considering catholic religion is still offered at the public schools in spain, i’m just not really sure why the concertados continue to exist.

I forgot to ask the commenters, What is the definition of “immigrant”? Are we talking about legal residents in Madrid?

And, as far as the U.S. having solved the problem of discrimination in schools, there seem to be a lot of people who wouldn’t agree. Here’s just one article about how minority kids are at a disadvantage in the U.S. educational sistem. Here is another on how whites still have an advantage over blacks when applying for a job. I hope someday all children will have equal access to a good education, but it’s going to take a lot of hard work from everyone.

As far as “ghettos”, Spain is definitely going to get a lot more of them. The Spanish are not going to like living next to immigrants anymore than they want their children going to school with them. Not saying that this is not normal and part of dealing with getting used to immigration. We (Americans) have been dealing with this since maybe the 1800’s (in New York to start with).

Now I don’t want to sound racist and I hope this doesn’t come out the wrong way, but the bit that got me about South of Watford’s comments is that he says that people are happy to have immigrants do all the poorly paid menial jobs that they don’t want to do and to make lots of money out of them in the process, but that then they don’t want to share the schools with them or live with them. Now that makes perfect sense, but where I live, the people who employ the immigrants on low wages and make a lot of money out of them live nowhere near the immigrants – they live somewhere in cheshire out in the countryside in a big house with no immigrants for miles. The people who do live near the immigrants are finding themselves not able to get ANY job because they have no real skills and qualifications – their only employment prospects are the same menial jobs which the immigrants are going for, which means that the original local residents are either priced out of jobs, or have to except lower wages due to the high demand for these jobs. (I also heard from someone, but don’t know if this is true, that a well-known British supermarket chain employs Polish workers and gets half their wages subsidised by the government, but that this doesn’t apply to english workers, so the english workers obviously don’t get the jobs – is that racist, I don’t know as I don’t know what the criteria for paying half their wages is, if the story is indeed true, but imagine for a moment how you’d feel if it was true, or you heard that it was true and didn’t get the job at the supermarket.)

Another factor which I think affects South of Watford’s and other commenters’ reactions to this situation is that as immigrants themselves, they are naturally prediposed to seeing the immigrants’ point of view rather than the original locals’ point of view. I’m not saying that this makes racism right in anyway, but Ben, South of Watford and most of the commentators seem to be people who have moved abroad eager to immerse themselves in the culture of the country they have moved to and integrate themselves as fully as possible with the lifestyle of their new country – which is as it should be (at least that’s my opinion – I find myself constantly embarrassed to be British when I’m abroad on holidays, when all I see are the British taking over places and replacing the local food and culture with bacon butties, pie and mash, Guinness and bitter and full english breakfasts (if you want all that, stay in Britain!) Not to mention their complete lack of respect for any of the locals – no wonder prejudice exists as it does!)
If you happen to live in your country of birth and send your child to, say, a catholic, or C of E school, (which are/were the predominant english religions), and then find that the majority of the children at the school are now immigrants and are muslim, what are you supposed to think when the curriculum changes to give priority to foreign cultures and the muslim religion, with your native culture and religion second bested to that of the immigrants’. Please don’t think that I’m in any way suggesting that the answer to these questions is to burn down the immigrants’ homes and treat the immigrants with any less respect than the natives, but the flipside to that is that there also needs to be some mutual respect for the native religions and culture of the country you’re in, and in Britain, this always seems to be second bested for fear of appearing racist.

Just as a quick aside, the cleaner who cleans our office at work was telling me about her other cleaning job at the airport where she is on of only two ‘native’ english, the rest of the team of a dozen or so cleaners being Polish. The supervisor suggested that the Poles needed to improve their English skills, as they could barely speak a word, and they suggested that as only two members of the team spoke English, they should learn Polish instead! So, you see there are always two sides to every argument (though to be fair, when you see the english abroad, they would want the locals there to speak english for them, so you can see where the Poles got there argument from!)

Anyway, the bottom line is that something needs to be done, but in Britain at least, all our politicians who make decisions about these things live in leafy surburbia with no real immigrant population to speak of. So they make decisions that affect both the natives and the immigrants without understanding anything about the problems and concerns of either side. So both parties are left second bested because cheap foreign labour keeps employment costs down for employers and they are the ones the government talk to. The likes of a native briton who can’t get a job because he’s been priced out of it, or the immigrant worker who’s being exploited for poor wages for long hours aren’t really important for them.

The result of it all is that the immigrants feel like Britiain is exploiting them and the natives think that they’re being invaded and overrun by the foreigners. The next step is Hitler Mark 2 unless the people who live in these places manage to find the common sense to actually care about each other regardless of where we’re from, or why we’re here – and how hard can that be, really?