Spain to legalise migrants
The Spanish government has approved a plan to grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of people without valid residence permits. The regularisation, which is to be enacted by decree, applies to migrants who entered the country before 31 December 2025, have been living in the country for at least five months and have no criminal record.
It also makes economic sense
Prime Minister Sánchez is not just pursuing an altruistic social policy here, Madrid correspondent Rainer Wandler explains in taz newspaper:
“Spain will benefit from this policy. ... Around 600,000 immigrants arrive in the country every year. Nevertheless, unemployment is falling because Spain's economy needs workers. The migrants are mainly employed in the tourism industry and agriculture, but also in construction and skilled trades. And with the rise in the working population domestic demand is also increasing, which in turn contributes to growth. Immigrants are no longer the cheap labour they once were, because under Sánchez the minimum wage has risen by 60 percent. ... Yes, social policies are possible, even in these times.”
Revive ethical criteria
La Vanguardia considers the proposal to be correct for several reasons:
“All the people who live here and contribute to maintaining the country deserve similar rights. ... This is what one would expect of policies based on ethical principles, rather than migrants being criminalised merely for being migrants, as the Trump administration is doing. ... Extremist groups often claim that immigrants come to take jobs away from Spaniards – as the first phase of the theory of the great replacement. But economic indicators point to the GDP having grown by 2.9 percent in 2025. ... In 2025, a record 22.46 million people were employed in Spain and 605,400 new jobs were created – more than in any other European country.”
Everything depends on the social conditions
Libération criticises the arguments of the anti-immigration right:
“Of course this is grist to the mill for the far right, which in Germany, France and Spain constantly invokes the spectre of crime and systematically links it to immigration. We're not naive: there are problematic individual cases, but studies show that overall there is no causal relationship between immigration and the average crime rate. Everything depends on the conditions of reception: the worse they are, the greater the risk of criminality. Europe has been built on immigration for decades, and this must continue to be its strength.”
Missed opportunity for a key debate
El País would have preferred a parliamentary debate rather than a decree:
“The government wants to implement this legalisation by decree, bypassing the House of Representatives. It is disappointing that parliament has failed to respond to the demands of the majority of the population, supported by employers' associations, trade unions, NGOs and the Bishops' Conference. In April 2024, a legislative initiative was presented with overwhelming support, which Parliament reluctantly accepted for debate, only to then put it on hold. ... Society must now forego the stability that a majority decision would have given to the resolution.”