“It’s not the same thing to bring in a Muslim Moroccan or a Catholic Argentinian.” This is what the spokesperson for Vox in the Cortes of Castilla y León, Juan García-Gallardowho advocated “being able to choose who enters” the country, an election in which “claiming that the origin is neutral is nonsense”, declared the former vice-president of the Council to defend a proposal on the illegal immigration in which his training was left alone in Parliament.
This is a non-legal proposal that, among other issues, calls for the deportation of all illegal immigrants or that funds used to help illegal aliens be used to pay for the costs of returning them to their countries. “Racist”, “xenophobic”, “incomprehensible nonsense”, “joke”», “stupid”, “ridiculous”, “impractical” or “legal difficulty” are some of the adjectives with which the different groups described the text, which received a unanimous “no” from the rest of the parties represented. to the Cortes.
Gallardo, who began his speech by saying “hello to everyone except the PSOE and the PP, who are once again on the wrong side of history” and welcoming the victory of Donald Trump in the United States –“We patriots are lucky”-, described an “open door” immigration policy as “suicidal”. “The false benefactor conditions us for disaster,” he said. His solution is that “if they are hostile,” they have “the right to say they are not welcome.” It is in this context that he launched the comparison between the “Moroccan Muslim” and the “Argentine Catholic”.
A point, faith, which focused part of Gallardo’s intervention. He cited the Pope or St. Thomas Aquinas and defended the beliefs of his grandfather, a “Catholic German,” after asking socialists if his ancestor was legal when he arrived in Spain. His predecessor as vice-president of the Council, Francisco Igea, also a believer, asked him not to rely on the Church to justify his arguments. “Saint Matthew: when I was hungry you gave me something to eat, When I was a stranger, you welcomed me. It doesn’t say it was because you were Catholic.” The former deputy for Ciudadanos reproached him.
For Gallardo, a “useful” migration policy should act on the “call effect” of those who, according to him, come in search of an “easy life”. “Human beings are migrants by nature,” replied Ángel Ceña, of ¡Soria Ya!, and he does it because “lack of opportunities”. 53 percent of the citizens of his province live abroad, he recalled and “it is not because we like adventure and walks through Castilian, nor because we like to leave behind us home, family and friends. “We’re looking for opportunities.” A context of emigration of locals, partly thwarted by foreigners, he noted. “Without immigration, we would not be a viable society,” he added.
From the PSOE, they have disfigured a “discourse of immigration equal to crime, which denies itself” and of wanting to “deprive of their future those who flee poverty –“Was your grandfather a criminal because he was an immigrant? Are you one because you are a descendant?-. “They don’t reject those who buy a million-dollar house, they hate those who don’t have money to survive,” Rubén Illera said.
For their part, the popular, former partners of the Government for two years – and with whom they signed an agreement which included – “promote a orderly immigration“- they rejected certain proposals from Vox which they understand as “confusing” and delving into “state competences” and ruined the break in the regional executives because of the reception of the menas. »This was done in 2022 and 2023 and the clothes were not torn«. In this sense, Noemí Rojo declared that “Castilla y León is a welcoming land” and “those looking for a better life are always welcome”. Finally, he advocates considering immigration as a “state question” with an approach that includes “border protection and respect for human rights”.
The most critical was the national spokesperson for Podemos, Pablo Fernández. “Castile and León have no problem… Depopulation, increasingly deteriorated public services… and this is accompanied by the same false noise,” he underlined before describing the proposal as “institutional racism” and “sovereign dirt.” “The right to migrate is a human right, there is no such thing as an illegal human being,” he concluded.
