The data confirms the evidence: immigration reduces GDP per capita

For a long time, it has been difficult to find analyses that study the phenomenon of immigration as a whole. On the contrary, what is most common are particular cases and the appeal to morbid emotions. However, the phenomenon of immigration is so massive that, like anything else on that scale, it presents its own characteristics and attributes. This can't be attributed to any particular immigrant, but rather to all of them as a whole.

One of the clearest and most well-known dynamics of mass immigration is that it reduces per capita income, especially in very unproductive economic models like ours. This is why experts in migration policy talk about the concept of "selective immigration." That is, filtering migration flows based on the interests of the host country (this, for example, is what the United Kingdom wants to recover now). In fact, the words of the current Prime Minister Starmer (Labor) here would be considered little less than those of an extremist:

The data and studies that prove this reality have been constant, despite not finding an echo in subsidized media. The latest of these analyses is the one conducted by the Civic Circle of Opinion, under the title of Immigration in Spain: for a rational public conversation. As the title of the work already indicates, the objective is to analyze immigration from a point of view that surpasses the prevailing simplism.

equally poor

To begin with, it is necessary to measure the enormous migratory weight that Spain has received, which is one of the largest in the world. No less than "Spain is receiving annual flows of immigrants close to those of the United States of America, a country with a population seven times larger," the report states. Thus, in what we have of the 21st century, Spain has grown in population by 23% based on immigration.

The question then is why Spain systematically receives so much immigration. The answer lies in the economic model, that is, in a very poor productive structure that requires enormous volumes of low-skilled employees. It happens that the very dimension of the migratory phenomenon leads to the fact that, with this amount of labor, wages in low-productive jobs drop by themselves.

The immediate result of this (in addition, of course, to diluting growth as we are more to share) is the stagnation of per capita GDP. On this, the report now being analyzed is clear. "The result of this concentration of the immigrant population in low value-added activities is that Spanish per capita GDP has grown in this century much less than the average of the other EU-15 countries."

The most disappointing aspect of this situation is that Spain, in terms of per capita GDP, is now with respect to the other European countries exactly as it was when it joined the European Union. Spain, in summary, is comparatively as poor as it was twenty years ago. More specifically, the young people, who were children twenty years ago.

the (non)policy of mass regularizations

The absence of a state migration policy leads to successive governments using extraordinary procedures to control the situation. We are, therefore, faced with the famous mass regularizations via ILP, which precisely these days are news because a new one will be made that will legalize almost another million people. As the report explains, this non-policy of extraordinary regularizations feeds a vicious circle.

Irregular immigration arrives via tourist or study visa, and once here enters the informal economy until it manages to regularize its situation. This leads to "a continuous process of filling and emptying the irregularity pool, and of providing workers for the informal sector of the economy." The most benefited from this process are the political and economic elites.