Spain’s far-right Vox party proposes restricting immigration from Muslim countries

SPAIN’S far-right party Vox has proposed a motion for debate in the Congress of Deputies that would see immigration from Muslim countries restricted. The speaker’s committee of the lower house of parliament will have to decide in the coming days whether or not to accept it. 

According to a statement released via the Vox website, the party wants to ‘end the massive wave of illegal immigration that is in particular blighting the Canary Islands in recent months and Spain for many years now’. 

Meanwhile, in the legislative motion itself the party is calling for the ‘suspension of Spanish nationality processes’, as well as residency permits, for ‘immigrants arriving from countries with Islamic culture, until their correct and peaceful integration in our territory can be guaranteed’. 

In the preamble to the main text, the party equates immigrants with Jihadist terrorists, as well as making an alarmist interpretation of the official statistics related to the numbers of Moroccan nationals who have secured Spanish nationality. 

Speaking to Spanish daily El Pais, the former president of the Pro Human Rights Association in Spain, Manuel Olle, said he saw the initiative as openly xenophobic and also contravening United Nations’ international pacts on human rights. 

All of the legal experts consulted by the newspaper, in fact, agreed that such a measure would fly in the face of the human rights agreements to which Spain has signed up. 

What’s more, discriminating against Muslims would also contravene Spain’s Constitution, which guarantees the right of religious freedom. 

As such there are doubts among experts as to whether the speaker’s committee could even accept the proposal for debate by lawmakers in Congress.

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