An Immigration Experiment Worth Watching in Spain

NY Times ^ | March 20, 2005 | DAVID C. UNGER

[Pelham]

Great. Let's send Spain the several millions of illegal aliens now living here.

[Travis McGee]

Eureka! Great idea! They won't be illegal aliens any more if you give them mass amnesty and make them all legal!

Wait until Presidente Arbusto hears about this!

[spyone]

I stopped reading on the third line when it said "a more enlightened system"...propaganda.

[Ken522]

Didn't France try something like this? Open the border to those folks living in North Africa ... help me out here, what am I missing?

[bahblahbah]

Hah, thats exactly when I stopped. I immediately scrolled down to see what others had to say about this crap.

[Once-Ler]

This sounds like a logical approach to the problem. It will be interesting to see how well it works.

[Poser]

Me too. When I saw the words "enlightened system" I looked at the source (NY Times) and stopped reading.

[spokeshave]

"Great. Let's send Spain the several millions of illegal aliens now living here."

Even more great.....they mostly speak Spanish..

Also its a lot further to swim back again.

As an "incentive" the INS should buy a couple of AirBus A380's.....could get 5 or 6 hundred on each run.

[thoughtomator]

More of the "work Americans Spaniards won't do" BS, gimme a break. You'll find plenty of people willing to do those jobs if not for the flood of illegals dropping the bottom out of the labor market.

[neverdem]

Why am I not surprised that you're in favor of it?

[henderson field]

The Spanish economy and culture is similar to that of the United States in what specific way?

[RichInOC]

At least for the Latin American ones...why not? I mean, the Latin American countries are successors to the Spanish Empire. It's the least we can do for our buddy Jose.

[null and void]

Consuelo Rumi, the government's state secretary for immigration.

Poor woman. No legs...

[WilliamofCarmichael]

foreigners who do not qualify for legal residence are swiftly returned to their home countries

Boy! that is different. Who ever heard of such a thing?

After this amnesty expires in May, workers who fail to qualify will be deported, while those who employ them will face fines of more than $80,000 per illegal employee.

Can they do that?!

Just a little sarcasm. You can bet that there are no language options -- it's Castilian Spanish or else.

So we still remain more "enlightened." Here it's up to us to translate into a zazillion languages even for those who are "forced" to remain outside the law. Ain't we sooooooooo sophisticated?

[ClaireSolt]

I wonder which brilliant pol first came up with this line? Sounds familiar.

Although Spain's overall unemployment rate hovers above 10 percent, the economy is desperately short of people willing to do some of the manual jobs Spaniards shun, for example in construction and agriculture

[skip_intro]

The year-old Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero...

By all means, let's follow the path of Spain's Socialist government.

No wonder the NYTimes is in favor of it.

Maybe we should follow Spain's example in how to respond to domestic terrorism, as well.

[twas]

Socialist governments are always so much more enlightened than our xenophobic populace.