For 35-year-old Nasar El Amuom, returning to his homeland, Morocco, is never a consideration.
At the greengrocery in Madrid that he tends as if it were his, he selects oranges, slaps melons and recommends juicy peaches to his clients. Their average age is 70, but he calls them "señoritas." A total success as a marketing campaign: the place is packed.
Nasar is one of 540,000 Moroccans who migrated to Spain in search of a better life.
"Our family came here because my father went to Barcelona to work on a flower farm. He brought our family members here one by one. I was the last to arrive in 1991. I had no schooling and couldn't read or write in Spanish. But I learned, I studied, I worked as a waiter in different places and now I am a greengrocer," he said with a smile and an eye on his growing line of customers.
His family is an example of the "pull effect" - something unmentioned by politicians and in law.
This is what happens when one has relatives or friends who have settled in the receiving country, explained David Reher, a professor of political sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid, and the director of a major survey conducted from late 2006 to early 2007 in a joint effort between the Complutense and the National Statistics Institute (INE).
"This is how it's always been; it's like taking a blind leap, but with a net," he explained.
Spain, where one out of every 10 residents is a foreigner, is no exception.
More than any regulation or law, these contacts are the main factor that convinces people to emigrate. In the most recent group to arrive (between 2002 and 2007), 83 percent knew someone here before they came.
This "limits their vulnerability," according to the authors of the National Immigration Survey (2007). Of all those interviewed – a broad spectrum of 15,000 people – 81 percent plans to bring their family to Spain. For women or couples forced to leave their children in their countries of origin – 25 percent of descendants – this is a priority.
This is how María and Sileni Tabarez got here. Their mother came from Dominican Republic to Spain in the 1990s, determined to get her four children off an island where they had practically no opportunities.
The plan was simple: her daughters would attend beauty school, and as soon as she had scraped enough money together, she'd set up a salon for them in Spain. And then something for her two boys when they grew older.
"That's how we came here as young women, in 1997. We finished school and my mother helped us set up a beauty salon and call centre. As for my brothers, one works at Barajas Airport in packaging services, and the other is currently unemployed," said Sileni.
A point of no return
Returning is not on the cards for any of them at this point, no matter how much they miss "bachata and the more relaxed pace".
One reason why many rule out the option of returning is that they have severed ties with their homeland.
Of those who came in the most recent wave, over 95 percent maintains ties with the country they left, but only 45 percent sends money or goods. These ties become weaker over time – of those who came before 1987, only 60 percent maintains ties and five percent sends money.
In her opinion, in light of previous migratory phenomena, political initiatives to encourage their return during a time of crisis won't work.
A group of 64 sub-Saharan immigrants stand in line after their arrival at La Tejita beach on the Spanish Canary island of Tenerife on 29 March 2009.
"You can't expect people to return en masse during a crisis in exchange for money. Immigrants will go when they've finished their professional phase or their projects here, and that will also benefit their countries of origin, because it's not just about sending money. Developed countries have a duty to promote growth through aid to create companies or micro-credits in developing nations."
About 80 percent of all immigrants in Spain come from around 20 countries, mainly Morocco, Romania, Ecuador, Colombia and the United Kingdom.
Those who arrived before 1986 include the majority of immigrants from developed countries (36.7 percent). The other four groups into which the researchers have divided up the population, according to their origin, are Andean countries (Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Colombia), the remaining Latin American countries, Africans, and others (Eastern Europeans and Asians).
Breaking down stereotypes
The INE study has a declared objective, admitted Reher: "To break down stereotypes".
"Politicians talk about immigrants all the time, but they have very little information about them," he said.
Stereotype 1: Not all immigrants are unskilled
About 75 percent of Spanish residents born abroad were employed before they chose to change countries.
"These are not lazy, unemployed people or petty criminals, because those groups couldn't afford the trip," said Reher. The remaining 25 percent is likely to be "children who couldn't have worked before coming because they were minors."
Supporting this theory, only 19 percent said they accrued debt to pay for their trip to Spain.
Spanish Labour and Immigration Minister Celestino Corbacho attends the inauguration of newly appointed Spanish New Second deputy prime minister and Economy and Finance Minister Elena Salgado (not pictured) on 8 April 2009 in Madrid.
This was the case for Edgar Mikionis’ family who was forced to emigrate because of the unstable situation in their native Lithuania; they had lost their jobs overnight.
"First my parents came, followed by my older brother. Then, in 2001, when I was 14, they sent for me. I didn't imagine that for the first few months, we'd sleep in the car because no one would rent us an apartment without a guarantor."
Through hard work, however, the family situation improved. Today Edgar, 23, installs fibre optics, his father drives a truck and his mother cares for the elderly.
Stereotype 2: All immigrants are starving, unclothed and come on rafts
Another cliché that the study debunks is that all immigrants come on rafts, starving and unclothed.
"In spite of the disproportionate media coverage, statistically the number of those who come in rickety boats is practically insignificant, less than one percent," said researchers. Most come by plane, the rest by road.
Sociologist Walter Actis agreed with this analysis: "The message the media is sending out is sensationalist: we're being invaded by hundreds of thousands of rafts! It's not true. And they only report on conflicts, which involve people who live in miserable conditions and have inferior jobs. Why aren't the immigrants who come with good training and qualifications news? Because it's easier to portray them as raggedy, starving individuals who steal our jobs."
Actis also criticised the government for "sending messages that suggest that 'foreigners should go home' now that we're in a crisis."
Stereotype 3: All immigrants are uneducated
To expose another stereotype, the education level of immigrants is very similar to that of the Spanish population.
Nearly 60 percent have completed secondary school, and 20 percent have a higher degree. Reher admitted that these data are somewhat distorted by the weight of immigrants from developed countries. However he stresses that the proportion of non-Andean Latin Americans , especially Argentineans, is higher than the Spanish average. Even in the group with the lowest education level, Africans, 75 percent have finished primary school.
Sánchez Alonso said Spanish bureaucracy prevents the country from making the most of foreign labour.
Moroccan seasonal workers pose in temporary housing at the strawberry farm Agromartin in Lepe, shouthern Spain on 7 March 2009
"This survey has shown that one of the problems of employing the tremendous human capital of immigrants is precisely the lack of administrative agility to recognise degrees. Just because they hold unskilled jobs doesn't mean they have no skills."
There could, however, be a positive side to this inequilibrium. For Reher, the fact that half of all immigrants are overqualified for the jobs they hold - "people with university degrees are remodelling houses" - is, short-term, beneficial for their integration.
"In Spain, there is clearly a negative sentiment toward immigrants, but it's not as bad as it could be, because they're competing for the lowest-level jobs."
Not all foreigners are in this situation, as seen in the study which compared foreigners’ first job in Spain with their current jobs.
About 40 percent started off with a low-level, non-manual position went down by 37 percent while 22 percent who started out with a job that required no training went down by nearly half to 13 percent. Over 25 percent are "supervisors" with other people under their charge, and 11 percent have their own businesses.
El Pais / Beatriz Portinari / Emilio De Benito / Expatica
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They’re skilled and here to stay in Spain. A new study debunks stereotypes regarding foreign workers living in Spain.
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