According to the demographic requirements of the CIS, immigration is the main problem for Spaniards. If we expand the focus to the European category, the European Council on Foreign Relations revealed in February that the climate and migration crises would mark the main political positions at the national and transnational level. Months later, the European campaign and its results validated this forecast. Without ignoring the social impact and the political-electoral consequences of the climate crisis, the situation leads me to prioritize today some reflections on the migration crisis.
The first of them involves accepting the complexity of the phenomenon, which, because it is multifaceted, does not admit absolute truths. The debate and, above all, the solutions must be captured in a wide color palette. Neither betting on white, nor betting on black, will we find the measures required for a reality that is both a hope and a problem. We are facing a highly sensitive matter, which depending on how it is treated can stigmatize our societies. If Manichaeism is never acceptable, it is even less so in the face of a fact so prone to flammable demagoguery.
Consequently, politically the controversy can only be addressed through consensus. It is enough to see how in the immigration debate the classic left-right axis appears blurred, if not replaced. Thus, we see how mass deportation attempts are proposed both from the left (Denmark or Germany) and from the right (Italy). Meloni’s own model simultaneously provokes the attention of the British Labor Party and that of the Spanish Popular Party.
On the other hand, to approach the hope-problem binomial, it is worth remembering an unquestionable context. As a result of irresponsible European negligence in demographic and family policies, the rejuvenation of Africa coincides with the aging of Europe. While the Old Continent is progressively losing inhabitants, a quarter of the world’s population will be African in 2050 (one in three young people between 15 and 29 years old and 10 of the youngest countries will be African).
Europe needs labor to attend to certain occupations (which we natives do not seem willing to practice) and to guarantee the balance between workers and retirees that ensure the sustainability of the pension system. And the African demographic dividend, as the IMF points out, would require, and this will not be the case, the generation of 18 million high-productivity jobs per year.
As a result of European negligence, the rejuvenation of Africa coincides with the aging of Europe
I particularly point out the immigrant population from the south of our borders for three different reasons: The first, because I am aware that the maritime routes of irregular access to Spain have become the fastest growing in the entire EU. The second, because this irregular immigration is the most used as a political weapon of confrontation. And the third, because a good part of African immigration is the one that can cause the greatest risks of integration and intercultural coexistence, especially due to religious factors that condition the framework of respect for human rights in general, and the respect and equality of women. , in particular.
If we are not able to find the appropriate response to this crisis, and do so at the European level, hope will fade and the problem will emerge as an unsolvable condition for our future. Our inability will be (already is) fodder for populism. Immigration has fueled the far right in the European elections. He did it before in Italy, Holland and various Nordic countries. He has done it in France, in the regional elections in Germany and in the general elections in Austria. And it can spread like lava from an erupting volcano.
This is the Europe that is coming to us. At the presentation of his latest novel The chess boy, Màrius Carol recalled that “every three generations there is a country that commits suicide because it has forgotten what happened to it.” In Europe, the war generation experienced atrocities. Such horror was explained to those of us who came later. The third generation cannot forget or ignore it at the risk of succumbing.
Source: www.lavanguardia.com
