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Spain fears downturn will radicalise ghettos

Like hundreds of thousands of east Europeans, Vassili Zen, a Ukrainian telecoms engineer, moved to Spain a few years ago to work in the booming construction sector.

Mr Zen cuts slate to build weekend homes in the mountains north of Madrid. It is back-breaking work but he does not complain. He earns about €1,000 ($1,480, £750) a month – much more than he was paid back home fixing telephones – and significantly more when he works weekends. Mr Zen says he has not taken a holiday for five years.

The global credit squeeze, however, has slowed construction activity in Spain and Mr Zen fears for his job. Figures out this week show unemployment nearing 2m for the first time since 2005. The construction industry shed 40,000 jobs in the last quarter of 2007, with immigrants suffering the brunt.

The unemployment rate for foreigners, at 12.4 per cent, is much higher than for Spaniards, at 8 per cent. Of the more than 400,000 foreigners looking for work in Spain, most are unskilled and uneducated, limiting their employment prospects. Academics and social workers say this is a time bomb.

With 4.5m foreigners living in Spain (10 per cent of the population, a higher percentage than in France, the UK or Germany), policymakers are concerned about the growth of immigrant ghettos that might become breeding grounds for radical Islamists and Latin American criminal gangs.

Ten days ago, police detained 12 Pakistanis and two Indians allegedly planning suicide attacks in Barcelona under orders from al-Qaeda. The arrests, just six weeks ahead of a general election, rekindled memories of the 2004 Madrid train bombings, perpetrated by north African terrorists just three days before the last national vote.

“Unemployment will rise significantly over the next few months, and I am worried about the growth of immigrant ghettos,” says José Ramón Pin, a sociologist and employment expert at Barcelona’s IESE business school. “The government ... should consider paying the repatriation costs of Africans and Latin Americans if they agree not to move back to Spain for a given period. Unemployment benefit could be wired to their home countries.”

Eastern Europeans such as Mr Zen were supposed to be the first to leave in an economic downturn. Instead more are arriving, as immigration laws allow foreigners to “import” their families one year after obtaining a residence permit.

Romanians, in particular, are expected to flood into Spain this year if Italy carries out its threat to expel Roma gypsies. Spain already harbours Europe’s largest Romanian community outside Romania, with 530,000 registered residents.

Over the past four years, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s socialist government has taken a laissez-faire attitude to immigration – with an amnesty for illegal immigrants and the assumption that foreigners would leave when jobs became scarce.

Mr Pin, like many other academics, believes most foreigners will not leave. “The difference in living standards is too great, and the social benefits in Spain – universal healthcare and education – simply don’t exist in north Africa or Latin America,” he says.

Mr Pin expects the government to step up its public works programme to absorb those who are laid off from building sites. “But the government also needs to redouble its efforts to stop the flow of illegal immigrants,” he says.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a62bfc8c-d11d-11dc-953a-0000779fd2ac.html