Government of Spain seeks to regularize half a million immigrants

The Congress of Spain voted this Tuesday in favor of approvinga measure that allows the regularization of half a million immigrants who have been in the country for years.

The vote occurred at the end of this Tuesday's session in Madrid and has obtained amajority support with 310 votes in favor and only 33 against, those of the Vox parliamentary group.

NamedPopular Legislative Initiative (ILP) for the extraordinary regularization of the 500,000 migrants who, according to the calculations of the promoters, live in Spain without papers and without basic rights, has more than 600 thousand signatures, as well as the support of 900 civil society organizations.

The spokesperson of the socialists in Congress,Patxi Lopez, has supported this initiative as a means to confront "this phenomenon of immigration in an intelligent way."

For his part, the president of the Popular Party,Alberto Núñez Feijóo, had opened the positivism of his training days ago in theEpiscopal Conference. “We are sensitive to those who work in Spain and do not have papers,” he assured.

The ILP demands an extraordinary regularization of those who already live and work in Spain, sued because “the criteria for access to residence are highly restrictive and very difficult to comply with,” and on the other hand, “the administrative procedure implemented is slow, bureaucratic and has a high margin of discretion when granting authorizations.” or its renewal.”

In May 2023, three spokespersons for the platform, defended the importance of granting papers to those who live in Spain clandestinely, as the citizen movement “Regularization Now” began to defend since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when thousands of migrants in an irregular situation they had to continue working in jobs considered essential during confinement.

Among them wasLamine Sarr, a Senegalese who, when registering the ILP in the Spanish Congress, contributed that “we have suffered all types of racism until we got here.”

He also said that among those seeking to have legal status in Spain "there are families with children who cannot access health or education, they find themselves in a wheel of a perverse system that keeps them in extreme precariousness."

This measure,can reach some of the almost 200,000 Cubans who live in Spain, according to figures published by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) of the Iberian country corresponding to January 1, 2023.

Until that date, 198,639 people born in Cuba were registered, of which 73,548 were residents.

The rest had obtained Spanish nationality and according to the INE, women lead the list with 107,987, surpassing men who total 90,652.

This event occurs a few days after theSpanish Government announces an ambitious reform in the Regulations for the Development of the Organic Immigration Law.

The initiative seeks to simplify procedures, improve the protection of migrants' rights and is scheduled to conclude before the first half of 2024, he indicated.Elma Saiz, Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration during a Sectoral Migration Conference.