Migration in Spain: Trying to Understand its Real Social Impact.

During the 90s, migration has been a relatively new phenomenon in some European countries like Spain. The welfare of this country was an important element that has lured immigration especially from less developed areas as Northern Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America. Spain is considered a new immigration country whereby 8.5% of its 44 millions inhabitants are immigrants. While this number does not include illegal immigrants because of the difficulty in exacting an accurate number, estimates suggest about 1.5 million of people are non-documented immigrants (45% of the total). But, what do the Spanish really think about immigration? What is the general opinion about this phenomenon? I try to answer these questions through the monthly surveys produced by Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas â€" CIS (Center for Sociological Research). Immigration is one of the five issue respondents mention when it asked about ‘three main problems of Spain at the moment’. The main aim of this paper is trying to understand what is the social impact of immigration in Spain and link it to the governmental policy about it. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]