When the Socialist Government of Spain came to power in 2004, it immediately amnestied 700,000 illegal immigrants. These were enabled consequently to migrate legally all over the European Union. Spain’s EU partners were not amused.

Things have changed completely. The Spanish Government, faced with a massive construction bust, is effectively banning fresh immigration. This follows the launching of a plan earlier this year to pay immigrants to return home.

MADRID, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Spain, facing rapidly rising unemployment, will stop issuing visas to most migrant workers, the government said on Thursday.
No more visas will be granted to low-skilled workers, such as those employed in restaurants and shops, a spokeswoman for the Labour and Immigration Ministry said…
Labour Minister Celestino Corbacho told reporters on Wednesday the government would cut the number of work visas “to roughly zero” in 2009…
The measure follows another decision to restrict family reunion visas, which the government had said would cut immigration by 40 percent.

(Spain to slash immigration as job queues grow By Jason Webb Reuters Thu 4 Sep 2008,)

Not all the motive is economic. A large proportion of the immigration is Muslim and also from sub-Saharan Africa, e.g. black.

Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero …has done a U-turn on immigration since winning re-election. In March’s vote, the opposition conservatives won working class support by playing on fears about Spain’s growing Muslim community.

In the past decade, Spain has gone from being almost immigrant free to being 10% alien. But the Spanish people have reason to hope this damage may substantially repair itself. In any immigrant flow, a surprisingly large proportion goes home by choice – quite apart from if they are paid to go. This and cutting off the inflow could alter the situation fast. And just being born in Spain does not give a baby Spanish citizenship, and hence the right or return, unlike the moronic US regulation.

A thought experiment: what if in Denver the Democrats, with their famous concern for the working man, had adopted the Spanish plan and moved to block unskilled immigration. And the Republicans, because of their reverence for the traditional nation, had adopted the proposed plank to end the birthright citizenship charade?

Well, if Spanish Socialists can see the light…why not?

It’s interesting to contrast this Overlawyered.com  story of a jet-skier injured in the Niagara River, (the center of  which is the border between the US and Canada) who washed up on the American side and found himself in a cell, and the millions of Mexicans who deliberately ford the Rio Grande, much shallower and warmer, and are immediately released by the Border Patrol even though, unlike the jet-skier, they have no plans to go back home.

September 4th, 2008 at 9:46 am

“Entering the U.S. illegally”

» by Walter Olson

One way that can happen to you is to be traveling the Canadian side of the Niagara River on your Sea-Doo jet ski, get caught in the rapids and swept over to the U.S. side. Jason Haist of Toronto was knocked unconscious and nearly drowned in the process, but his legal troubles were only beginning, as U.S. Border Patrol agents filed charges against him. They also arrested his cousin Edward, who tried to help him, for not reporting immediately on entry. After a press outcry, the two were released from their jail cell and returned to Canada. (Toronto Star, Aug. 25; Inside Toronto, Aug. 26).

One little remarked point are the similarities in the roles of Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton in the rise to power of their husbands: they were both skilled operatives instrumental in building their husbands’ political machines. Obama, for example, placed Michelle in the 1990s in charge of a headhunter’s group for social charities in Chicago, allowing her seed hundreds of Barack Obama loyalists throughout Chicago NGOs. Interestingly, Barack has seldom over-praised his wife’s contributions the way Bill Clinton did so slavishly. Barack likes to play up Michelle as wife-and mother rather than as political cadre.

Obama’s never shown much respect for feminism. His appreciation of his grandmother, a pioneering woman banking executive in Hawaii, is rather faint.

I generally never waste time listening to convention speeches because you can read them faster afterwards (or, increasingly in the age of the internet, before). But I did try to listen to Sarah Palin. (Read it here) I just got bored, although it was well enough delivered, I guess. Maybe because I’ve written speeches and can see the joints. Needless to say, there was nothing about immigration, affirmative action, the National Question - just war, oil, not raising taxes, bashing Democrats - the conventional stuff that Republican fundraisers can take to key constituencies. No-one would ever imagine that the Census Bureau has just projected American whites will be a minority in less than 40 years.

At least, no-one at the convention would ever imagine it. Others are imagining it with salivating malevolence. The Washington Post’s Harold Meyerson wrote on September 3:

…the Republicans now more than ever are the white folks’ party, the party that delays the advent of our multicultural future, the party of the American past. Republican conventions have long been bastions of de facto Caucasian exclusivity, but coming right after the diversity of Denver, this year’s GOP convention is almost shockingly — un-Americanly — white.

“Un-Americanly”? So whites are not merely to be a minority, they are to be deprived even of the name of the country they founded, built up and were 90% of until 1960.

What, then, would define “American”? We can be sure Meyerson is ready to tell us. (Ask him).

We can also be sure that Sarah Palin’s speechwriters - and who knows about Ms. Palin herself - would listen.