Society and illegal immigration

Abstract

Migrations are no longer what they were in the past, when uprooting, nostalgia and forgetfulness were some of the characteristic notes of these movements. Today the situation has changed thanks to the improvement in the quality and intensity of communications between those who leave and their societies of origin. Both the drastic drop in the prices of telephone calls and airline tickets (and their increased frequency) and the explosion of the Internet have revolutionised the lives of immigrants. However, this improvement is only one aspect of the daily lives of those who, for various reasons, have been forced to leave their countries. They, and their families, here and there, know a large number of problems, some of which are described below.
Globalization and its changes have allowed for improved interpersonal communications between immigrants and their societies of origin. In this way, the links between the colonies of Latin American immigrants and the society they have left behind, including their families, have become more intense. In spite of the great distances, and the fence that the Atlantic Ocean represents, today there is a greater facility to listen to the radio and to watch the television of the countries of origin, as well as to read the daily press. As if this were not enough, it is clear that immigrants are a large market and where there is abundant critical mass begins to develop a communicational offer "Latino" that reinforces the previous trend. The sum of all these novelties allows that the ties with the society of origin are very narrow, that the customs and the native languages are easier to maintain and that the incentives for the integration are smaller than in the past. Added to this is the growing importance of the so-called "nostalgia trade", which allows immigrants to access, without too much effort, their traditional consumer goods, especially food and beverages, but also others, such as the press.