1.3 The emmigration of foreign workers to spain: a new and relevant  (Page 8/8)

In a way, some authors, perhaps without trying, have contributed to some border characteristics and very diverse ideological slopes, but that come together in a very negative position against Islam and Islamic immigrants, which they visualize as non-integrated partners in the western democratic society. I am talking mainly about S. Huntington with his Clash of Civilizations (1997) and libel against the Mexican threat to the U.S. Helmut Schmidt, former president of Germany (2002) warned that Europeans must respect the cultural and religious identity of Islamic neighbors because of the 12 million European Muslims, 300 million surround us and there are 1.3 billion in the world; at the end of the century there will be as many Turks as French and Germans combined.

In this dialogue of Islam and Christianity, the church has many things to say and do. In Spain, the Catholic Church and the Islamic magnates have a long but necessary way to go, not only from the top of the hierarchy, but from the pastoral bases of the parishes and from the evangelists. An example is the combined action of the Episcopal Conferences of Mexico and the United States that have sent their respective governments a proposal to regulate the companies that offer the shipment of remittances that sometimes charge the immigrants up to a 20% for its services.

The unified utopia is possible: we are all brothers on a single earth

The immigration of the Third World to rich countries, and Hispano-Americans to Spain, will be a sign of identity in the 21 ^st century. The challenge of the next millennium is to look for the difficult, but necessary, balance between equality and solidarity, within the framework of a constitutional democracy.

When observing the diversity of others, and those who are different who arrive to our land, just as for centuries Europeans went to theirs, it is valuable to finalize this message with the Declaration of the Spanish Committee in the European Year Against the Racism, proclaimed in the Tricultural City of Toledo, on March 13, 1997:

The wealth of Spain and Europe, for centuries, fundamentally nourishes from the diversity of its traditions, cultures, ethnic groups, languages and religions, and of the certainty that the principles of tolerance and democratic coexistence are the best guarantees of the existence of Spanish and European society, open, pluricultural: diverse.

Spain by its historical tradition of coexistence between towns and cultures, by its possession of the Mediterranean, as well as by its ties with Ibero-America, can facilitate the establishment of multicultural models of relation with the immigrants.

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Tomas Calvo-Buezas is a professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for the Studies on Migration and Racism, (CEMIRA), at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain.