Omar El Hilali, Espanyol player of Moroccan origin: "Those who don't come to work should be sent back to their country."

Omar El Hilali , a Moroccan-born Espanyol footballer, was forceful in his analysis of the current immigration issue in Spain. For him, the solution lies in returning to their home country those who do not come to Spain to work.

"People who don't know I'm a footballer look at me as if I've committed 40 crimes. And that's detrimental to us. I think it would be very simple to send those who don't come to work back to whatever country they come from , wherever that may be," the Espanyol player said in an interview with 'betevé,' a local newspaper in Girona.

In the mid-90s, El Hilali's father left his family in a small Moroccan village near Tangier to emigrate to Catalonia in search of a better life. After several years of working in the fields, he was able to regularize his situation and save some money to bring his wife and children to Spain. They settled in Hospitalet de Llobregat, where the right-back was born, now established in the First Division with the blue and white team and a capped player for the African national team.

A soccer player, El Hilali, argued that "the majority of foreigners, whether from Morocco or Romania, wherever, come to work." But "there's a minority who come here and don't come to earn their daily bread." "Well, I think what those people do is smear . Like, for example, my parents came."