Madrid Mayor: Illegal Immigrants Are ‘Heroes’, Better Workers than the Spanish

Manuela Carmena
Getty
Virginia Hale

With Spain now the main entry point for illegal immigration from Africa, the Mayor of Madrid has hailed the influx as “extraordinarily positive” for Europe, describing newcomers as “heroes who follow their dreams”.

“Europe trembles at the moment, with countries questioning people’s right to lodgings and human beings’ capacity to move and go where they think they should go,” Manuela Carmena told an awards ceremony in Toledo on Friday.

“Now is the time we have to make an effort to show that our beliefs are the direct opposite when it comes to migration, which is a phenomenon extraordinarily positive for all societies,” she declared, adding: “Without migration, we would not have the world we have.”

At the event, which marked the end of the First International Forum on Migrations and Citizen Coexistence, Carmena praised the “incredible” forum, and thanked the Socialist Workers Party and far-left Podemos-ruled local government, along with a raft of open borders NGOs for working to make Toledo a city in which “we are committed to saying loud and clear that everybody has a right to peace”.

In an interview with eldiario.es, the Madrid mayoress said she did not understand why anyone would be opposed to open borders, telling the liberal-left online newspaper that migration objectively enriches the rest of the community.

“We see that Social Security contributions go up when there are new groups of workers because they do not subtract, they add,” she said, adding that “while it is said [migrants] ‘are coming to take our jobs’”, the reality is that newcomers “often have more skills or are more willing to work” than Spaniards.

“When people talk with migrants, it is very difficult to not feel drawn to them,” Carmena remarked, stressing her commitment in office to “breaking down stereotypes” about immigrants and encouraging dialogue between groups.

“How can we despise a group of humans who are of such obvious value as these people, who have struggled so hard to reach countries where they can find a better quality of life?” she asked, declaring illegal immigrants to be “heroes in pursuit of their dreams”.

Since she became mayor in 2015, the longtime Communist activist created a Diversity Unit within Madrid Police, the “main objectives” of which are reportedly “fighting to ensure equality, and to prosecute hate crimes”.

“Officers investigate any cases of intolerance and discrimination that occur in the city of Madrid, whether a criminal offence or not,” Spanish broadsheet El Mundo reported last year.

There has been controversy around its use, however, with the Diversity Unit ordered to allocate resources protecting Madrid mosques from hate crimes while denying protection to churches, despite there being not-infrequent attacks on Christian places of worship, including with the use of Molotov cocktails.

Breitbart London previously reported how, in 2016, Carmena ditched the city’s Nativity scene at the Puerta de Alcalá on the grounds that it was not “art”, replacing the traditional display with some light-up flowers.

The move proved unpopular, however, as citizens placed dozens of their own displays at the iconic arches in protest, leaving messages which urged the far-left mayor to “have respect for Spain’s tradition and culture”.

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