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Spain's growth plan turns the tables on immigrants
Spain rocks when it comes to tapas, flamenco, and fiesta, but a peek into some serious issues and you'll find that much is messed up and inconsistent. On one hand Spain welcomes illegal immigrants seeking refuge, and on the other hand it's now making it harder for legal immigrants to make a living in the country.
Spain has always been generous with amnesty. Since 2000, it has granted legal status to more than 1 million people who have lived there illegally for 3 years and could prove they were employed.
Now suddenly things are changing. Paperwork is getting harder and harder, and as the unemployment rate in the country soars to 11% (2.5 million people) -- the highest in Europe -- Spain's latest plan is to decrease this rate by creating more jobs for nationals, paying immigrant laborers on temporary contracts to go back to their countries, and making the visa process for new immigrants difficult.
Of course this has caused much debate. Immigrants in Spain -- mainly from Africa and Latin America -- comprise a large percentage of the labor workforce in the country, doing many jobs that Spaniards refuse to do and at very low wages. According to this podcast, about 88,000 immigrants were hired this year on temporary contracts to do back breaking work nationals will not do; them leaving is not a solution to decrease unemployment in the country.
It's interesting how Spain's economic downturn has turned the tables on immigrants who were considered valuable resources till about a year ago. According to a report in Business Week, in the last decade, despite the fact that Spain absorbed about 3 million immigrants from all over, it was the best performing economy in Europe and the rate of unemployment plummeted. In event, much of this success was attributed to the influx of immigrants. Now in crisis, Spain is plotting against the very people who aided it's growth over the years.
In my opinion, Spain used to be one of the easiest countries to immigrate to, especially illegally -- irrespective of nationality -- whether you are Eastern European, Asian, African, or American. That, and the general "Mediterranean good life" drew in hoards of people. I know a handful of Americans who came to Spain on holiday and just stayed. None of them have paperwork and all of them will probably sort themselves out under amnesty. I, although not a student, have somehow managed to maintain a student visa for almost 3 years now, and have been working without a contract. Trying to be legit and get a "real" job just seems waste of an effort in this country.
All said and done, once you are sorted in some way, you can live quite a good quality of life. Spain has that charm. The government created this environment over years and, although with hiccups, it generally worked for both the country and foreigners choosing to reside there. Now unfortunately, for lack of a better plan, everything seems to be taking a U-turn.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
nzm Sep 11th 2008 12:36PM
Sounds like they've been talking to Dubai! Look what's happened there with immigrant workers doing the jobs that no Emirati would do and now there's a need to create jobs for Emiratis. Nothing under 200k dirhams please!
Without saying it outright, what Spain is saying is that they're attracting the "wrong kind of people" to move to Spain, and that's a majority of lower income "blue collar" type, if you have to classify them. Spain isn't the only country that has fallen into this - Germany certainly has done the same with the Polish and Russian influx. Countries need these workers to keep their service industries ticking along, but there comes a tipping point where there are too many allowed in for the number of available jobs.
What they are missing are the higher-income earning "attractive" immigrants who would fill housing settlements such as Sesena, as mentioned in this report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7584097.stm
There's another twist to this as well. According to this report,
Jamie Rhein Sep 12th 2008 10:05AM
Interesting, Abha. This reminds me a bit of all the immigrants working in Singapore who are the underbelly of all that glitter and all those high rise buildings.
The quagmire of economics. Look at what happened to Chinese immigrants in the western part of the U.S. after the railroad was built. It's an age old story.