Illegal Inmigration & Terrorism: The Unlearned Lessons (2)

So how did Spain ended up flooded with unknown and almost untraceable masses of illegal immigrant's? As mentioned before, during the PSOE administration of Felipe Gonzalez, there was an unwritten policy of, if not open borders an open disdain to ignoring immigration rules & laws. Most Illegal Muslim immigrants came via boats from North Africa and landed on the unprotected southern coast of Spain as if it was some migratory D-Day. Thousands died in the process, a tragedy in itself that helped fuel political correctness for illegal immigration. When regular folks started to raise concerns regarding the flood of immigrants, they were promptly accused of uncaring racists and xenophobes by the ruling left wing government of the late 80s and 90s, human rights organizations and the media itself. When people still complained, a massive guilt trip campaign was launched and its results were the almost total shutdown of any opinion that did not concur with the politically correct view of the issue. Interesting enough, the same points being made today in the US Congress while discussing the Amnesty Bill were made in Spain during those years.

1.- Spain was a nation of emigrants.
After the Spanish Civil War, hundred of thousands of Spaniards fled to other countries. The economic situation was so bad that people were literally starving in a mostly rural country. This piece of Spanish history is used to claim that any protest against Muslim immigration is just an indicator of bigotry on those who reject their presence in Spain. However they leave one little detail aside: Those Spanish emigrants did so LEGALLY. They did not sneak through any border without documentation or tried to shy away from authorities seeking to regulate them. And what was most amazing was their absolute integration into the culture of their adoptive country, there was almost no "gethoism" but they sought to be just regular folks living among other people of other cultures while sharing theirs. Parents went out of their way for their sons and daughters to be part of the country and become productive members of society. Of course it help that for the most part Spanish emigrants shared a common language and religion with their host countries, but still their adaptation to the local customs is short of amazing. Many emigrants spent decades without returning to Spain and when they did, they found that they were more citizens of their new countries than Spaniards and they were proud of it.

2.- Immigrants do the jobs Spanish people do not want to do.
In a country racked by high unemployment (20%), this was perhaps one of the most crudest insults to the Spanish people. The truth of the matter is that unscrupulous companies rather hire illegals at slave wages than to cough up the money for a decent wage and dealing with legal issues like Social Security, insurance, etc. Government turned a blind eye on the matter because they were getting good income from taxes and thought that those illegals one day would vote for them. Unfortunately for PSOE those Muslim illegals never got around to get a voting card and regular folks kicked PSOE out and elected Jose Maria Aznar from PP (Partido Popular) as Prime Minister in 1996 who started to tighten restrictions on illegal immigration. But by then it was too late. The seeds for the Madrid Train bombings were already sown.

More excuses to come in the next chapter.

End of part Two.