I want to integrate (and they won’t let me) | Opinion

They ask that immigrants integrate, adapt to “our” culture (who knows what it is) but in reality it is the last thing they want: that the children of Moors, blacks and Latinos share class with their own children? Who live in the same neighborhoods as them? Take one as a roommate with all its strange smells? Do the neighbors of the house compete for the same jobs? No, not at all, most of those who fill their mouths with the word “integration” what they really want is the disappearance of any distinctive element in that other thing that they hate and which reminds them of their difference. “Let them disintegrate” would be a more accurate expression. This is demonstrated by the fact that while they shout “integration” not only do they do nothing to promote it but they contribute to the mechanisms that generate segregation. Calling this hypocrisy fascism, as Pau Luque did in his time, means taking the usual racists very seriously and not taking into account the fact that what is desirable for those of us who come from other countries is, precisely, integration. We want to integrate because we want to have the same rights as everyone, to live in houses not far from everything, in neighborhoods where only “our” people live. We want to integrate so that democracy is not far from us, that politicians take us into consideration and question us instead of talking about us as if we were in a closed aquarium from which we neither hear nor understand what they say about us. Today there are girls who live in deprived neighborhoods and who make a titanic effort to overcome those barriers that the system has imposed on them: race, gender and class, obviously. They study a lot because they know that they have no choice and if they can they will escape from that place where they have been relegated to join the society that is not a ghetto and that is so far from where they are now. The black rights movement in the United States fought against segregation established by law and called for their integration. Here it happens that those who should defend the rights of immigrants (without ever having set foot in one of these suburban neighborhoods) tell us that integration is right-wing. But it’s exactly the opposite. It is already good for the right to be locked in, to have to cross those invisible borders to reach the center, where we would be citizens without more, without less.