Fear grips foreigners in Campo area

Joe Garcia
Fear grips foreigners in Campo area

In the wake of COVID-19 and Brexit, some foreigners living in the Campo area even fear that Spain may close the border for the thousands who go every day to work on the English-speaking peninsula.

After all, they say, Spain has long sought to revoke the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht that gave the land to Britain in perpetuity and that Gibraltar is now one of the world’s richest lands on a per-capita or per-mile basis.

A report in the Washington Informer adds: The tiny nation at the dangling, southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, is isolated from Spain and the rest of Europe by geography, history and politics.

But in the months since Brexit, its circumstance has only become more confusing and more uncertain largely for the nearly 3,000 Latin Americans who live in the Campo area.

ANXIETY AND CONFUSION

Politically and symbolically Spain sits atop it to the north, and exercises a territorial claim on it—and a day after Brexit, Spain’s acting foreign minister called for joint Spanish-British control of the peninsula. The British rejected that claim - but for the Hispanic workers the whole thing generates 'tremendous anxiety and confusion.'

They ask what is going to happen to their legal or immigration status.

As one would expect, speculation is rife. A Mexican worker recalls having negotiated a crossing in one of the most scrutinized borders in the world, that between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso in Texas. Having emigrated to Spain seven years ago, negotiating bureaucracy is a difficult experience for many immigrants.

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17-06-2020 PANORAMAdailyGIBRALTAR