Posted on 02/17/2009 12:52:13 AM PST by bruinbirdman
Police in Madrid have been set weekly quotas for arresting illegal immigrants and told to hunt for potential detainees outside their own districts if they cannot meet the targets, according to police trade unions.
The draconian measure – and the relatively mild reaction from politicians so far – are signs of growing concern in Spain over high unemployment and the strains placed on public services by large numbers of sin papeles (those without papers) from Africa and Latin America.
Most illegal immigrants have settled in Spain simply by overstaying their visas, but thousands of west Africans have attempted to enter in small boats that aim for the Canary Islands.
Twenty-one would-be migrants, including an eight-year-old girl, died when their craft capsized within earshot of Lanzarote on Sunday evening.
With some 5m legal and illegal foreigners in a total population of 46m, Spain has the highest proportion of immigrant residents among European Union states.
Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, interior minister, admitted on Monday that the police had been given “quantitative targets” to deal with crime but said they worked strictly within the law. He denied reports that immigrants had been detained at the gates of schools where they were picking up their children.
Mr Pérez was reacting to the leak of an internal memo for the police force in the Madrid suburb of Villa de Vallecas, which gave a weekly quota of 35 arrests and said: “If there are not that many, they can be sought outside the district.”
It also gave priority to seizing Moroccans, saying the north Africans could be sent home quickly and cheaply. Alfredo Perdiguero, secretary-general of the Federal Police Union, complained in a radio interview that officers were pressed to produce favourable statistics for police headquarters and were rewarded with days off.
Many migrants came to work as builders, farmworkers and waiters during the years of rapid economic growth. But Spain is now in recession, unemployment has soared to more than 3.3m and immigrants are losing jobs at twice the rate of Spaniards, prompting fears that they will turn to crime.
Milagros Hernández, a United Left party politician, called the quota system “institutionalised racism”.
I wish we were hearing this here! Authorities targeting illegals . Heck , they don’t even check ID’s for boarding aircraft in this country. For fear of profiling , if they see a non-English speaking Hispanic ,they let them thru rather than be accused of profiling .
Talk about boats...we are swamped here in illegals
and they are all pumping our babies as fast as they possibly can .
It could all end with tough TSA profiling .
A novel application of "if you subsidize something you get more of it".
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