The immigrant and the sheriff

My name is Aïcha Traoré, I am twenty-nine years old, and I was born in a small village in southern Mali. I went to school until I was twelve. I learned to read and write, to add and subtract, and to obey. Then I helped my mother at the market and my father in the fields. We ate every day. Our world slowly fell apart. First, the land began to yield less. Then came the insecurity: armed men, rumors, fear at night. Hoping things would get better wasn't an option. I left behind my elderly mother, two younger brothers, and a mud house built by my father. I also left behind my language, my songs, the sound of my name correctly pronounced, and my father's grave. The journey was long, expensive, and dangerous. I crossed with my daughter in my arms. Since then, the fear of losing her has never completely left me. I work whatever jobs come up: cleaning by the hour, cooking, caring for the elderly. I don't have a contract. I don't have papers. I always carry a fully charged phone in case a job comes up.

I live in fear. In case they ask for my papers, in case my daughter gets sick and I can't take care of her, in case work doesn't come through, in case they treat me like a thief because I'm Black.

I have hope for my daughter's future. She goes to school, she has friends, she gets a lunch scholarship. I imagine her studying and not having to lower her eyes. Someday I'll return, but not as someone who has failed. I don't want pity. I ask for time and an opportunity. I work. I take care of others. I endure.

_______________________________

Mrs. Traoré,

I understand that your story may be moving, but I have an obligation to speak frankly to the residents of this municipality. This country has laws, and these laws state that to live here, it is necessary to do so legally. If we start justifying every personal situation, the system collapses.

Our city cannot be the destination for everyone struggling in their own country. There are also families here who can't make ends meet, who are waiting for social housing, who follow the rules and feel abandoned. My priority is the people here.

You say you work, but you do it without a contract. This hurts workers who do follow the law and accept low wages because you do too. The underground economy isn't solidarity, it's a problem. And squatting harms property owners and neighbors.

We can't turn the exception into the rule or compassion into public policy. If we allow irregularity to take root, entering without papers is rewarded. And this generates more irregular immigration, greater pressure on social services, and more conflicts of coexistence.

Governing isn't about getting emotional, it's about setting limits. And the line is clear: those who break the law cannot stay. What's needed is to strengthen controls, expedite deportations, and guarantee an orderly, safe city with clear rules.

This isn't a lack of humanity. If someone is left on the street, they must return home.

_______________________________

Mr. Mayor,

You speak to me as if I were an inconvenient exception. I am not. I am a consequence. Of the laws you defend, of the labor market that accepts my work but keeps me invisible and without access to housing.

You say this country has laws. I know them very well because I live trapped. I know that without papers I can't work legally. I know that without a contract I can't have papers. It's a dead end. It's not that I don't want to obey the law; it's that the law doesn't offer me any real path to do so.

She talks about "the locals." My daughter goes to school here. She speaks Catalan. She has friends from here. What is she? What am I, when I clean stairwells, take care of the elderly, work in bars? We are part of this city, even if it doesn't want to see us.

She says my work harms other workers. But I don't set salaries, I don't make labor laws, I don't decide who has rights and who doesn't. I work like this because it's the only way to survive. If I could sign a contract tomorrow, I would. If I could pay into the system tomorrow, I would. Irregularity isn't a choice, and employment isn't my life's project. It's a last resort. No mother chooses to live in a room without a key. You say that governing isn't about being emotional. You're right. But it's also not about simplifying, or turning people into enemies without identity. You talk about limits. I talk about dignity. About human rights.

I'm not asking for pity. I ask for responsibility, because expulsion, precariousness, and labeling as an enemy solve nothing. I will continue working. I will continue caring. I will continue resisting. Will you build the city on fear or on reality?

_______________________________

This is a fictional dialogue about immigration. It is not a moral debate between good and bad. It is about a structural, persistent, and perfectly predictable phenomenon in an unequal, climate-emergent, and economically interdependent world. Pretending that it can be stopped only with controls, expulsions, and rhetoric about crime is as naive as thinking that everyone is a saint.

The discourse that equates irregular immigration with disorder ignores that access to legal pathways is almost nonexistent when the labor market absorbs workers without rights and when housing is nearly impossible for the poorest and most racialized.

Conflicts exist. There is pressure on public services, tensions in neighborhoods, and real competition for the scarcest resources. But these conflicts aren't resolved by sheriff-like mayors. They are resolved with mature public policies: regularization linked to real work, effective labor inspections, investment in affordable housing, and a territorial distribution of support services. However, talking about order only displaces the problem to the margins. That's what has been done in Badalona.