💰 Immigration reality, rhetoric and policy in Spain
(08/08/2018) Whichever way the debate goes, better border control seems like a good idea, even for those on the left.
(Original published: 08/08/2018)
Millions vs. tens of thousands
Local size vs. national impact
Statistics vs. media impact
The economics of immigration
The port of Algeciras in southern Spain, across the bay from Gibraltar, is a big beast, filled with enormous freight cranes, dozens of large cargo ships and ferries, and thousands of containers waiting to be moved. This summer, like last summer and for many summers previously, several hundred thousand private vehicles owned by North African citizens resident in Europe will arrive at the port—and a couple of others but mostly this one—and travel the eight nautical miles across the Straits of Gibraltar for their holidays, returning quite legally and properly before the autumn to resume ordinary life in Spain or France or Germany. As you drive south along the motorways, there are signposts in Arabic indicating the route at least as far north as Murcia, 5.5 hours drive from the ferry ramps. In 2017, the total number of people travelling in this manner was over 3 million passengers, according to a recent Home Office statement.
4.7 million foreigners still live in Spain, down slightly from a peak of 5.7 million in 2011. For the past 12 years, anywhere between 1.7 million and 2.1 million have been registered as paying into the social security system through formal employment or self-employment. A crude dependency ratio, subtracting the number of immigrants with some kind of work (even the informal kind) from the total immigrant population, fluctuated between 37% just as the economic crisis began in 2008 to 66% in 2013, the high point in terms of unemployment in Spain as a whole. The current foreign population of Spain—that authorities know about—includes a million Europeans, 876,000 South Americans and 766,000 from “the rest of the world”, which includes Africans.
There has been something of an explosion of immigrants being rescued in small boats along the southern Spanish coastline this summer, according to Coast Guard data. 26,000 or so all year, to the end of July, 98% along the southern coast, and most of those in the three months since May, and increasing each month. Just yesterday, the Coast Guard tweeted another 458 had been picked up in small boats by 8 p.m., with many more expected in the rest of August, and last year’s figures show the autumn months brought more rescues than the summer.
Another untold number of immigrants on small boats do make it to the beaches of Andalusia (or even Murcia or Alicante on occasion) and scurry off towards the life that awaits them somewhere beyond the sands. Several videos of this happening, to the surprise of sunbathers on the beaches, have appeared in recent weeks on social media and then on Spanish news programmes. But 26,000 is just 0.6% of the 4.7 million foreign residents in Spain or 0.9% of the 3 million North African summer travellers. A drop in the ocean, almost literally. The 800 who jumped the border fence in Ceuta, in a surprisingly violent manner this time, according to police, are an even smaller sliver of the total: 0.017-0.026%.
Truth be told, you could probably hide 26,000 immigrants away in the port or town of Algeciras and—if reporters didn’t stick their cameras and notebooks around the door—nobody would be much the wiser. So what is the problem?
Immigration is this week’s public debate. The editorial selection of one story from among all other possible stories is the first sign of importance to readers; multiply the number of media outlets talking about it, multiply the type of coverage (text, photos, radio, TV), and run the same story for hours, days or weeks at a time and you increase “importance” and impact and create a national debate, such as it is. It is the same dynamic that drove outrage (or pride) over the videos of the Civil Guard and police being cheered off to Catalonia by flag-waving Spaniards in the rest of the country last year or, more recently, anger (or agreement) at the non-rape verdict in the Wolf-Pack trial this spring.
To viewing eyes, if not to national statistics, boatloads of African immigrants rushing off into the sands of Spain in an uncontrolled manner, or onto the streets of Ceuta after jumping the border fence, or the Coast Guard acting as an “immigrant taxi service” is strong stuff, and makes easy fodder for those in politics—on the left and the right—who wish to magnify the images to try to score some more votes. It is a similar effect to crowd size in city streets during demonstrations. It looks and feels like a lot of people on the screen or if you are standing next to it but compared to the whole course of a nation is tiny. Which is not to say it is not really happening or that it does not have to be managed in some way.
A nation must decide what to do and somebody has to pay for the cost of life once people arrive—this is true for British pensioners on Easyjet just as much as African immigrants on small boats. It might be immigrants with their own savings (or pensions), private citizens or NGOs with charity, employers with new jobs, gangs or cartels with criminal proceeds, or the state with welfare (which leads to more taxes or debt), or some combination of those elements in each case. Defenders of the economic benefits of across-the-board immigration would love it to be all positive about jobs and spending and GDP growth, but reality is somewhat more stubborn.
There are studies to support both the benefits of broad immigration as well as a more selective approach based on skills, at least if the economy is to be the basis on which a nation decides its migrant policy (which it need not be). A cross-party committee in Britain’s House of Lords found in 2008 that GDP was an “irrelevant” and “meaningless” yardstick and that there was “no evidence for the argument, made by the Government, business and many others, that net immigration—immigration minus emigration—generates significant economic benefits for the existing UK population”. A more recent academic article, published in Science Advances this year, concluded: “Our results suggest that the alleged migrant crisis currently experienced by Europe is not likely to provoke an economic crisis but might rather be an economic opportunity”.
Logic suggests adding 100,000 highly skilled, young, childless people to an already growing economy, full of creative companies, would lead to greater output, income and profit for all—value creating assets; whereas adding 100,000 low skilled or older people, with children or sick parents to look after, to a stagnating or declining economy would not produce such a positive economic result—costly dependent liabilities (in an economic sense). This, of course, is as applicable to the existing population as it is to immigrants: there are still 3.5 million unemployed people (Spaniards and foreign residents) in the Spanish economy 10 years after the financial crisis began.
Beyond economics, on a national or political or strategic level, human rights or a desire to help refugees, or to contribute to the world, or to “fix Africa” first with a new Marshall Plan, might be fine, noble guides towards the right path, but what a country decides to do after some serious thought, or what voters decide when presented with options by their politicians, should be more controlled. Whichever way the debate goes, better border control seems like a good idea, even for those on the left. It would allow the Coast Guard and others to continue with their necessary rescue work, reduce or eliminate the images of uncontrolled numbers of immigrants rushing into Spain, and allow governments to open the gates as much or as little as they see fit. A socialist executive might decide it wanted to let more people in, a conservative cabinet that it wanted to restrict inflows, or be more selective.
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