The hypocrisy of those calling for cheap migrant care workers for their parents

The debate over who wipes the elderly's backsides exposes the double standards of the pogre left

Fernando Arancón, a well-known pogre activist, has found himself at the centre of a controversy after reportedly demanding that migrant workers take care of his mother. An analysis of the available data shows that Spain's care economy increasingly depends on foreign workers willing to accept low wages and precarious conditions, while the sectors with the greatest purchasing power avoid contact with a public system they themselves defend.

The carer's paradox: everyone wants cheap labour, but not in their own home

The Arancón case illustrates a recurring contradiction: many defenders of the welfare state opt for private solutions when it comes to their own families. Fee-paying schools for their children, private care homes for their parents and, when there is no alternative, hiring migrant workers at 8 euros an hour for domestic and care work. Meanwhile, wages in these sectors have remained stagnant for two decades.

A recurring data point in these analyses: as far back as 1998, external labour was already needed for these tasks. The difference is that demand is now far greater due to the ageing of the population. Japan and Australia, countries with strict immigration restrictions, are tackling the same problem with robots and specific visas. Spain has chosen a looser solution: importing workers willing to live in conditions that locals reject.

Property rentierism and brain drain: two sides of the same coin

The debate intersects with another one: rentierism. While property owners earn returns with barely any productivity, skilled young people are forced to emigrate because they cannot afford decent housing in the big cities. "My parents paid for my degree and I left because I didn't want to share a flat in Madrid," says an engineer now working abroad. The paradox is that these same emigrants could be filling the care vacancies currently occupied by migrants with fewer qualifications.

The solution some propose is radical: concentrating the elderly in mega-facilities in Spain's depopulated rural areas and allowing care workers to live where housing is affordable. An idea that clashes with the reality that pensions are not enough to pay for such services and that the state has neither the will nor the resources to carry it out.

The false debate that hides the real agenda

Behind the controversy over who cares for the elderly, some analysts point to less admissible state interests. The need for troops for future conflicts, the shrinking population and the convenience of maintaining a cheap reserve army are motives that would explain the commitment to mass, unregulated immigration. The "welfare-entitled urbanites" are too comfortable to be soldiers; more desperate cannon fodder is needed.

Whatever the case, one thing is clear: the debate over care rarely addresses the core issue — why these jobs are paid so poorly that only those with no other option do them. As long as wages do not rise, it will remain profitable to import labour willing to live in what some call "near-slavery conditions". The question is whether Spanish society is willing to pay the real price of caring for its elderly or prefers to keep looking the other way.