The trouble with taking a firm stand on either the side of migrants or of the normally unwilling hosts, is that apart from labelling one racist or idiot, the other helpless victim of foreign circumstance, is that it ignores the point that lands of milk and honey are largely illusory.
If you consider what happened in the southern Italian islands and in Greek islands too, what’s going down in Spain’s Canary Islands and also the Balearics, you have to be wilfully blind not to see that the situation is unsustainable. All of the places mentioned already have large populations of indigenous unemployed, people who can’t afford to leave home and have to marry and live into the foreseeable future with one set of parents or the other, causing much natural stress within families. Those islands share the misfortune of being relatively close to the African continent, and as a consequence, become first stop for the small migrant boats, all overloaded with folks seeking a new life, either of honest labour or of easier pickings in crime.
Palma, the capital of Mallorca (Balearic Islands) publishes daily reports of street crime and gang intimidation of shop-owners and pedestrians, theft from tourists forced to leave their belongings beside their beach towel and sunshades as they go for their dip. It seems to me that, from all of the different nationalities of illegals here, it turns out be the Algerians and Roma gypsies who win the most frequent offender records. (Well, Palma doesn‘t publish this information, it’s the local newspapers.)
The locals, in common with what happens in many British rural areas, have the problem of unreachable real estate prices, unreachable for locals because of the relatively wealthy foreigners buying into the market. In my own case, I could no more afford, today, the place that I bought outright forty-four years ago, than could the average Mallorcan then or now. It’s not difficult to understand how resentment can corrupt relationships between nations; I feel blessed never - yet - to have faced any such thing, perhaps because I do my best to integrate and don’t go through daily life expecting the entire world to be able to speak English.
Is it really any wonder the Mallorcans want shot of the lot of ‘em, or even of many legally present immigrants? They have my sympathy and understanding.
