Last-minute regularizations: "I have no other plan than to have papers"

Barcelona / MadridThe day before the extraordinary regularization process for migrants ends, some are still submitting their documentation. For Al Bilal, a Pakistani man in his forties, it has been "very" difficult to obtain all the papers, especially the criminal records from his country because they had only partially arrived by the time he had considered completing the procedures without attaching the proof of request. Finally, the document arrived last week, just in time to "avoid surprises," he says. On the other hand, he even has the census that is not required. Awaiting definitive data, the latest official figures from a couple of weeks ago indicated that 900,000 applications have been made, although journalistic reports increased the figures to 1.2 million cases, more than double what the Spanish government had anticipated (500,000).

Afzal is another Pakistani who has come to accompany Bilal and proudly shows his TIE, the provisional identity document certifying that the application he submitted the first week of the process has been accepted and, therefore, he is recognized as a resident of the State with the right to work. The "problem" – he says – is that, to make an employment contract, "companies only want the NIE", the permanent document which will still take a few days, so many of the beneficiaries will still have to wait to be able to work legally and must maintain jobs without a contract or rights that have allowed them to survive and, even, in most cases, send money home.

Ramón and Angie are a young Salvadoran couple who have been working "taking care of the elderly, cleaning offices, and whatever came up." They live in Santa Coloma de Gramenet and travel throughout the metropolitan area "to earn a euro," aware that their salary falls short when they account for the expenses of renting a room, food, transportation, and "transfers to El Salvador" to support their two young children. "Our greatest hope is to have the papers to see the children again," exclaim the couple. In 2022, they sold the small business they had and left El Salvador to flee "from violence and give a better life" to their children, explaining they are repeating the desire of those seeking to regularize their situation. "There is work in this country, a lot of work, but then employers don't want to do the paperwork for you or wait for the procedures to finish," she complains.

Avoid queues

The Honduran woman Marisol clutches a blue folder tightly to her chest. Inside she keeps her criminal record certificate, the municipal residency certificate sent by Barcelona City Council (another document that is not required, but which has caused a headache for applicants); the vulnerability certificate issued by social services, and the plane ticket showing she landed in Madrid in January 2022. It has been difficult for her to gather the documentation because she has not paid for any legal advice services and has done it herself, and besides, as she works cleaning houses, she couldn't find the day to "waste time" at the queues from the first weeks of the regularization process. "A day you don't go to the house, a day you don't get paid and it can't be, the numbers don't add up", she says. She is totally confident that in the coming weeks she will receive notification that her claim has been positive. "I have no other plan than when they give me papers, I can look for a job that pays better and I can travel to my country to hug my daughter and my mother", she states emotionally.

Social entities, accredited by the Spanish government as collaborators for processing applications, have denounced that the numerous obstacles in the circuit have not facilitated the process. For this reason, they asked, unsuccessfully, for the deadline to be extended by another fifteen days, until mid-July, so as not to exclude people who have not been able to gather all the documentation. However, with the provisional data, the regularization has brought to light a much larger than expected pool of people living and working without administrative authorization. "It's now or never, or at least not for a very long time," Marisol says.

Who will speak out about the regularization process hours before it ends will be the President of the Spanish government himself first thing this Tuesday. Pedro Sánchez will inaugurate the presentation of the Integration and Citizenship Plan and the campaign "Where do they come from? They come from building the country", in which they will join forces, precisely, with the regularization of immigrants and its positive impact on the State and will discredit, again, the discourses of the right and the far-right against this process that from Moncloa they have always denounced as "dehumanizing". Although the deadline to submit applications will not have ended and official figures will not be known until Wednesday, government sources already anticipated this Monday that more than a million applications will have been submitted.