NEW YORK TIMES
Spain said it could give residency and work permits to about 900,000 undocumented migrants in the country over the next three years to help address a growing need for workers, even as other European countries embrace tougher stances on immigration.
The new rules will start in May, with government officials expecting that about 300,000 migrants will be given legal status per year until 2027. Only people who have been living in Spain for at least two years will be eligible, the government said.
Legalizing undocumented migrants is not just about “respect for human rights,” said Elma Saiz, Spain’s migration minister, in an interview with national broadcaster Radio Nacional de España. “It’s also about prosperity.”
She said Spain needs about 250,000 foreign workers a year to maintain its welfare state, given its “demographic challenges,” including one of the lowest birthrates in Europe.
Countries in Europe have shrinking working-age populations, with businesses reporting a chronic shortage of workers, especially in sectors like caring for older people, agriculture and hospitality. Yet there is only a limited legal path for migration to the continent, and governments have been slow to expand it as anti-immigrant sentiment grows across Europe.
Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister of Spain, has spoken often about the country’s dire need for labor and said last month that immigration was critical for economic growth. The key to migration, he said, “is in managing it well.”
Spain’s new rules will not apply to recent arrivals, including the more than 25,500 people who have arrived illegally this year to the Canary Islands from West Africa — more than double the number of arrivals in the same period last year, according to Frontex, the European Union’s external border agency.
Ismael Gálvez Iniesta, an economics professor at the University of the Balearic Islands, said that most undocumented migrants in Spain are women from South America. Many arrived by plane on tourist visas and overstayed. There are no official figures on how many of them are working, but many move to Spain — where they already speak the language — for the economic opportunities, he said.
Legal paths to immigration involve a cumbersome process for employees. “There is a great deal of bureaucracy to make contracts,” said Mr. Gálvez, who has co-written several reports on statistics about undocumented migrants in Spain. “This discourages companies from starting the procedures.”
Patricia Fernández, a lawyer at the Coordinating Association of Neighborhoods, an organization that provides legal advice to migrants, said that the new regulation falls short in that the process for acquiring a residence permit is still “excessively rigorous.” She also said there were not enough civil servants to issue such documentation, which would likely lead to long delays.
About seven in 10 Europeans believe that demographic trends put Europe’s long-term economic prosperity and competitiveness as risk, according to an E.U. study last year. The more than four million Ukrainians who have moved to E.U. countries since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 were fast-tracked for employment, but politicians say a longer-term solution is needed.
In the European Union as a whole, the numbers of unauthorized migrants attempting to cross into the E.U. dropped 43 percent in the first 10 months of this year compared to the same period last year. In 2023, bloc experienced its highest number of such crossings since 2016.
Right-wing parties have tapped into anxiety over migration and concerns about a dilution of national identity. Local leaders in such countries as Germany, which has seen huge numbers of migrants in the last decade, say that schools and health care facilities are overwhelmed.
In recent weeks and months, Germany and France have intensified border controls, and the Netherlands announced plans to do so starting next month. In September, Sweden, a nation long known for its welcoming policy toward migrants, said it planned to offer cash to immigrants who agree to go home. And European leaders are exploring how to create hubs where they could pay countries outside the European Union to process asylum applications and take on the responsibility of deporting those whose claims fail.
Eve Geddie, the head of Amnesty International’s Europe office in Brussels, said that the debate over outsourcing asylum screening is a distraction from the need to increase legal migration. “Huge, key, core sectors in Europe are relying on these people,” she said.
