Cast upon the shores

By DAVID ADAMS

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 23, 2000

MURCIA, Spain -- Lured by its sunny beaches and vacation villas, foreigners have long been welcomed on Spain's south coast.

Much like South Florida, the Costa del Sol, as it is known, is a teeming mass of tourists during the holiday season.

And also much like South Florida, in recent years a new type of foreigner has been landing on the shores here.

From only a few miles away across the Mediterranean have come tens of thousands of African farm workers, lured by jobs in southern Spain's newly prosperous agricultural sector.

While their labor is badly needed in the picking fields -- few Spaniards will accept such work -- theirs is an uncertain welcome.

The large number of new immigrants has, for the first time, raised the ugly specter in Spain of racial resentment and xenophobia.

"It's a very new situation for the Spanish people," said Juan Diez Nicolas, president of the Forum for the Integration of Immigrants, a consultative body that reports to the Spanish government. "We are just beginning to realize it's a problem, and we don't really know how to deal with it."

Uncontrolled immigration also poses a global dilemma for the rich nations of Europe. While the 15-member European Union seeks greater political and economic integration, how willing is it to open its borders to the poor millions massed to its south?

Some countries -- Spain, Britain and Italy -- increasingly need skilled workers from abroad to fill job vacancies and boost their economies. But increasingly, like the Florida Strait or the United States' border with Mexico, the Spanish coastline has become a front line in Europe's defenses against illegal immigration.

Some arrive with work papers to fill seasonal jobs picking lettuce and peppers in hothouses. But many more come illegally, some paying up to $3,000 to be smuggled aboard small, unseaworthy fishing vessels, which cross the Strait of Gibraltar dodging Spanish police boats.

There are few places in the world where rich and poor live so close, yet so far apart.

Less than 9 miles across at its narrowest point between the coasts of Morocco and Spain, a craft can make the trip under cover of darkness in two hours. Spanish newspapers daily carry articles about smuggling boats, known as "pateras," intercepted at sea.

Already this year police have arrested more than 2,000 boat people aboard some 150 pateras. Human-rights groups estimate as many as 100 have drowned in the overloaded boats. Ship captains describe the strait, where the warm Mediterranean meets the Atlantic, as one of the most treacherous sea passages.

Most come from Morocco, others from Algeria, Nigeria and war-torn Sierra Leone. Spanish police estimate 50,000 illegal immigrants enter the country each year. Last year 17,000 were expelled, mostly North Africans.

In absolute numbers this may not compare to alien arrivals in the United States, but taken as a proportion of the population it comes much closer. Across the 15 countries of the European Union, police estimate that 500,000 people enter illegally each year, compared with the 300,000 who violate U.S. borders.

In Spain the numbers appear to be rising all the time. In the space of only four days last week, police detained 353 people aboard a dozen pateras along the southwest coast.

Police blame many of the arrivals on the emergence of smuggling operations that do a multimillion-dollar business in trafficking people across the strait. Spanish newspapers report daily on police raids on homes where Africans are held hostage by smugglers until a ransom is paid by their families.

Last month, 37 Africans were discovered packed into a truck on a highway from Malaga to the fields of Murcia. They had not eaten for four days and had little water. Several carried false working papers for which they had paid up to $1,000.

After 58 Asians were found a day earlier suffocated in a truck arriving at the British port of Dover, European ministers called for new measures to tackle the smugglers.

As the main gateway into Europe, much of the burden inevitably falls on Spain. Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar is considering a $120-million plan to construct an "electronic wall" across the Strait of Gibraltar, armed with radar towers, infrared lights and sophisticated cameras.

Others argue such an effort is a waste of money. "Hunger has no frontiers," said Maria Teresa Camacho, director of a Roman Catholic relief center in Murcia, a major magnet for migrants who come to work in the fields nearby. "It's impossible to stop these people from coming."

The center is besieged by immigrants from Africa and, increasingly, from eastern Europe, mostly looking for work and legal advice. Others come for a bowl of food and a place to sleep.

A hole in the door to Camacho's office, where angry immigrants tried to kick their way in, testifies to the growing desperation.

"We have to do something to normalize those who are here because they are not going to leave," she said. "Europe is getting older. For us to survive, we need immigrants, but we have to recognize that they are also human beings with rights."

While Spain is enjoying a new status as one of the most dynamic economies in the European Union, its transformation involves some difficult adjustments.

Rapid economic growth, coupled with one of the world's lowest birth rates, has fueled the demand for cheap, unskilled labor from abroad.

Without large-scale immigration (or a radical change in the birthrate of 1.2 children per woman), Spain will in the future be unable to sustain its taxpayer-funded social security and pension systems. According to United Nations data, by 2050, people older than 65 will account for 37 percent of the Spanish population, up from 17 percent today.

But this is a reality hard for many Spaniards to swallow.

"Spain is searching for a new identity and future," said Mustapha El Mrabet, spokesman for the Association of Moroccan Workers and Immigrants in Spain. "The standard of living in Spain has risen dramatically because of all the immigrants working the soil. They have to accept that there's another culture, another society in their midst. Without the immigrants, Spain's economy is finished."

