Ep 188: Europe's Migrant Crisis with Economist Daniel Lacalle

So there's a lot going on in Spain where you are right now.

So let's kick off with Ceuta.

Roughly 70,000 migrants reportedly crossed from Morocco in a couple of days, overwhelming a territory that only has 85,000 people.

What actually happened? Was it a spontaneous migration event? Was it an organized assault? Was it migration being weaponized geopolitically?

A lot of things have happened, and we need to go back a little bit in time and understand what has been going on.

Three things in the last eight years have been crucial.

Number one is a policy from the socialist government that has been very much pro-migration, massive regularization of illegal immigrants, very generous with taxpayers' money.

subsidy program to migrants that give them all types of support, etc.

So basically, there is a pull factor in the policies of the socialist government.

Number two is a relationship with Morocco that has been rocky between the Spanish government and Morocco.

quite rocky in the past years, fundamentally because there's a perception within Spain that the Spanish government is almost in the hands of the government of Morocco in terms of enforcing policies because it doesn't seem to be implementing anything that defends the border.

Number three is also a very misguided immigration policy coming from the European Union.

The European Union has not helped when it has allowed all of those pro-migration policies of the socialist government to be not only just implemented but increased throughout the last years.

Spain was giving a headline growth of GDP that the European Union, the European Commission, was quite happy about.

And now, obviously, what we see is that GDP per capita is stagnant, that there's this enormous problem.

So There's always been a problem of illegal immigration trickling in into Spain and the regularization of immigrants creates a pull factor because the government is basically saying to illegal immigrants that it pays to enter the country because they only have to wait.

They will have at some point a regularization papers and subsidies.

So that's one of the things that has happened.

The other thing that has happened is that, I mean, nobody believes the government when they say that no one had any information about this happening.

The president of Souta alerted days in advance to the government that there was already a lot of illegal immigration coming into the country, that nothing was happening.

And the central government said to the president of Ceuta that there was no need to do anything.

He demanded a state of alarm, which would basically had reinforced the border.

Nothing was done.

So all of this was creating this pull factor.

Obviously, if you see that 500, 1,000 2,000 immigrants coming and nothing happens.