While the United States has stepped up its immigration crackdown and deportation efforts and European countries are closing their borders one after the other, Spain continues to act as an outsider.
Spain’s left-wing government in late January approved a royal decree – without a vote in parliament, where it does not have a majority – to allow several thousand unregistered people who already live and work in the country.
To be eligible to apply for a one-year renewable residence permit, applicants must have no criminal record and prove that they have been in Spain for at least five consecutive months before Dec. 31, 2025.
Even if there are no official statistics on the exact number of unregistered people living in Spain, it is estimated that half a million to a million people may be affected by this measure, which Spain is promoting as a way to reduce the lack of jobs in its developing economy.
“I still can’t believe it. I’m between joy and a feeling that it can’t be real,” said a 36-year-old Honduran, who has lived in Madrid for almost a year and a half without documents. CBC is not a developer because he does not yet have a legal status in Spain and is afraid of being retaliated by employers.
He says he has applied for asylum but is still waiting. He plans to apply for this new program that he deserves. Until then, he continues to do odd jobs under the table to send money to his wife and five-year-old daughter, who remain in Honduras.
“During the week I work in a building, and on weekends I am a dishwasher in a restaurant. It is not easy every day, we are often exploited and we have to accept everything we are asked to do. We have no rights and we earn very little,” he said.
About 90 percent of undocumented immigrants in Spain are believed to be from Latin America, particularly Colombia, Peru and Honduras. Since they do not need a visa to enter as tourists, many use this method to stay illegally in the country, where they speak the same language and share cultures. Since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House, Spain has seen it increased immigration from Latin America who avoided the United States.
Economic impact
There are almost seven million foreigners living in Spain – about 15 percent of the population is there – according to the latest data. The Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, has always praised the benefits of immigration to explain Spain’s growing economy.
The country is recorded Growth of 2.8 percent by 2025 and saw its ineffectiveness the rate drops below 10 percentwhich is the first since the economic crisis in the country. After the bursting of the housing bubble, Spain experienced a crisis from 2008 to 2014 that led to austerity, widespread unemployment, the need for government bailouts, and long-lasting social and economic damage.
“Emigration is one of the reasons for this good economic health,” said Raymond Torres, an economist at the Spanish think tank Funcas. “The tourism, services and construction sectors are very demanding and dependent on people from other countries.”
The new layoff plan has been welcomed by employers facing ongoing labor shortages. “This is a reality that we have been criticizing for a long time in the construction sector,” said Juan Antonio Gómez-Pintado, president of Vía Agora, a real estate development and property management company.
“The needs are urgent,” he said, referring to Spain’s construction sector, which will need it 700,000 more workers to meet current demand. Gómez-Pintado says this move could greatly help the industry.
By 2005, the country had become legal due to economic reasons about 600,000 people are undocumented. This adjustment improved immigrant employment, mobility, and tax contributions but did not cause a “telephone effect” or affect workers of different skills and wages equally, according to studies.
The pressure to regularize undocumented immigrants increased during the violence, when many immigrants continued to work in precarious conditions. Later, more than that 700,000 citizens signed the petition to ask for it to be done regularly.
In addition to helping to reduce labor shortages, this measure is intended to help bail out public finances. Unregistered people have access to health care, which is universal in Spain, although they do not participate in social security, explained Torres. “So there are costs on one side and no income on the other,” said Torres. Various studies have indeed shown that an unregistered person costs the state more annually rather than a person with an official position.
This major adjustment can lead to other positive results, said Torres, especially by reducing unfair competition between companies – whose costs vary according to whether their employees are declared or not – while providing new opportunities for professionals.
“Some of these migrant workers have very broad skills. Sometimes they are doctors but they work in homes because of their unusual situation. Regular control will allow them to change this,” he said.
An ‘overloaded’ system
The Spanish government announced that applications for regularization will begin in April and will be extended until the end of June, guaranteeing that the administrative procedures will not exceed three months. The government wants to strengthen the knee, while officials have confirmed you have already been warned in recent months about the lack of resources to deal with all requests received by the Spanish immigration system.
“The system is already overloaded. Procedures that should take a few months sometimes take a year. It will be a big challenge,” said Eva María Navarrete Parrondo, an immigration lawyer in Madrid.
He says he has received nearly 400 requests a day since the announcement last week. “Most of my undocumented clients are already working without proper documents, especially in the construction industry. They have high expectations, they hope to free themselves from the burden of insecurity and find better working and living conditions,” she said.
Parrondo says he thinks Trump’s mass deportation policies hastened Spain’s decision to show dissent.
However, not everyone is happy in Spain. The opposition party has expressed fears that public services will be overwhelmed, while the right-wing party described the announcement as an announcement. “attack” of the world. They have raised this issue at the EU level, which has come to light he replied that he falls under the jurisdiction of the member states.
Prime Minister Sánchez responded to the critics in time video posted on social mediasaying that Spain chose the path of “dignity, society, and justice,” and asking, “When did the recognition of rights become a strong thing?”
Although a Honduran worker the CBC spoke to he says that sometimes he gets comments that he is not Spanish and that he does not have any documents, he says that the reception he received in Spain is very good because people know that they need him.
“We are not stealing the jobs of the Spanish people, we are doing the jobs they don’t want to do,” he said. Now he puts a lot of hope in this adaptation process. “I can’t wait for this whole nightmare to end. I hope that after that I will be able to bring my daughter and my wife here. This is my last dream.”
