Among so much bad news, I detect a positive direction from the government on migration with the reform of the immigration law, reports on the importance of migrants for our society and the Spain that defends them, with the south, within the G20. , taxes on billionaires
Discrimination against foreign citizens costs the Spanish economy 17 billion euros per year
These days, Mansour Knote, the 19-year-old Guinean who saved a young woman during the DANA in Malaga, and Ibrahima Diack and Magatte N’Diaye, the Senegalese witnesses in the trial against the homophobic assassination, in La Coruña, from Samuel Luiz, the news coincides with who they tried to save. Of course, it is intolerable that some only show respect to those who have emigrated when they perform heroic deeds or stand out for their talents. The right to migrate, recognized in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and human dignity belong to everyone, whether courageous or cowardly, intelligent or foolish.
Which does not mean that the fraternal solidarity of those who suffer daily from social and institutional racism is moving and deserves, in all justice, gratitude and applause. I go a little further: these rescues illustrate the larger and more discreet, less spectacular but equally important rescues that are being carried out in countries like Spain, reviving our economy and our demographics.
Finally, this week, I detect a change of course in favor of the Spanish government, of the socialist party which has not defended as explicitly as the left to its left, the essential contribution of migrants to our society.
If migrants stop, Spain stops
One of my post-Covid habits is to climb the stairs in my building, as exercise. In this movement, I meet Latin American women: one takes care of a sick person, another has been raising three children for years and the others take turns taking care of three dependent elderly women. I know their work well, hard and patient, thanks to the caregivers of one of my aunts suffering from senile dementia, mainly Venezuelan and Colombian (63% of immigrants arrive by plane, between 0.5 and 1% by boat. Photos of people rescued with the red blankets which usually illustrate the news on migration give a distorted idea of reality).
26% of workers in Catalonia are already immigrants and 15% in 20 of the 50 Spanish provinces: caregivers and cleaners, waiters, salespeople, fishermen, day laborers, meat industry employees, cashiers, masons, taxi drivers, truck drivers. many are overqualified. If they stop, Spain stops.
Despite my experience in Seville, every time I go to Madrid I am surprised by the number of Latin Americans working in bars, stores, the metro. And until we see, those “essential in the pandemic” to fish, cultivate and harvest (like the olive growers of Jaén who are sleeping outside this week), work in the slaughterhouses, that is to say to feed themselves . In Catalonia, 26% of workers are already immigrants (according to this CCOO-CAT report, which presents the distribution by profession on page 45), in 20 of the 50 Spanish provinces, it is more than 15% (in Seville, we do not reached 6%).
If they stopped, Spain would stop. It’s been like this for years. The novelty is that, finally, this week the PSOE+Sumar government has taken several measures to emphasize that migrants, the new Spaniards, are essential.
Official position improves
What movements am I talking about? Well, on Monday the week began with a report by researchers from the Autonomous Community of Madrid commissioned by the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration on the economic impact of discrimination against immigrants. That is, the racism bill. Data: 17.166 million euros per year. A sum that could pay the salaries of almost all state civil servants.
And how is this money lost?
- Because because they are immigrants, 248,000 people whose work is needed are not hired,
- Because those who are hired are paid less than they should be and dedicate themselves to tasks well below their preparation (we waste lawyers, engineers, doctors when so many agents are needed health, in positions that do not require such qualifications).
- And because in the previous educational stage they are also discriminated against and brutal potential is lost.
We could see growth of 1.27% higher than the 3% we are experiencing. Everything is assessed in the report, here in its entirety.
The systemic racism that exists in Spain causes us to lose 17.166 million euros per year because it refuses to hire 248,000 necessary people and those it places do so below their qualifications and with lower salaries than normal. expected.
The next day, Tuesday, the government approved new immigration regulations, which aim to regularize 900,000 people over the next three years, making it easier to obtain residence and work permits. This is not, for many reasons, an ideal reform. Lawyers and associations warn that without more specialist immigration staff, it will be difficult to apply; Furthermore, this only reduces the root demonstration time from three to two years, which continues to condemn many people to two years of neo-slavery and, as the Regularization Now movement criticizes, this is part of a utilitarian perspective unlike the ILP before Congress which advocates regularizing 500,000 immigrants without linking them to the labor market. With everything and that, there is no doubt that this is a better route than the one we took.
New direction which, a day later, Wednesday, was confirmed by a long article by the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, also with Pedro Sánchez, Arancha González Laya, in EL PAÍS, where she blames demographic aging for the crisis of European competitiveness in the global context and. the lack of immigrants in Europe. The EU, he writes, has an average age of 44, compared to 38 in the United States and China, 28 in India and 18 in Africa. While in the USA 14% of the population is immigrant, in the EU only 6%. are. .
Utilitarianism and the racist right
The utilitarian conception that emerges from even the most well-intentioned analyzes is evident. But the privileged (and we white Westerners are) have never recognized the rights of those who oppressed out of conviction or good will, but they have always conquered them thanks to their power in society. So there is nothing wrong with being clear about the professional importance of immigrants; on the contrary, it is a key asset for negotiating and consolidating the rights which, by justice, belong to them.
Human beings have the right to migrate, whether or not the country of arrival needs us to take up jobs and contribute to the payment of retirees’ pensions. But being essential, as migrants in Spain and the EU are today, provides a key strength to conquer rights that the privileged elite does not let go of in its desire to continue to oppress.
These are human rights that the far right and the Spanish right persist in trampling on with initiatives stemming from a shameful segregationist past, such as Vox’s ban on immigrants from Hortaleza (Madrid) from being able to sit at bus stops or even from the past of the slave trade, as a test approved by PP and Vox in the Balearic Islands to check the age of migrants by looking at their teeth as if they were of horses.
Spain with the south ahead of the mega-rich
Finally, President Pedro Sánchez, during the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, positioned himself, alongside Brazilian President Lula da Silva and the South, defending reforms in favor of representativeness at the UN, as well as taxes on billionaires in the face of hunger, injustice and environmental destruction.
Something essential because, as Oxfam denounces, the 1% of the world’s mega-rich – whose interests Trump and his minions in the American administration will defend – control 31% of the world’s wealth while the poor 50% do not have only 5% of resources. .
Please note, in this tax mission, Spain has a task. Not only thanks to the tax reform approved yesterday in Parliament with the promise of extending the tax on electricity companies, we will see how it comes to fruition, but because we are the 15th country out of 206 in the world where companies and richest escape their tax dens. According to the Tax Justice Network, 10 billion euros per year. This is no small feat.
