“Perdido en el corazon de la grande Babylon” says Manu Chao. His album Clandestino was released in 1998, the year I moved to Spain. I went there with a return ticket and very little money to try my luck. It was a time when immigration to Spain was just starting and the administration did not yet cope with it well. People from Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe suddenly started appearing in the streets of bigger towns. Most of them came from poverty, looking for a better future.
Spanish administration could not cope with it efficiently. The slow bureaucratic system enabled a lot of Clandestinos.When I finally received my first residence permit and went to pick it up, it had already expired. While I was waiting to get “legalised” (such and awful word, as if human existence can be legal or illegal) I already had a job and paid taxes, spent the earned money and paid more taxes, yet I was technically “illegal”. During that time one fact became painfully obvious: governments and political parties will use emigration as a tool to justify just about anything. It is enough that there is a bit of immigration in a country for it to become socially and politically significant card to play. There is always “us” and “them”.
What we often forget is that it is precisely through migration that the world as we know it today was created – if the old tribes and nations did not move around this planet, the world would be a completely different place now. The newcomers were always greeted with animosity and very often violence. Even though we are much more advanced technologically, the territorial animal inside each of us is still that same one, both when we are the natives and the immigrants. The other person loses their human dimension the moment they step on the soil that we consider “ours”, even though this planet is not property of human beings or any other species for that matter. This one goes out to all of the clandestinos.
Jobstealer 