Or is it already too late?
How many times in recent years have we heard that Europe is so far ahead of us, so multicultural, so sophisticated, so you know—advanced! Even Barack Hussein Obama while running for President made his pilgrimage to the great region of diversity and enlightenment sending a message back home that we knuckle-draggers needed to follow Europe’s lead.
Now, besides Judy’s news this morning that immigrants in France will be DNA tested we have news from Spain which I found appalling, shocking, depresssing. Will we follow Europe’s lead now?
From the Wall Street Journal a couple of days ago, as the economy crumbles, Spaniards are now doing the work immigrants used to do:
MANCHA REAL, Spain — Spain’s unemployment rate rose to 13.9% in December — an eight-year record and by far the highest rate in the European Union. In this southern village, that means olive grower José Morillo is hiring locals and turning away foreigners who worked for him during the country’s economic boom.
Half of Mr. Morillo’s pickers used to be immigrants, as Spaniards shunned the low-paying work. This year, all but one of his 11 workers is Spanish — and the nearby town is teeming with unemployed immigrants who sleep outdoors or in church shelters.
It is so bad the Spanish government is paying immigrants to leave!
Government efforts to free up more jobs for Spaniards are having a limited effect. Billboard-size ads in subway stations and on city buses pitch payments for legal immigrants who go home: If they agree to leave Spain for at least three years, the government will pay the unemployment benefit they’re entitled to in a lump sum — 40% on leaving and 60% on arrival back home.
The average payment runs about $14,000. In the program’s first two months last year, just 1,400 immigrants took up the offer.
Spain got in the same problem we did—easy credit fueling over-zealous construction.
A building frenzy helped Spain generate more jobs than any other country in the euro zone this decade. More than five million immigrants arrived, and the registered population, which had been stable till 2000, jumped 15% by 2008.
Last year, the cheap credit that fueled Spain’s boom dried up. The economy likely entered recession in the second half of 2008, and the European Commission expects it to shrink 2% this year. Data out Friday show the number of Spanish out-of-work job seekers rose by 609,100 in the fourth quarter, bringing the total number to 3.2 million. The unemployment rate was nearly twice the euro zone’s November average of 7.8%
Thank God for the defeat of the Kennedy-McCain Amnesty bill in 2007! Thank God for knuckle-draggers, rednecks and assorted bitter clingers! Spain granted its illegal aliens amnesty and now they are sleeping on the streets!
During Spain’s flush times, immigrants were welcome to come and work. In 2005, the government granted amnesty to more than half a million people living in Spain illegally. Today, they are seen as a growing social problem.
I wonder if the Wall Street Journal editorial staff, that had pushed Amnesty here in the US, took note of this message from Spain.
As time goes on, I think we too will see that there are many jobs Americans are happy to do, just as advanced Spain (Europe!) has belatedly discovered.