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Los discursos del miedo,

01 January 2003

Josep Ramoneda. El País Sunday supplement, 5.1.03, p. 9. Examines the political debate surrounding immigration. The most common themes, "swamping", a clash between cultures, vagrancy and the threat to workers, are dismissed as "false" by Ramoneda. Firstly, the percentage of foreigners in Spain (3.2%) is well below the European average (5%) and although the figure has been rising, this is due to increased labour demand. The "swamping" will not stop because immigration will slow down when labour demand also falls, it argues. Secondly, according to the trade union Comisiones Obreras in Catalunya, third-country nationals have a higher employment rate than Spaniards, because they come to work, often without their families. Likewise, migrants do not take workplaces away from Spanish nationals, although their exploitation by employers does affect conditions. The government's discourse is based on demagogy, the whipping up of fear (the opposite of what public authorities should do) and the detachment of crime from social conditions to justify an aggressive "zero tolerance" approach to mirror the Sarkozy, and previously Giuliani, models.