Rodríguez Zapatero has tried – through his pact with radical Nationalism and historical revisionism – to demolish the pillars on which our democratic Transition rested: unity, solidarity and harmony among all Spaniards. The Law of Historical Memory promoted by this administration meant the end of the harmony pact that all Spaniards had agreed upon; to look ahead thinking of the future and to avoid a return to a past full of confrontation and revenge. The Catalonian Statute’s Reform, pushed by Zapatero, resulted in a concealed reform of our Constitution, transforming the State of Autonomies – as agreed upon in 1978 – in a confederal state that can ultimately lead only to the liquidation of the nation.

Read the rest …

 Following the recent news that Russia was exploring the Artic, for natural gas, this is big news.

 And global warming can only help the Russian …

Developing …

By Robert Duncan

The dream of most immigrants – at least when arriving to Spain – isn’t to stay here. Rather its to strike it rich and then move back home. Striking it rich is relative, given that in many of the countries these people come from the monthly salary can be around 200 dollars. But with a small nest egg, perhaps a home that was built in the country of origin while living in Spain, and hopes of a small retirement pension, many immigrants are willing to take their chances living in a foreign country.

One such case is Cesar Augusto, who came with his cousin to visit Spain in 2002.

The two Venezuelans caught a flight from Caracas and arrived on three-month tourist visas. Like thousands before them, they didn’t bother returning when the visas expired. “My cousin decided to stay, so I thought I’d stay to accompany him,” said Augusto. “Besides, things are very bad in Venezuela.”

And in Ecuador. And in Colombia. And in Argentina. And in Peru.

The economic and political upheaval in South America, along with a common language, have sent the numbers coming to Spain from that continent soaring into the hundreds of thousands, up from just tens of thousands at the turn of the century. That wave of late has been supplanted by workers from Eastern Europe as the borders drop and the European Union enlarges.

The face of Plaza Olavide has changed in the last 10 years. Nestled in the center of Madrid, the Chamberi neighborhood is one of the capital’s most expensive areas to rent an apartment. But high prices haven’t stopped poor immigrants from making this neighborhood their home to take advantage of its central location.

Apartments are often rented, and then subsequently sublet to dozens of people – the going price can reach 300 euros for the right to a slot in a bunkbed and to use a communal toilet down the hall. The purchase price for a 130 square meter apartment in Chamberi can easily touch 750,000 dollars. One industrious Ecuadorean woman sublet to 30 people to finance the spacious apartment – when no immigrants were living there – where she and her family were living. The living room was divided into three rooms by curtains. With the rent money she was able to purchase a second apartment – and then move her family to London.

These waves of immigration have helped prop Spain’s economy, both by contributing to its welfare system and by supplying unpopular work to crucial sectors, such as construction and services. Included in the services sector is tourism, which contributes 12% to Spain’s gross domestic product, or construction. But there are concerns as the construction sector is now seen on the decline, with a recent report from the large Spanish bank BBVA even suggesting there could be losses of upwards of a quarter of million jobs.

The concern is where those people will turn – the vast majority of them being immigrants. Many are already taking courses sponsored by the govenment to learn new job skills. But the fear is not all will have taken such an opportunity.

Often the needs of the Spanish economy don’t mesh perfectly with the needs of the arrivals.

Many immigrants run the risk of being trapped in marginalized jobs, experts warn, preventing them from fully integrating into Spain’s economy and society even while their numbers grow. Where just five years ago it was impossible to speak of immigrant ghettos, today there are neighborhoods where a Spanish face is foreign.

With roughly 11% of the European Union’s population and about 10% its GDP, Spain accounts for around 25% of Europe’s immigration.

Ecuador alone sent more than 200,000 citizens to Spain from 1998 to 2001. Now, in 2007 there are over 420,000 legal Ecuadorians in Spain, with estimates that number could swell to over 750,000 if illegals were included.

Colombia added almost 150,000 during the same years. Argentine net migration to Spain rose nearly threefold for the same period, although the absolute numbers were lower.

By comparison, Morocco, a mere eight miles away and a country whose migration problems with Spain are widely publicized, sent just more than 100,000 to Spain during the same three years.

