Catalan Social Volunteers Join Forces to Tackle Immigration Realities

Knowing hardly anything about the subject, the Catalan organisations for social volunteering joined forces to investigate the problems of immigrants and prepare themselves for the challenge. By holding round tables, the NGOs managed to find consensus on the way forward: first tackle their own prejudice about the immigrants and what they are doing in other Western societies, then define the key problems of the integration of immigrants, and finally, to start working on them.

Two years after the beginning of their project the key issues are very clear, according to the Catalan NGOs: the government needs to be put under pressure to provide more help to illegal immigrants because NGOs can't solve the problem on their own; the NGOs need more resources to be able to help; NGOs need to make the public aware of the real issues that they do not hear about in mass media in order to raise the political pressure and finally, NGOs need to go out on the streets and contact immigrants themselves, because the immigrants cannot find the way to Spanish citizens who want to help them.

Emotions ran high in the ensuing discussion. A lot of volunteers expressed frustrations with the Spanish government, which does not seem to address the social instability caused by immigration. "There is no dialogue with politicians", said one of the participants in the discussion. Someone proposed that volunteer organisations write a new immigration law themselves, because politicians are not doing it.

Others stressed that immigrants have to be involved in the volunteer programs set up to help them, because only then will NGOs be able to address their needs effectively â€" a point that was taken on board by the Catalan Federation of Social Volunteering.

Finally, it was stressed that immigration is not a bad thing in itself: western societies actually need immigrants to participate in the economy. Volunteer organisations should therefore join forces as much as possible to change both the circumstances under which immigrants have to make a living and help change public opinion drastically. One of the volunteers involved in the discussion said it this way: "We are not speaking out enough."