"There has been no serious debate about immigration": a group of economists calls for a "own" migratory policy in Catalonia

Barcelona"Our society has not had a serious debate on this topic." This is how Joan B. Casas, dean emeritus of the College of Economists of Catalonia (CEC), expressed himself regarding immigration and its impact on Catalonia. Casas is co-author of a new report presented this Tuesday at the CEC headquarters titled A Useful Migration Policy for Economic and Social Transformation, prepared by the group of experts Economists for Well-being, which outlines the shortcomings of migration policies in Spain and identifies specific solutions so that the arrival of foreign population helps to create an economy that works "for the benefit of the natives, those who have come, and those who may come in the future", in the words of Josep Reyner, another of the co-authors.

was published in February by the Cercle d'EconomiaIn this regard, the former dean of the CEC indicated that immigration "is not a conjunctural phenomenon" but "structural": "We will need immigration because our fertility rate is very low and life expectancy is very high", he said.

"For too long [immigration] has been a difficult discourse, with two positions", one uncritical of the arrival of foreign population and another that blames newcomers for many of society's ills, recalled the dean of the CEC, Carles Puig de Travy, at the presentation. "Mature societies do not function this way, but rather face complex challenges with data and the will to understand them as they are, not as we would like them to be. We must talk about facts", he added.

The dean celebrated the publication of this new study, which is added to the one published in February by the Cercle d'Economia and the recent Fènix Report, which discussed the relationship between low productivity and certain business sectors that have a high percentage of foreign labor.

Labor duality

The study shows that Catalonia has a "dual" economy. This duality is evident in the labor market, where three apparently contradictory factors coexist: the arrival of thousands of immigrants each year, one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe, and the fact that half of Catalan companies in almost all productive sectors report "difficulties" in finding employees for the new jobs they are creating. In fact, two out of every three vacancies in Catalonia take more than three months to fill.

All this "tells us that there is no adequate immigration policy," commented Casas. As an example, he highlighted the recent regularizationapproved by the Spanish government, which he said is "nothing to brag about," with long queues and a certain bureaucratic chaos. "A serious state should not allow this," he pointed out, while recalling that in recent decades six similar processes have been approved with governments of various political leanings.

For his part, Reyner, who also chairs the Catalan economics commission of the CEC, recalled that "the integration" of immigrants into the labor market is "defective." The unemployment rate among immigrants is significantly higher than among the native-born, but data show that, among second-generation immigrants, "these high unemployment rates are being reproduced," which indicates a "certain failure" and "insufficiencies in incorporating immigration" into the world of work, the economist added.

According to the report, the qualification of immigrants arriving in Catalonia and the State as a whole "is lower than the national average and the second lowest in the EU" and, although in recent years there has been "a certain improvement in training level", this difference with the local population has not been closed, indicated Reyner. Furthermore, he commented, more qualified immigration also faces problems with labor integration due to difficulties in title homologation, the lack of a social network to help them find jobs suitable for their educational level, language problems or hiring biases, with companies opting for native-born workers.

More migratory competences for the Generalitat

For all this, the authors of the study request that competencies to manage migratory policies be transferred to the Generalitat in order to adapt them to the country's socioeconomic needs. While this does not happen, they call on Catalan politicians to try to "influence those who do have them," a fact in which Catalan parties have shown "considerable passivity" for years, said Casas.

Furthermore, the report proposes a change in immigration entry criteria to take into account "the professional profiles" of newcomers, "the strategic sectors" that need labor, and "the capacity of public services" to absorb population increases, according to Casas. "Economic immigration, which is the main one we have in this country, should incorporate selection criteria, age, training, linguistic knowledge, predisposition to acquire them, and capacity for labor integration," he added. These policies are inspired by those applied by other governments of democratic states: "The countries that are applying this are orderly and have nothing to do with ultramontane far-right tendencies," he commented, referring to Canada, Australia, or the Nordic countries.

Economistes pel Benestar was one of the groups that promoted the debate on the need for a new financing system for Catalonia. In this regard, Casas has emphasized that, in his opinion, if the new system that is about to be approved "is adequate" it will have to incorporate calculations that take into account the migratory impact, something that does not currently happen.