A “question of humanity”. But also “necessary for the welfare state”. The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, defended migration against “the hoaxes” of the far right, Vox and the PP, who say “that migrants come to wander”, while “they contribute 10% of the income of the Social “. Security and use of public services 40% less.
Sánchez, to defend the benefits of migration, recalled a journalistic column in a Venezuelan newspaper from May 25, 1949, in which the “protagonists were Spaniards, more precisely Canarians: 106 of the 120,000 who crossed the Atlantic on small boats. between 1945 and 1978, fleeing poverty and fascist repression. The news said the following: “”A dilapidated boat arrived on our shores with 106 illegal immigrants on board. Those detained without papers – including ten women and a four-year-old girl – were found in deplorable conditions: hungry, dirty and with tattered clothes. The hold of the boat, which was only 19 meters long, resembled a vomitorium and gave off an unbearable stench.”
The President of the Government, of course, made no reference to the Sahrawis deported from Barajas nor to the immediate returns to Ceuta and Melilla.
Sánchez defended migration based on economic and demographic data: “Most projections indicate that the EU population will reach its peak around 2025 and from then on it will age and decline. The number of retirees will increase by 35% and the European population will lose around 30 million workers. Something similar will happen in Spain. If we do nothing, over the next 25 years our population pyramid could lose 4 million working-age people, leaving our workforce at levels similar to 1996 and potentially stunting our growth economic potential of 2% per year. just 0.1%.
“All developed countries face this demographic challenge,” Sánchez said: “And, aside from technology and productivity improvements, we all have two tools to deal with it: births and migrations. »
Regarding the promotion of the birth rate, the President of the Government announced that the parties of the coalition government will seek “to reach an agreement with the groups of this Chamber to approve a new law on the family which will expand the rights of families single-parent families, large families, migrant families and families with a disabled member.
