U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping deportation campaign and hardline approach to restricting immigration, particularly from Latin American countries, has caused a knock-on effect in Spain. The country is seeing an increasing number of Latinos arriving, abandoning their American dream.
Benjamin Enrique Berardinelli Manjarrez is one of them. The 33-year-old Colombian arrived in Madrid at the beginning of May, by way of Italy.
“My first idea was to go to the U.S. Like many other Latinos, I have this dream of America for a better life and to make money,” said Berardinelli Manjarrez. “In one day, you can earn enough money to pay a month’s rent in Colombia.”
“Many Colombian friends told me they want to go back. They don’t feel safe anymore and are scared of ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and the police,” said Berardinelli Manjarrez, who left behind a wife and a nearly three-year-old child.
90s kid here, I thought the dream died in the 70s.
Trump said he was going to do it and Latinos still voted for him. They were okay with it as long as it was other people.
Trump and the other Republicans cheated in 2020, but didn’t quite do it right. They got it right in 2024. Trump got a lot of legit votes, too many, but he cheated as well. He might have won anyway, but we’ll never know for sure.
2016, too. literally a convicted felon 34 times over from efforts to illegally influence that election.
Conspiracy theorists aren’t doing us any good. Stop it.
Is it a conspiracy when they said they did it? Don’t make me pull out receipts.
the democrats didn’t even bother to put up a fight on spanish media; they just assumed that people would vote for them anyways like they assumed people would ignore their complicity with a genocide or ignore that things are getting economically worse for americans simply because trump is such an asshole.
and it’s going to happen again in the next election cycle when the democrats decide that they don’t want to piss off their oligarchic donors instead of helping their voting base.
“The American dream” only existed for a very short period in history and was largely caused by factors not directly in control of America (i.e. Europe needing to rebuild itself after WWII), and then it was only allowed to a certain group of people with a particular level of skin pigmentation.
It would be more productive and rewarding to try and find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
Also high taxes on the wealthy and specific policies designed to build a middle class.
It’s incredible how quickly our politicians managed to
be paid off tofuck that one up.The regression back from that peak point of opportunity and quality for the many (though, as the previous poster pointed out, in America very much only for those with a certain skin color) has happened all over the West, though in this the US is ahead of the rest.
Basically Neoliberalism was the method used to reverse most of what the Working Class fought for in the post-War period.
to try to* find
and again… 🤷♂️
Americans being Americans aside, there is an abundance of beautiful abandoned villas and fincas in Spain. Personally, I would love a chance to immigrate there.
While that’s true, most of them are abandoned for a reason … lack of work or water being the big two.
Hell I’m an American citizen and I might end up living in Spain at this rate
The list of acceptable countries to live in when emigrating from the United States has been getting very long lately
Also I’ve seen more and more in Portugal (it traditionally was mainly Brasilians, but now there are also more people from spanish speaking Latin American countries).
They’re way safer around these parts than in the US.
It’s been over for a long time. If it ever existed.
Perhaps it was always just a “dream”.
Trooper agrees …
Hopefully Spain can capitalize on this. This seems like a good opportunity to bring back some manufacturing.
If I recall, Spain in recent history has had horrible issues with unemployment (I’ve heard 20-25% at some points) and poor economic outlook in general. It may be more of a crisis for them if anything.
They’ve brought it down drastically via a strong integration and small business program with the current president