According to the latest figures, the largest single immigrant population remains Morocco with 575,000, followed by Rumania (525,000) Ecuador, United Kingdom (315,000), Colombia (260,000), Bolivia (200,000), Germany (165,000), Argentina (140,000), Italy (135,000), Bulgaria (120,000), China (105,000) and Peru (100,000).

A closer look at those numbers shows that Latin American immigrants as a whole are the largest group in Spain.

With such numbers it should be no suprise that there is also talk that political parties are actively seeking the immigrant vote – most South Americans can claim Spanish nationality after living and working legally two years in the country. On top of those numbers are immigrants from other European Union countries. As Spain heads into General Elections in March there will most likely be initiatives that seek to woo this potentially crucial swing-vote.

One important area will be how immigrants view their as of late loss of purchasing power – many of them, while still sending money home, have bought into the dream of buying an apartment. But mortgages are rising, with many immigrants finding that the price of paying the bank is now surpassing what they make. To make ends meet many immigrants fall back on the tried-and-true method of subleting any available space in their apartments. In one more than one case a bed placed on a cold hastily glassed-in terrace can fetch an extra hundred euros a month.

South American, and other, foreign workers are helping to pay unemployment benefits Spain can ill afford. But despite their contribution, the arrivals are bringing tensions often hidden by the common language and which bode ill for the future. 

It is often conjectured that for every one legal immigrant there are between three and five others who are illegal. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development routinely warns that immigrants face precarious conditions because they aren’t legal, work on temporary contracts and tend to work long hours, sometimes paid below the contractual rate.

And there is another problem in Spain – many of the jobs are offered on temporary contracts, or through employment agencies so that companies pay a lower salary to avoid paying many of the benefits that they would have to make for longer-term employees.

As immigrants are channeled into temporary jobs, experts fear they will become a permanent underclass.

Latin American immigrants complain that speaking Spanish hasn’t given them a lift up the economic ladder nor helped them integrate into society.

“[They] are really only competing with Spain’s other, traditional, marginalized group: the gypsies,” said Inaki Santacruz, a researcher at the University of Barcelona’s CREA research center. He said the immigrants primarily take jobs in restaurants, as farm workers, on construction sites and as cleaners.

“They are types of work that are despised, that have no social status,” he said. The workers have few narrow work options and little upward mobility.

For this reason, the business group, Circulo de Empresarios, has criticized laws requiring proof that no Spaniard is willing to take a job before it is given to a foreigner, ensuring that foreigners are offered only unpalatable work.

In a study a few years ago CREA found that about 27% of legal immigrants are employed in cleaning compared to only 6% of Spain’s employable population; 20% in agriculture and fishing compared to 9% of all workers, and 11% in restaurant work compared 1% of Spain’s eligible.

“We aren’t allowed to work in any other sectors,” said Enrique Pulupa, past president of an Ecuadorean advocacy group, Coordinadora Nacional Ecuatorianos en Espana. “This could be a time bomb if things aren’t solved.”

But Pulupa and others say that businesses, trying to cut costs, add to the problem by turning to agencies to fill vacancies. Because agencies tend to fill short-term needs, the immigrants they employ don’t qualify for loans and mortgages.

For Spanish businessmen like Genaro Lema Mouzo, the country cannot afford to block the immigrants. Lema managed the bar where Augusto worked, before – ironically – eventually moving to Latin America to set up a business.

“We have to hire foreigners,” he said. “You put out an advertisement, and 40 foreigners arrive at the door, and only two Spaniards will appear…Spaniards don’t want to work weekends. They want to have Fridays and the weekends off. When a foreigner comes here, they accept the conditions.”

Simultaneously, the foreigners are propping up Spain’s welfare system.

Spain has been unwilling to cut benefits that some economists say would force Spaniards into jobs and instead has come to rely on foreign workers to pay for the cost of unemployment, according to past OECD report.

But to be honest, the immigrants don’t just take unwanted jobs – they also pay social-welfare contributions. Although data is scarce, economists say immigrants are net contributors. At €100 per month — the amount a low-paid cleaner might contribute — those immigrants pay well over 1 billion euros into the social-welfare system.

