the surmounting numbers of people who hold a pension might well endanger our welfare society in only a few years.

Spain is the country with the lowest birth rate in Europe; some statistics show even worse, claiming that Spain holds the lowest among all other countries in the world. Things get more dramatically serious if we just consider that life expectancy keeps growing more and more, reaching 75 years in men and about 80 for women.

It is for all these reasons that the presence of new citizens who come offshore is becoming increasingly necessary. Our society seems to demand the arrival of people who, though not Spanish in origin, could well come to sustain the necessary state of affairs that will make welfare society possible in the next decades.

Over the last few years, loads of people have made up their minds to cross the Strait of Gibraltar and risk their lives to reach the promised land: Spain. Those are Muslims who want to leave their home countries, Morocco, Algiers, Tunisia, Senegal, and so on, to find betterment for them and their relatives.

In the light of all these circumstances it becomes obvious that a new kind of society is emerging, one which is more  multi-feceted, multi-coloured, diverse and plural. People who worship different religions and are used to  differing customs are coming together, thus building a new society which should, in theory, be more encriching for its members.

But immigration is not proving, so far, so entirely positive as should be wished, racial confrontations are arising and cultural disputes are coming to the surface. For some, it seems as if, after five centuries of physical and cultural distance, the Spanish heritage were threatened again. Islam and its culture was thrown away by the Catholic Kings in 1492, the kingdom of Granada being the last surviving remain of what had been a powerful reign of succeeding dynasties over the centuries. Islam is now coming back, and many Spaniards are just afraid that would pose a threat to their future and their jobs, without realising that, perhaps. Their arrival is something which is inevitable and, more than that, absolutely necessary to maintain our population in its present figures.

France has experienced this rejection of an alien culture, the Arabs, for the last three decades. In politics, the far right has made its way using xenophobic messages as its main basis, much the same has been true of the Germans and their Turkish labour force, with racist uprisings and a few deaths to be blamed on racism. Austria is now coming to the front pages of newspapers for its co-allied government in which a nazi party has come to form part of. It is just to be hoped that nothing of the kind happens in Spain, measures are being taken and the necessary steps are being followed in children’s education, the labour world and social services to avoid which was not in other countries of the European Union. Immigration is a phenomenon which is and will still be there as long as global differences exist between developed and underdeveloped countries, which again gives evidence for the fact that the rich can do quite a lot for the poor.