Immigration has been highlighted as a key election issue by right-wing and far-right parties.
CGTN Europe’s Ken Browne has spoken to migrant workers in Madrid and asks how they feel about the way their presence is being used to fuel extreme campaigns across Europe.
CGTN Europe’s Ken Browne has spoken to migrant workers in Madrid and asks how they feel about the way their presence is being used to fuel extreme campaigns across Europe.
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00:00Top Manta, two words that every Spanish person knows.
00:05It's the selling of counterfeit items from a blanket.
00:09The mostly undocumented migrant workers who do this are known as manteros in Spanish.
00:16When the police come, they grab their goods and run.
00:20Manteros say they have no other choice but to do this work because they don't have the papers to work legally.
00:27Yeah, my story, I'm a Gambian who's been in Spain for two to three years now.
00:35I myself, I was a mantero. I was a street vendor.
00:39And I find it so difficult, so hard, and then we do it because we don't have an option.
00:46Nobody wants to be in the street, running against police, under the sun, carrying heavy things.
00:54I move on, and now I have a good job. I work in the airport.
00:57Abdu also volunteers at the Pantera Syndicate, which helps migrants get the papers they need to get off the streets and into legal employment.
01:07But it can be a lengthy process.
01:10The reality is that Spain, like the rest of Europe, needs migrant workers.
01:15Over 30% of the country's agriculture workers come from outside the EU.
01:20And at harvest time in Catalonia, for example, that rises to 75%.
01:25And those numbers don't even include undocumented workers.
01:29Without migrants, Spain and much of Europe wouldn't eat.
01:33But that doesn't stop some political groups from portraying them as a threat
01:37and using anti-immigration rhetoric to win votes in Spain, in Italy, and across Europe.
01:45On one side, the current Italian government is trying to picture out migration mainly as a problem.
01:52On the other side, the same government issued a legal entrance permit for working reasons,
01:58especially for migrants in the agricultural sector.
02:02There are 150,000 new workers a year in the next three years.
02:07The EU received over a million asylum applications in 2023, the most since 2016, when the term migration crisis was coined.
02:17And while some politicians are amplifying the anti-immigration rhetoric, studies suggest it isn't one of the voters' top concerns.
02:26Like this one from Eurobarometer that puts migration and asylum at 7th behind concerns about the economy, jobs, and climate change.
02:35The European elections will provide an important insight into whether the far-right's anti-immigration rhetoric is a winning strategy.
02:43But beyond that rhetoric, Europe needs migrants. The question is if it's willing to accept them or not.
02:50Ken Brown, CGTN, Madrid.