While some other EU countries have higher percentages of foreign workers to total population, none has a growth rate like Spain’s. And the pace is likely to continue, despite the recent numbers that show legal immigrants in 2006 only rose by 400,000 to 4.5 million – sharply up from the half a million in 1996.

And despite continued talk that there will be no further amnesties for illegal immigrants already working in Spain the reality may be quite different given there are likely one million non-contributors living in the country. With such numbers there is the possibility that even veiled promises ahead of General Elections could be used as an attempt to sway legal immigrant voters, given that many of them have friends – if not family – who could benefit from an amnesty.

The demand is unmistakable, but the story isn’t always a happy one. 

Rosero, a 29-year old Ecuadorean who worked as a street vendor, hawking whatever is the latest fashion, from T-shirts to bootleg CDs, fights back tears as he describes his disappointment. “It’s not easy here in Spain,” he said as he distributes pamphlets from a company offering services for Latin American immigrants. “It’s not a paradise. Here you suffer, searching to make ends meet, doing whatever you can.” Like many immigrants, he asked that only his surname be used.

“If you don’t have your papers in order, they will take advantage of you. I was working in construction and they paid me half of what they paid those who had papers,” he explained.

“I was a small businessman in Ecuador and thought that things would be better here,” Rosero said, adding that he sold everything and came to Spain as a tourist along with his wife and young daughter a year ago.

Robert Duncan is a journalist and ombudsman for foreign press in Spain. He is an Executive Board Member and Vice-President for the Organización de Periodismo y Comunicación Ibero-Americana, and Vice-President of the energy and telecommunications association, APSCE. He is News Editor for Spero News, and Editor-In-Chief of EnerPub.

He has also been published in World Catholic News, National Catholic Register, Renew America, Lifesite.net, as well as Capital Hill Coffee House, Common Conservative, The Conservative Voice, Enter Stage Right, News By Us, Conservative Crusader, World Net Daily, Mens News Daily and others. Robert was the bureau chief for an international news agency in Madrid for many years, and was published regularly in Dow Jones Newswires, with articles appearing in The Wall Street Journal.

By Robert Duncan

As readers of my column know I have written quite a bit over the years on immigration (click here for most recent feature: Immigration in Spain – A profile), the subject fascinates and binds me both on a personal and intellectual level.

When I arrived to Spain almost two decades ago the country was still a net exporter of workers. In the late 80s there were many excursions to small towns in far-off hills where I am sure I was the first foreigner the locals had ever saw. In once such adventure a small crowd of people - supported by a policeman driving a wreck of a car – followed me as I walked the streets. Mind you, this was when Spain still only had one television channel and to get a telephone line took months – so I suspect in some ways I was a novelty.

It wasn’t only until the late 90s that the balance actually turned with the country receiving more than it sent out. Spain has become one of the biggest focal points for immigration in all of Europe.

As I mentioned in the article above many immigrants aim to work long-term, and then return to their native countries on Spanish pensions.

However, of course there are the other immigrants who arrive with the intention of staying, and who seek to become functioning, well-adapted members of society. And a principal mover behind their decision is the hope to be on a level with the locals as far as income, training, education, employment and fluency in the language are concerned.

Despite these intentions, the reality can be far different.

In his paper, “Integrating the Immigrants” (“La integración de los inmigrantes”), IESE Prof. Antonio Argandoña highlights the conditions that must exist so that immigrants are properly integrated, without delays or distress, in the host society. If these factors are properly considered, he says, then society stands a much better chance of reaping the benefits and avoiding the conflicts surrounding the immigrant experience.

Communities Play Key Role

Upon arriving in a new country, immigrants do not usually find themselves isolated, but instead enter directly into a number of communities: family (if they have any), the neighborhood, town or city, school, workplace, and so on. These communities are vital.

Communities of established immigrants are often the first central receiving point for the newcomers, providing them with their initial investment in social capital, specific services (housing, entertainment, financial markets and work) and such intangibles as friendship, companionship or a sense of belonging to a particular social or ethnic group. Such communities undeniably offer benefits in terms of reducing the costs of adaptation, easing tensions and maintaining cultural identity.

