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Photograph by Fernando Garcia
| Brotherly Love
Friar Macías is willing to break the law to shelter illegal immigrants in Spain |
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Posted Sunday, April 20, 2003; 14.23 BST
Every week dozens of African immigrants risk their lives to reach the south of Spain in small boats known as pateras. Some drown, and many are returned to Morocco, probably to try again. The ones who do come ashore are usually destitute, and face a precarious future as illegal immigrants trying to make their way into Europe to find work.
A surprisingly large number of the women émigrés are pregnant; a stubborn myth holds that if a woman gives birth to a baby in Spain it will be eligible for Spanish nationality. Isidoro Macías, a 57-year-old White Cross Franciscan friar, is known as Padre Pateras because he feeds, clothes and houses some 25 of these women and their babies at a time; he also has to tell the young mothers they have been lied to. In Tangier in the '70s Macías opened a center caring for developmentally disabled boys, which is still open today.
"Their parents can't cope with them and they often abandon them," he says. In 1982, when he saw the plight of illegal immigrants being smuggled across the Strait of Gibraltar, he realized that their need was just as great. He runs two shelters in the Spanish port city of Algeciras, one for African mothers and babies, the other for homeless elderly men and women. Padre Pateras receives a small annual subsidy of €120,000 from the local authorities for his elderly charges, but depends on donations for the mothers and babies: "Our mission is to care for people with nothing."
By doing so, he is breaking a Spanish law that prohibits taking in illegal immigrants. But the police turn a blind eye. "They often bring us unaccompanied children, and we are supposed to hand them back for repatriation after we have bathed and fed them, but I hate to do that," he says. "I believe we are doing God's will, and who can question God's law? If someone comes here for shelter, of course we give it to them."
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They Hear You Knocking [June 24, 2002]
Europe's leaders agree on the need for a common policy on asylum seekers and immigrants. But at home they're hanging tough to satisfy the voters
Germany's New Recruits [June 18, 2001]
Indian tech workers benefit from expedited work permits to plug skills shortages
Europe Slams the Door [July 19, 1993] 
Overwhelmed by migrants and too broke to support them, the nations of Western Europe are pushing the newcomers back home
Surge to The Right [Jan. 13, 1992]
From the Atlantic to the Urals, politicians stir fear and loathing of dark-skinned immigrants
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