Spain will legalize hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants

MADRID — 

Spain volition legalize astir 300,000 undocumented migrants a year, starting adjacent May and done 2027, the country's migration curate said Wednesday.

The argumentation aims to grow the aging country's workforce and let foreigners surviving successful Spain without due documentation to get enactment permits and residency. Spain has mostly remained unfastened to receiving migrants adjacent arsenic different European nations question to tighten their borders to amerciable crossings and asylum seekers.

Spain needs astir 250,000 registered overseas workers a twelvemonth to support its payment state, Migration Minister Elma Saiz said successful an interrogation connected Wednesday. She contended that the legalization argumentation is not aimed solely astatine "cultural wealthiness and respect for quality rights; it's besides prosperity."

"Today, we tin accidental Spain is simply a amended country," Saiz told nationalist broadcaster Radiotelevision Espanola.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has often described his government's migration policies arsenic a means to combat the country's debased birthrate. In August, Sanchez visited 3 West African nations successful an effort to tackle irregular migration to Spain's Canary Islands.

The archipelago disconnected the seashore of Africa is seen by galore arsenic a measurement toward continental Europe with young men from Mali, Senegal, Mauritania and elsewhere embarking connected unsafe oversea voyages determination seeking amended occupation opportunities overseas oregon fleeing unit and governmental instability astatine home.

The caller policy, approved Tuesday by Spain's leftist number conjugation government, simplifies administrative procedures for abbreviated and semipermanent visas and provides migrants with further labour protections. It extends a visa offered antecedently to job-seekers for 3 months to 1 year.

By mid-November, immoderate 54,000 undocumented migrants had reached Spain this twelvemonth by oversea oregon land, according to the country's Interior Ministry. The nonstop fig of foreigners surviving successful Spain without documentation is unclear.

Many irregular migrants marque a surviving successful Spain's underground system arsenic effect pickers, caretakers, transportation drivers oregon different low-paid but indispensable jobs often passed implicit by Spaniards.

Without ineligible protections, they tin beryllium susceptible to exploitation and abuse. Saiz said the caller argumentation would assistance forestall specified maltreatment and "serve to combat mafias, fraud and the usurpation of rights."

Spain's system is among the fastest-growing successful the European Union this year, boosted successful portion by migration and a beardown rebound successful tourism aft the pandemic.

In 2023, Spain issued 1.3 cardinal visas to foreigners, according to the government.