From the Guissona model, where the foreign-born population, 53% of the total, has grown at the pace of the expansion of this town in La Segarra, to that of Badalona, whose mayor, Xavier García Albiol, demands a “more orderly” immigration ”, a welcome with nuances. Along with the popular councilor, his counterparts from Guissona, Jaume Ars (Junts); Badia del Vallès, Eva Menor (PSC), and Manresa, Marc Aloy (ERC), participated yesterday in the debate Immigration in advanced countries: problem or solution? , organized by the Cercle d'Economia.
“Do welcome-all policies serve us? I don't think so," said Garcia Albiol. “There are left-wing parties that tell everyone that we must welcome them and we have to be here with open arms,” but “if we are a country of solidarity, I ask that we be coherent and that we give them roles, if we let them all in, let it be with all the consequences, that they can work and contribute, otherwise it is a speech of hypocrisy,” he added. The statement that the situation of irregularity could end up leading them “to begging, collecting scrap metal or being the perpetrators of crimes” deserved Eva Menor's rejection.
The mayor of Badia del Vallès defended that people arriving from other countries “are an opportunity” because “diversity creates value. “Closing the doors to immigration has a cost that we cannot afford, immigration brings wealth,” she said.
From different positions there was agreement on the need to provide city councils with more resources to promote better integration, and Marc Aloy reiterated the inconsistencies of the Immigration Law. “We need labor even though we come up against legislation that prevents regularization,” he lamented. "But since we are very guaranteeers - he added - we give them education and health, this is a contradiction."
The debate has coincided with the presentation this week of the UAB study La Catalunya de los 8 million, which concludes that “three out of every four Catalans are a direct or indirect product of immigration.” The research highlights that "all migration in the 21st century has contributed 1.5 million people compared to just over 200,000 in natural growth" and that, "without this extraordinary weight of migration, it would not be understood." the demographic evolution of the country, but neither the economic, social or cultural evolution.
Compared to the 5.7% of citizens arriving from other countries registered in Badia del Vallès; 15.7% from Badalona and 19% from Manresa, Guissona, with 53%, tells a positive story. The great expansion of BonÀrea in recent decades would not have been possible without the arrival of labor from other countries. “In the 90s of the last century, contracts were already made originally, in Romania, Ukraine and Senegal,” explains the mayor of Guissona, Jaume Ars. “For us, immigration is an opportunity, it also makes our population young,” he explained to the attendees, among whom were Jordi Pujol and his son Oriol.
García Albiol insisted on the duties of this group: “We have a problem adapting to Catalan society”, while Ars clarified that the great challenge is “co-responsibility” and Aloy the management of arrivals.