However, the immigrant community can also become an obstacle for integration. Sometimes it prolongs the protection offered by the immigrant’s culture of origin – thus delaying their adaptation to the culture of the host country – or creates a “subculture” of resistance, warns Argandoña.

How can the right conditions be produced? Argandoña suggests focusing on two conditions: mobility and reciprocity.

Mobility: Leaving the Comfort Zone

The immigrant’s goal is to carve out a new life, argues Argandoña. Along that path, immigrants may encounter certain changes, such as their address, city or job. Sooner or later, the newcomer will have to leave the “immigrant neighborhood” where they originally landed, in order to open themselves up to relations with the locals or with immigrants of other nationalities.

In general, mobility such as this is not easy, as it means leaving comfortable surroundings. Additionally, immigrants may lack such necessary means as training, qualifications, work experience, and financial and social resources. In that respect, commendable work is being done by numerous associations, foundations and nonprofit organizations, as well as the thousands of volunteers who devote their time and effort toward helping immigrants get integrated, sometimes in realms that seem less important, such as entertainment, sports and leisure activities.

Reciprocity: It Works Both Ways

Integration is a personal responsibility, not only of those individuals arriving, but of those authorities, institutions or communities already there. In this sense, the task becomes a collective and reciprocal one, says Argandoña.

The society that receives immigrants establishes certain conditions – hopefully reasonable, not arbitrary, degrading or inhumane ones – that should be observed by immigrants. Likewise, the host society has some specific duties of its own – not only in legal terms, but also in terms of having just expectations regarding the work that the immigrants have come to carry out.

It is worth remembering that those arriving in a new country do not do so just because they want to, though arguably people should have the right to establish themselves in another country of their choosing in pursuit of better opportunities for themselves and their families, says Argadoña. More often, immigrants have left their home country behind because they are escaping a bad situation brought about by famine, persecution, terrorism or war. Also, they come because the host society needs them in some way.

Whatever the reason, the host country should set fair conditions aimed particularly at creating ties, ensuring acceptance of common values and a shared future, and fulfilling the duties of “good citizenship” without that meaning a loss of their own identity.

From a corporate standpoint, work contracts for immigrants may appear restrictive. In establishing the terms of an agreement, companies must be open to considering the particular needs of individual workers. Immigrants, especially, are people with their own set of personal conditions, histories, family environments and dreams, which make them different from everyone else.

Integration Policies

Granted, it’s not easy to reconcile the personal demands of immigrants, the governments of their countries of origin, the needs of their family members (both those staying behind and those arriving with them) and the desires of the host community. Therefore, Argandoña offers some general points to bear in mind, all aimed at creating a more open, dynamic, cohesive and diverse society.

- Family is the basic social cell.

- Employment is a basic right, which gives the worker a sense of usefulness and justifies his/her presence in the new society. Work is a major factor for socialization, as it enables immigrants to enter social networks that will help foster their integration, skills and experience. It is also a source of income and welfare.

- The ability to generate and receive income, beyond just social protection or public/private charity, is a source of both financial independence and opportunity. 

- Access to education and training is especially important for young people prior to their entry into the job market. There must be an acquisition of knowledge, culture, arts, skills, values and attitudes from the host society.

- The support network of social security and social services (healthcare, unemployment insurance, housing), and the right to economic entrepreneurship, will give immigrants greater security when it comes to new undertakings, such as purchasing a home or starting a business.

- Housing will at least partly determine the stability of their family, their employment and their mobility.

- Participation in social and political life through associations, groups and clubs will help them become fully integrated.

Robert Duncan is a journalist and ombudsman for foreign press in Spain. He is an Executive Board Member and Vice-President for the Organización de Periodismo y Comunicación Ibero-Americana, and Vice-President of the energy and telecommunications association, APSCE. He is News Editor for Spero News, and Editor-In-Chief of EnerPub.He has also been published in World Catholic News, National Catholic Register, Renew America, Lifesite.net, as well as Capital Hill Coffee House, Common Conservative, The Conservative Voice, Enter Stage Right, News By Us, Conservative Crusader, World Net Daily, Mens News Daily and others. Robert was the bureau chief for an international news agency in Madrid for many years, and was published regularly in Dow Jones Newswires, with articles appearing in The Wall Street Journal.