“In today's societies, migration is necessary,” claimed former president José María Aznar in an interview with The Confidential published this Monday. The popular one assures that the proposals to “expel all migrants” are typical of a “populist” and distances himself from those who oppose “admitting immigrants who do not conform to a certain racial or cultural stereotype”: “The norms are differentiated based on origin, identity, race, sex. I am not a supporter of that.”
His statements come following a question about a quote from his new book, 'Order and Freedom', in which he assures that “immigration is an issue captured by the populist extreme right” and that there is a “xenophobic discourse” that opposes “admitting immigrants” who do not meet certain racial or cultural characteristics. Aznar does not link this far-right speech with that of the current leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who presented a new immigration plan last week in which he promised to toughen the “welcome” and “rooting” policy. The leader of the PP has anticipated that asylum will be prevented for those who arrive from “safe countries where there is no serious risk of political persecution”, without specifying which countries would be excluded.
For his part, Aznar maintains that immigration is necessary in Spain due to a “demographic catastrophe, for which immigration is not a substitute, it is simply palliative” and “due to work needs”: “Who is going to do the work that is done in your house? Or in the factory, or in the store of the person who says it or in the one next door or in the one beyond. Or to produce the food that you have eaten today. Be it fruit or vegetables.”, he adds.
“We were immigrants too”
“We were also immigrants. All these issues should be the subject of deeper reflections,” laments the former president, who affirms that Spanish politics has “lost civic affection” and “sense of coexistence”: “For this reason, the recovery of a national sense, the recovery of the State as a source that guarantees order, security, defense, justice, rules, is absolutely fundamental. Civic affection does not exist when you dedicate all day to sowing discord. And that is what is being planted very irresponsibly in Spain,” he argues.