VivirLatino

In the midst of all of the hateful voices that have emerged recently it’s easy to forget that we aren’t the only country in the world with an “immigration problem”. At least it seems ours is the only country that seems to have politicians, pundits and other clowns getting riled up about things like a translation of the national anthem.

While other countries’ elected officials may have a bit more tact when it comes to speaking out about immigration, the battle in the arena of public thought — to reject or embrace immigrants — rages on in other “developed” nations. One needs to look no further than the incidents in France last year to see that the immigrant cause is not one unique to the USA.

What inspired this post is that I read the Spanish press daily and at least once a week there is a story with a headline that goes something like this: “157 immigrants arrive on the coast of the Canary Islands in rafts”. Normally the story shares an account of how many people left Africa on said rafts, how many people actually made it to Spanish soil (the Canary Islands, while Spanish territory, is actually only about 150 miles off the Sahara) alive, how the immigrants were treated for dehydration and how babies were taken by the Red Cross for care.

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