What would it take for Spain—or any society, for that matter—to reassess the scale at which it welcomes immigrants from Muslim-majority countries? Not that such a reassessment would necessarily make a practical difference, since most such immigrants (primarily from neighboring Morocco in Spain’s case) file asylum claims underwritten by EU protocols over which the member states have entirely given up their sovereignty. Though such claims are often long shots, the mere act of filing one immediately shields the applicant from deportation pending a judge’s ruling on whether to grant or deny it. Those immigrants who come in a plainly illegal manner, meanwhile, or those who overstay the denial of their claim, are admittedly a population which, if public opinion supported such a move, the state could more swiftly deport than it currently is.
