A social pact for immigration... and for housing

On the 5th, the president of the employers' association Fomento, Josep Sánchez Llibre, proposed to Spanish society a social pact in favor of immigration, avoiding the ideological and partisan character that characterizes the debate and focusing it on the economic effects that the demographic evolution is having.

I welcome this, because immigration has many facets, and one of them is undoubtedly the economic one. We don't necessarily have to consider it the most important, but there's no doubt that it's important.

Sánchez Llibre didn't just call for an agreement; he also provided data and a position. The data is contained in the study. Spain, with its 50 million inhabitants which the Ministry of Public Works had commissioned and was presenting publicly that day. Regarding his position, he stated: "Businesses need immigration like the air we breathe and the water we drink; Spanish companies absolutely need immigration to be competitive." As for the scale of the problem, both he and the study's director specified that "to maintain the current employment level, approximately 140,000 working-age immigrants would need to be brought in each year" between now and 2035.

It's clear what employers need. What do they offer us in return? They don't tell us, but the study provides some data that can help us reflect on this.

The first fact is that immigration in Spain is not usual in our environment, as they would have us believe, but is exceptionally high: "While the group of partners of the European Union has increased the population by 4.7% from 2000 to 2024, Spain has advanced by 20.1%."

The second is that this immigration "has generated a deficit of 0.5 million homes that has had to be covered by the conversion of second homes."

The rate of immigration proposed by employers would generate an additional housing deficit of approximately one million homes, a quarter of which would be in Catalonia. We already know that Salvador Illa's government is committed to building housing, but we also know that this process is too slow to cope with such a rapid population increase, which would mean that the deficit would continue to worsen year after year.

Is it realistic to think that society will accept this scenario? I don't think so.

The third finding of the Foment study is that immigration in recent decades has been concentrated in domestic service, tourism, construction, and the primary sector. These are sectors that, on average, pay low wages—too low to allow their workers to afford housing at market rates. Consequently, they will have to rely on public assistance, which will come at the expense of support for native-born residents. It is absurd to expect the latter to accept this situation stoically.

I don't intend to dismiss Sánchez Llibre's proposal, because he has done his part: proposing an agreement and outlining his needs. What's needed now is someone to respond, someone who represents the interests of workers and tenants, who are the ones most harmed by the continued influx of immigrants. Workers because immigration keeps wages down, and tenants because it puts upward pressure on rents.

In my view, the response that should be given to Sánchez Llibre is the following: Spain can continue to receive immigrants as long as two conditions are met. First, that the rate of arrival of new families does not exceed the rate of construction of new housing; second, that they earn a salary that allows them to afford housing without needing public assistance.

Fortunately, these two conditions are consistent, because, unfortunately, the companies Sánchez Llibre represents are not capable of creating 140,000 new, well-paid jobs each year. Therefore, Spanish companies would not be able to fill the 140,000 annual vacancies. Is this serious? No, because the jobs that would remain vacant would be low-productivity positions; otherwise, companies would offer good salaries to fill them.

In short, our companies have a staffing shortage that will only worsen year after year. Okay, but society has a housing problem that will worsen if the population continues to grow faster than our building capacity, and it will be further exacerbated if newcomers don't earn enough to afford market-rate rent.

The agreement proposed by Sánchez Llibre is possible, but only if both sides benefit. The problem isn't that the agreement isn't possible, but rather that it's unclear who is defending the interests of workers and tenants "beyond ideology and partisanship."