The Spanish Government has announced the country is set to legalise 300,000 undocumented migrants per year through 2027 under new regulations.
According to Spain’s migration minister Elma Saiz Delgado the move was designed to combat the country’s labour shortage and ageing population.
“Spain has to opt between being an open, prosperous country or being a closed and poor one, and we have chosen the former,” she said on November 19. She added that Spain needed around 250,000 to 300,000 tax-paying foreign workers a year to sustain its welfare state.
According to the government, the reform shortens and simplifies legal and administrative procedures for work and residence permits.
Five types of residence have been established, including a so-called second-chance residence, which allows the regularisation of people who have had a residence permit in the past two years and have not renewed it.
The visa for job searchers has been extended from three months to one year.
“It is the most comprehensive and ambitious reform that has been carried out in 13 years,” said Delgado.
Santiago Abascal, president of the Spanish hard right party Vox, criticised the move, arguing that Spain should focus its resources on its own citizens.
According to Abascal, immigration increases violent crime and places a strain on social services.
He denounced two-tier treatment between Spaniards and migrants, referring to the recent flood crisis in Valencia.
“Instead of approving millions in aid for illegal immigration, they [the government] should approve massive aid to rebuild all and each of the towns that have been devastated by their fanatical and criminal policies,” he said
En vez de aprobar ayudas millonarias destinadas a la inmigración ilegal deberían aprobar ayudas masivas para reconstruir TODOS y cada uno de los pueblos que han sido arrasados por culpa de sus políticas fanáticas y criminales.
DEPORTACIONES MASIVAS YA.
TODA LA AYUDA A LOS… https://t.co/BI9qYgcLax pic.twitter.com/6DAOpowkic
— Santiago Abascal 🇪🇸 (@Santi_ABASCAL) November 19, 2024
Led by the left-wing coalition spearheaded by Spain’s Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), Spain has adopted a receptive stance on migration.
The measure announced by the government followed Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s stated commitment to use immigration as an economic strategy.
Addressing the Spanish parliament on October 9, Sanchez said that “[immigration is] not just a question of humanitarianism … it is also necessary for the prosperity of our economy and the sustainability of the welfare state,” adding that the “key is in managing it well”.
Spain is part of the so-called “Western Mediterranean route”, which refers to irregular arrivals to the country both by sea, across the Mediterranean to mainland Spain and by land to the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa.
According to a survey published in El Pais in October, 57 per cent of Spaniards believed that there were “too many” immigrants in Spain.
Other European countries such as France, Germany, Italy and Sweden have recently either tightened border controls or implemented tougher immigration policies.
Slovakia, Hungary and Serbia have signed an historic agreement during a trilateral meeting in Komarno. https://t.co/bqhGaGGjOs
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) October 23, 2024
