The African-izing of Spain, runway-style

Because so much of the U.S. is preoccupied with immigrant- and Mexican-bashing, we tend to forget here that we're not the only prosperous nation with an illegal immigration problem. The U.K. and Spain in particular face hard-core social and political challenges brought by the influx of undocumented workers from Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Eastern Europe. But rarely does immigration politics collide with the fashion industry as is happening right now in Spain, where designer Antonio Miro used Senegalese illegal immigrants in a runway show featuring a replica of a cayuco, the battered boats Africans use in their desperate attempts to make it to Spanish shores. The BBC says 6,000 Africans died or went missing in 2006 while trying to reach Spain's islands, a horrifying figure compared to the number of people who die crossing the U.S.-Mexico border each year. A Spanish pro-immigrant group, SOS Racismo, expressed support for Mr. Miro, who paid the eight African models a small fee for rendering their services. But Abdulaye Konate, chairman of Spain's Senegalese Immigrants Association, strongly disapproved. Which leaves me wondering, how did Miro find his models? What kind of work do they do when they're not being gawked at on a runway? The imagination boggles. And when you consider the inevitable rise of Spanish-African biracial children, something tells me immigrant neighborhoods in Spain right now are a-maze-ing. (* Photo by AFP via BBC News.)