In this seminar we had the chance to listen to a member of the Spanish Comission for the Refugee Relief (CEAR). He raised the main topics concerning the work of CEAR and the main challenges this NGO faces nowadays.
Immigration is nowadays a key topic in European politics. It is a fact that the Western world needs migrants in order to keep the social states usually present here. It is also a fact that there is an estimation for immigration to decrease in Europe, due to certain European policies and the financial crisis. This might originate new problems to the necessary workforce in order to keep growing and providing the social state to European citizens. Some strategies pursuited by the European Union’s are return policies and severe border controls. These methods aim at disencouraging further refugee streams and also at selecting between wanted migrants and unwanted refugees. We have examples in Holland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Italy, where immigrants and refugees are being demonized and proposals to expell them are done.
A refugee is however understoos as someone owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of aparticular http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifsocial group or political opinion is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country. Therefore, a refugee is even more a forced migrant (if possible).
Salva Lacruz illustrated that Spain also has huge problems with our refugees. First of all, people are hold there, without any legal advise or support. Furthermore, violence, beatings, torture and the violation against the right of freedom were observed by NGO's like Amnesty International.
