A fair and pragmatic regularization

BarcelonaIn Spain, the process of obtaining residency and work permits is so cumbersome and complicated that carrying out extraordinary regularization processes has already become a custom. The goal is to end administrative bottlenecks and pockets of irregular immigration that, in turn, fuel the black economy and the perpetuation of situations of social vulnerability. These regularizations have been carried out by socialist and popular governments. There were them in 1986, 1991, and 1996 under Felipe González, in 2000 and 2001 under José María Aznar, and in 2005 and 2006 under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The last one, therefore, was twenty years ago, before the migratory boom after the global recession of 2008-2012.

The Council of Ministers approved this Tuesday the royal decree that, through a reform of the immigration regulations, will allow the regularization of around half a million people who are estimated to be in Spain without papers and who meet the requirements to obtain a residence permit. Pedro Sánchez's government has promoted regularization as a human rights issue, a gesture that clearly distinguishes it from the restrictive migration policies being approved across Europe, but it must be emphasized that there is also a pragmatic logic behind it. The Spanish economy is among the fastest growing in Europe for the past five years, and a significant part of this growth is due to the massive incorporation of foreign labor into a job market where entire sectors, such as agriculture, tourism, or care services, depend entirely on newcomers. It is no coincidence that both employers' associations and trade unions have expressed their support for the measure. With regularization, the Spanish government seeks to bring economic activity to light, increase tax collection, and continue to deepen social policies.

As we said, however, there is an undeniable political reading of the measure, which has its origin in a pact with Podemos. As he did in his day with the amnesty for those convicted of the Catalan independence process, Sánchez has preferred to clash with the right on ground where the European left is particularly uncomfortable. It must be said that in this case he has had a very powerful ally, namely the Spanish Church, which has also sided with the regularization of immigrants for humanitarian reasons.

And as usually happens when Sánchez goes on the offensive, the PP has once again been left out of step, as it has gone from voting in favor of processing a popular legislative initiative in favor of regularization to criticizing it frontally, even though Aznar did the same in his day. There are fundamental reasons to defend a stricter border policy (although the Mediterranean continues to be a death trap for thousands of people every year) and a more restrictive admission process, but it is difficult to argue that the best option is to leave half a million people in limbo and in a state of absolute defenselessness sine die. Either they are regularized or they are expelled in the style of the ICE in the United States. And not even the PP has the courage to defend that.