Among so much bad news, I detect a direction for the better from the Government in terms of migration with the reform of the Immigration Law, reports on how essential migrants are for our society and Spain defending, together with the global south, in the G20, taxes to billionaires
Discrimination against foreign citizens causes the Spanish economy to lose 17 billion euros a year
Coinciding these days in the news is Mansour Knote, the 19-year-old Guinean who rescued a young woman during DANA in Malaga and Ibrahima Diack and Magatte N’Diaye, the Senegalese witnesses in the trial against the homophobic murder, in La Coruña, of Samuel Luiz, whom they tried to save. Of course it is intolerable that some only show respect for those who have migrated when they perform heroic acts or stand out for their talents. Both the right to migrate, recognized in article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as human dignity, belong to every person, whether brave or cowardly, smart or foolish.
Which does not mean that the fraternal solidarity of those who suffer social and institutional racism daily is moving and deserves, with all justice, gratitude and applause. I go one step further: these rescues exemplify the broader and quieter, less showy but equally important rescues that are being carried out in countries like Spain, reviving our economy and demographics.
Finally, this week I detect a change of course for the better of the Government of Spain, of the socialist part that did not defend as explicitly as the left to its left, the essential contribution of migrants to our society.
If the migrants stop, Spain stops
One of my post-Covid habits is to climb the stairs in my block, as exercise. In that movement I come across Latin American women: one takes care of a sick person, another has been raising three children for years, and the others take turns caring for three dependent elderly women. I know their work well, hard and patient, thanks to the caregivers of an aunt of mine with senile dementia, mostly Venezuelan and Colombian (63% of immigrants arrive by plane, between 0.5 and 1% by boat. The photos of rescued people with red blankets that usually illustrate news about 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, shop assistants, fishermen, day laborers, meat industry employees, cashiers, bricklayers, taxi drivers, truck drivers. .. many 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, in stores, on the subway. And so many that we do not see, those “essential in a pandemic” for fishing, cultivating and harvesting (such as Jaén olive growers who this week are sleeping outdoors), work in the slaughterhouses, that is, to feed ourselves. In Catalonia 26% of workers are already immigrants (according to this CCOO-CAT reporton p.45 of which is the distribution by professions), in 20 of the 50 Spanish provinces they are more than 15% (in Seville we do not reach 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 made several moves to highlight that migrants, the new Spaniards, are essential.
The official position turns for the better
What movements am I referring to? Well, Monday started the week with a report by researchers from the Autonomous of Madrid on behalf of the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration on the economic impact of discrimination against immigrants. That is, the bill of racism. Data: 17,166 million euros per year. An amount that could pay the salaries of almost all state officials.
And how is that 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 are dedicated to tasks far below their qualifications (we waste lawyers, engineers, doctors when so many health workers are needed, in positions that do not require such qualification),
- And because in the previous, educational stage, they are also discriminated against and a brutal potential is lost.
We could be growing 1.27% more than the 3% we do. Everything is priced in the report, here in full.
The systemic racism that exists in Spain causes us to lose 17,166 million euros a year because it refuses to hire 248,000 necessary people and those it places do so below their qualifications and with less salary than normally expected.
The next day, Tuesday, the government approved the new Immigration regulations, which are called to regularize 900,000 people over the next three years, making it easier to obtain residence and work permits. It is not, for many reasons, an ideal reform. Lawyers and associations warn that without more immigration personnel it will be difficult to apply; Furthermore, it only reduces the time to demonstrate roots from three to two years, which continues to condemn many people to two years of neo-slavery and, as the Regularization Now movement criticizes, it falls into a utilitarian perspective unlike the ILP before Congress that they are promoting. to regularize 500,000 immigrants without linking them to the labor market. With everything and with that, there is no doubt that it is a better route than the one we took.
New direction that, a day later, Wednesday, was confirmed with a extensive article by the former Foreign Minister also with Pedro Sánchez, Arancha González Laya, in EL PAÍS, where he blames the crisis of European competitiveness in the global context on demographic aging and lack of immigrants in Europe. The EU, he writes, has an average age of 44 years, compared to the US and China of 38, India of 28 and Africa of 18 and while in the US 14% of the population is an immigrant, in the EU only 6% are. .
Utilitarianism and racist right-wing
The utilitarian conception that emerges even from the most well-intentioned analyzes is obvious. But never did the privileged (and we white Westerners are) recognize the rights of those who oppressed out of conviction or good will, but rather they always conquer them due to their power in society. Thus, there is nothing wrong with being clear about the labor importance of immigrants; on the contrary, it is a key asset for negotiating and consolidating the rights that, out of justice, belong to them.
Human beings have the right to migrate regardless of whether the country of arrival needs us to fill jobs and contribute to pay pensions for retirees. But being essential, as migrants are today in Spain and the EU, gives a key force to conquer the rights that the privileged elite does not let go of in its desire to continue oppressing.
We are talking about human rights that the Spanish extreme right and right insist on trampling with initiatives typical of the shameful segregationist past such as that of Vox de prohibit immigrants from Hortaleza (Madrid) from sitting at bus stops or even from the slave trade past, such as the 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 horses.
Spain with the south before the mega-rich
Finally, President Pedro Sánchez at the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro has positioned himself, alongside Brazilian President Lula da Silva and the global south, defending reform in favor of representativeness in the UN, as well as taxes on billionaires in the face of hunger, injustice and environmental destruction.
Something key then, as Oxfam denouncesthe 1% of the world’s mega-rich – whose interests Trump and his henchmen in the US administration will defend – control 31% of the world’s wealth while the poor 50% only have 5% of the resources.
Be careful, in this tax mission, Spain has a task. Not only because of the tax reform approved yesterday in Parliament with the promise of extending the tax on electricity companies that we will see how it comes to fruition, but because we are the 15th country of the 206 in the world where companies and the rich most evade their tax lairs. According to the Tax Justice Network, 10 billion euros per year. It’s no small feat.
#Immigrant #rescuers #greedy #billionaires