Spain boasts a history of cultural integration, including a period of 700 years of Islamic rule by the Moors. Many towns and cities in the south that today bear the brunt of Moroccan immigration still carry Arab names, or traces of Moorish architecture. The Catholic relief center in Murcia sits next to the cathedral, built on the site of a former mosque.

But Arab rule ended with the Reconquista (reconquest) by the Christian kings of Spain in 1492, the same year that Colombus set sail for the New World.

Today Spain is a homegrown society. Only 1.8 percent of its 40-million inhabitants is foreign born. The average in the rest of Europe is around 5 percent.

For most of this century, Spain exported its citizens because of civil war and economic stagnation. Only recently did the number of immigrants exceed those leaving the country. Even today, Spain has more than three times as many Spaniards living overseas as resident foreigners, although that is changing fast.

Large-scale immigration has already led to racial flare-ups in some areas.

Last February, southern Spain was rocked by anti-immigrant violence in the town of El Ejido, just down the coast from the popular resort of Malaga.

For three consecutive days mobs of local residents wielding sticks and shouting racist abuse chased Moroccan and other African immigrants though the streets. Some threw molotov cocktails, setting fire to immigrant homes and stores. More than 50 Africans were hospitalized.

The violence was widely condemned across Spain, and it was seen as an isolated incident.

But immigrant groups and human-rights advocates warn that southern Spain is a tinderbox of racial tensions. They compare the region to other parts of Europe where the influx of cheap immigrant labor has given rise to widespread xenophobia.

Anti-immigrant feelings in Spain have yet to coalesce in a political movement, as has happened in France and Austria. But signs are appearing.

"It's not that Spain is a racist country," said El Mrabet. "But it will be if the necessary steps aren't taken. All it needs is for a charismatic political figure to appear and you have a Le Pen or a Haidar," referring to ultra-right leaders in France and Austria.

The incidents of racial violence are becoming more frequent. A year ago the Cananglada neighborhood of Barcelona erupted in violent protests against a group of Moroccans who had settled there. During three nights of demonstrations, immigrants were beaten and their houses attacked and burned.

Last week a Moroccan was beaten to death with a baseball bat by two 18-year-olds in Barcelona. After their arrest, they greeted onlookers with a fascist salute.

"We are not a xenophobic society," said Diez Nicolas, the government consultant. "The number of cases (of attacks on immigrants) is so small that we all remember the few cases there have been."

Even so, Diez Nicolas warns urgent government action is needed to nip any racist sentiment in the bud.

"If we allow the situation to get out of control there's no doubt that would create xenophobic attitudes in a very short time."

Government policy has been ambiguous at best.

Last year,Spain's National Assembly passed a generous but controversial law granting broad rights to immigrants, including easing conditions for those already in the country to obtain work permits. But the government has since backtracked. It has announced plans to introduce a new law later this year curtailing some immigrant rights.

Under current law, undocumented immigrants have until the end of this month to register for work permits. To earn the right to stay, they must prove they have been living and working in Spain for the past year.

Thousands have already registered. But for many who work illegally, proving their existence is hard to do, with employers paying wages under the table to raise profits and avoid social security dues.

Eight years after coming to Spain from Morocco, all 63-year-old Jelloul Bennouna has to show for his immigrant's dream is a wood-frame shack covered with plastic sheeting.

"I came looking for work, a better life, and this is the reality I found," he said, surveying a cluster of seven fly-infested dwellings by a rubbish dump on the outskirts of El Mirador, an area of intense farming under plastic-covered hothouses.

Bennouna said he and a group of 40 young men had been living by the dump, without electricity or running water, for three years. Despite holding a work permit, Bennouna can't find employment. Standing next to a plastic shack bearing the Arabic words "Allah o akbar" (God is Great), he complained jobs are scarce for Moroccans.

"The businesses here want illegal Ecuadorans. They work for less," he said.

Local businessmen confirmed a preference for hiring Spanish-speaking Ecuadorans. Moroccans -- especially young men -- had a reputation for being unreliable and irresponsible, they said.

"The Ecuadorans integrate better," said Brigido Caravaca, 32, a labor contractor for a major agricultural business exporting vegetables to northern Europe. "The Moroccans get drunk and create problems with (Spanish) girls."

On integration, Caravaca spoke from personal experience. His girlfriend, Mirna Mieles, 30, left her family in Ecuador to come to Spain 18 months ago.

"At first it was very hard," said Mieles, describing the exhausting eight-hour days picking peppers under the hot plastic sheeting. "I had fevers and lost weight. I had no energy. I was like a robot programmed for work."

She has since moved indoors to a packing plant, earning 5,000 pesetas ($30) a day.

For those like Mieles who are able to obtain work permits, it is a dream come true. In many respects the Spanish immigrant dream makes the American dream pale by comparison. Legal immigrants enjoy the same benefits of free health and educational services as the rest of Spain.

But Spain also is a victim of its own recent success. Economic growth and new jobs, coupled with softer immigration laws, have turned Spain into a new mecca for migrants. But as with all immigration waves, there are never enough jobs, opportunities and services to keep up with the flow.

At the relief center in Murcia, volunteers warn new arrivals not to get their hopes up. When one undocumented woman from Ukraine explains that she has already sent word to her husband and infant child to smuggle their way to Spain, she receives a stern reality check from the center's director.

Camacho warns: "Tell her they are going to have a rough time."

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