← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Madrid burns
Thread ID: 12944 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2004-03-31
2004-03-31 00:00 | User Profile
Attacks in Spain put migrants in spotlight
It is like a dream coming true through a nightmare," said Doinita Violeta Luca, pondering a brand-new, plastic-sealed residency card that carries her name next to the Spanish national colors, the first step toward a proper passport later this year. . As she readied herself to leave the makeshift immigration office in a central police station in Madrid, there was a troubled mix of pain, guilt and wonder in her eyes. Like many others, Luca, a 34-year-old Romanian mother of two, earned her right to citizenship by being wounded and traumatized in one of the four trains that were ripped apart in coordinated bombings on March 11. . Within hours of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Spanish history, the outgoing prime minister, José MarÃÂa Aznar, announced that immediate family members of foreign-born victims and the non-Spaniards among the 1,900-plus people who were hurt in the bombings would be given Spanish passports. Forty-seven of the 190 people who died were immigrants like Luca, many of them commuting to work from the multiethnic working-class suburbs of Coslada and Alcalá de Henares in the east of Madrid. . The bombings, known in Spain as 11-M, have put a spotlight on the country's deeply ambivalent relationship with immigration. As newspaper articles often mention, most of the suspects held by the police so far are also foreigners, mainly of Moroccan descent. . With one of the lowest birthrates in Europe and a looming jump in pension claims, Spain's E743 billion, or $900 billion, economy increasingly relies on an influx of workers and taxpayers from abroad. Yet opinion surveys show that hostility toward foreigners is growing rapidly, along with the perception that they burden the social welfare system, steal jobs from their Spanish hosts and contribute disproportionately to crime. Meanwhile, tight quotas have kept the lid on the influx of legal workers, causing illegal immigration to soar.
[url]http://www.iht.com/articles/512467.html[/url]
2004-04-11 02:18 | User Profile
illeagle immigration in spain ? geez, i thought only we americans had that problem.
2004-04-11 02:56 | User Profile
A clear sign that we need to do a better job of discriminating between Hispanics (who are often white) and Chicanos.
The fact it is, it is our fellow whites in Mexico--the people who actually run the country--who are flooding this nation with their brown citizens. Rather than make meaningful economic reforms, they aim to make us take a mode of life more similar to their own -- while making a profit from the destruction all along.
2004-04-11 05:37 | User Profile
[QUOTE=JoseyWales]illeagle immigration in spain ? geez, i thought only we americans had that problem.[/QUOTE]
You should go to Europe sometime 30%+ of the UK and France are now non-white.
2004-04-11 13:27 | User Profile
30% is not true. It is closer to 10-15%.