report on immigration, compiled by the Obra Social La Caixa, has dismissed stereotypical images of immigration in Spain.

The study from the savings bank notes that immigrants now represent 12% of the Spanish population, more than 5.7 million people, but only 1% of those in Spain to receive a state pension is an immigrant.

The research looked at immigrants’ access to social services, the health and education systems, and analysed immigrants contribution to the funding of social services.
It concludes that immigrants who live in Spain pay more into the welfare state than what they receive – in fact about three times more.

‘50% of the surplus in the public finances seen in the years of greatest economic growth corresponds to contributions made by immigrants’, says Francisco Javier Moreno, one of the report’s authors.

Immigrants are also 7% less likely to go and see the family doctor, and 16% less likely to see a specialist, although they are 3.2% more likely to attend accident and emergency services.

Immigrants cost the health system about 5% of the total, but despite recent growth remains below the proportion of total immigrants in the population.

The study also notes that 30% immigrants can be considered to be poor, compared to 18% of the native population.

On the negative side the study notes that immigrants tend to live along the coasts or in Madrid, and despite that there are no ghettos as seen elsewhere in Europe, there is a separate concentration of immigrant collectives in certain zones of cities. This can put a strain on certain local public services, but they note that is up to administrators to solve – ‘If there is an increase in demand, there should be a change and improvement in supply’.

The report also considers the recent economic boom was based on the arrival of cheap immigrant manpower, but this has now left the Spanish economy with scant productivity, and lacking technological improvements where immigrants have been employed.

Javier Moreno and the other author of the report, María Bruquetas, have underlined that such studies are important in times of crisis such as now.

‘The perception of the reality is sometime as real as reality itself’, they note, adding that ‘work has to be done to ensure that mistaken perceptions are not transformed into a self-fulfilling prophecy’.

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