The Spanish newspaper Publico publishes today an article by Augusto Kappenbach where he analyzes the different social approaches of our contemporary society concerning the immigration.
He criticizes, firstly, the authoritarian perspective that demands for a strict integration of the immigrant, asking him a behaviour that is – paradoxically – not followed by the normal citizen nor by the politicians. But he warns, as well, about the extremely opposite point of view, what he calls a “relativist multiculturalism”, that accepts as a whole the immigrant idiosyncrasy without questioning at all the suitability of their social and individual perspectives.
The sentence that, to me, summarizes his words is a statement that should be understood by all societies:
la verdadera igualdad no consiste en eliminar o disimular las diferencias sino en reconocer la igualdad de derechos entre personas profundamente distintas.
(real equality is not to eliminate or mask the differences but to recognize the equal rights of people profoundly different.)
However, the whole article is worth reading it. It already starts saying:
Los inmigrantes no sirven solamente para ocuparse de trabajos que muchos españoles desprecian o para aumentar nuestra exigua tasa de natalidad: también resultan útiles para cargar con las culpas de nuestros problemas, como el paro o la delincuencia.
(Immigrants are not only useful to take those works that the Spaniards reject or to increase our low rate of birth. They are also useful to take the blame for our problems, like unemployment and crime.)
Other ideas:
Robert Brasilach, un intelectual fascista francés, defendía durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial lo que él llamaba “un antisemitismo razonable”. Nada de campos de exterminio ni pogromos: solo una discriminación civilizada.
“Brasilach Robert, a French fascist intellectual, argued during the Second World War what he called “a reasonable anti-Semitism. ” None of pogroms and death camps: only a civilized discrimination.”
Quizás no haya muchas posibilidades de opción. Nos guste o no, nuestras sociedades serán cada vez más multiculturales, independientemente de las políticas inmigratorias.
(“Perhaps there are not many possibilities of choice. Like it or not, our societies are increasingly multicultural, regardless of immigration policies.”)
Well, worth it to read the whole article.