Aznar dares critics: 'Offer yourselves to do migrants' jobs'

Aznar dares his critics to scrub the floors he once left to others

A former prime minister who, according to the comparison repeated in the debate, came to power with around 3,000 immigrants in Spain and left with nearly two million has fired off a remark that has set the discussion alight: those calling for migrants to be expelled should volunteer to fill their jobs. The response was swift. And it was anything but lukewarm. The debate, open for months, has turned into a reckoning with the migration policy of the Popular Party (PP) governments, with the 2000 reform of Spain's immigration law as the centrepiece of the accusation.

The former prime minister's argument, laid out in a public appearance, starts from an uncomfortable premise: there are sectors —construction, hospitality, care work— where no native-born labour appears willing to accept the conditions on offer. Hence his challenge. The fine print, however, is what has inflamed tempers: in the same speech he speaks of the impossibility of expelling all migrants because of the lack of a labour replacement, distinguishes between legal and irregular migration, and argues that the demographic crisis cannot be fixed by importing population. A lukewarm take, some conclude.

From 3,000 to two million: the legacy nobody claims

The most repeated figure in the conversation is not an opinion: it is a stock comparison. According to the formulation circulating, when the PP came to power there were around 3,000 registered migrants; when it left, nearly two million. On that figure rests the thesis that the first great mass regularisation was not socialist but conservative. The reform of the immigration law passed in 2000 allowed proof of roots in Spain with little more than a bus ticket, according to the version doing the rounds. Under that framework, the Spanish economy absorbed intensive labour throughout the construction boom.

The accusation levelled from various quarters is labour dumping. It is argued that the mass arrival of foreign workers in precarious situations pushed down wages in the least skilled sectors and discouraged improvements to collective agreements. Before that wave, they argue, there were Spanish waiters pushing unions to raise conditions. Afterwards, employers found a more docile reserve army. The consequence, in this reading, is not that Spaniards don't want to work: it's that the wage on offer doesn't allow a living.

Why don't wages rise if workers are scarce?

The most common objection to the former prime minister's speech is textbook: if labour is really scarce, the market should respond with higher wages. That it doesn't, for this camp, reveals that the problem is not a shortage of hands but the existence of a contingent willing to accept less. Raising the minimum wage hasn't been enough, the argument goes, because the worker with a paid-off house prefers a small pension plus cash-in-hand jobs to breaking his back, and the young hold out a few months waiting for something better. The result is a low-wage equilibrium sustained by migratory turnover.

On the other side, the defence of the system points to the productive structure. Spain was never a leader in patents, R&D or technology, and productivity has been stagnant for years. Mass deportation would not change that picture: care, farm and construction jobs would remain vacant because the problem is the model, not nationality. The alternative proposed from this side is different: a public stock of rental housing and a basic income that would reorder the labour market.

The mirror of Spanish emigration

The conversation takes a historical turn when compared with Spain's own diaspora. According to the figures cited in the thread, between 1960 and 1975 around 3.5 million Spaniards left for Germany, France and Switzerland fleeing poverty, and an estimated half did so irregularly, bypassing the Spanish Institute of Emigration. In 1960 illiteracy among those over 25 stood at around 15% nationwide, but exceeded 25% in Andalusia, Galicia, Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha, the regions most people left from. In Jaén, one in three women over 15 could not read or write.

Those emigrants were met with contemptuous labels in Switzerland and Germany, and doors were closed to them over the colour of their skin or for not speaking the language, according to the testimonies quoted. The comparison is used as a mirror: those today demanding the door be closed descend from those who knocked on someone else's. The counter-response comes quickly: legal emigration with a contract is one thing, irregular border crossing another. The debate over what share of that exodus was regular remains open, and the illiteracy figures are disputed between 11% and 15% depending on the source and age group.

The fiscal cost and the fine print of the system

The economic flank of the debate centres on net contribution to the public purse. The question is how many migrants consume services without ever having paid in, and the answer offered from the other side distinguishes between irregular and legal migrants, between those who have contributed for years and those who have just arrived. The figure of 100,000 abortions a year for three decades appears in the conversation as the demographic explanation for the labour gap: fewer births of one's own, more imported workers. It is an argument that mixes natalist policy with migration policy and that nobody here has quantified rigorously.

What does emerge clearly is consensus on selectivity. Almost nobody defends expelling those who pay into the system. The friction point lies with the irregulars, the repeat offenders and those who never enter the formal labour market. The proposal gaining ground is selective, not mass, expulsion, with the warning that without incivil record checks the system loses legitimacy.

The uncomfortable legacy: from the 11-M attacks to the bubble

The conversation doesn't stop at migration. It drifts towards the economic record of the conservative years: joining the euro in 2002, the sale of strategic companies, the land law that made construction the cornerstone of growth, and the absence of a public rental housing stock that might have cushioned the price surge. The handling of the 11-M Madrid train bombings is also mentioned, along with the decision not to postpone a general election amid a state of terrorist alert.

The result is a portrait in silhouette: a leader who today warns against multiculturalism and irregular immigration, but who, according to his critics, peine the door, tolerated dumping and pursued no natalist policy. The best defence is that the context was different and the economy needed hands. With the numbers on the table, the demographic balance of those years is what it is. And the question left hanging —who scrubs, who cares, who lays the bricks— still has no cheap answer.

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