Spain offers amnesty to illegal immigrants

The Spanish government is to grant nearly 700,000 new work and residency permits for immigrants after completing the country’s biggest immigration reform.

The amnesty for illegal immigrants is expected to have a significant impact on the country’s social security system, increasing the number of registered workers by about 4 per cent.

“So far, we have 672,347 jobs emerging from the underground economy,” Labour Minister Jesus Caldera told reporters yesterday, the last day to apply for the amnesty in Spain.

Residence and work permits are being given to unregistered immigrants who can prove they have lived in Spain for at least six months and can show a contract from an employer offering them work for the same amount of time.

Most of Spain’s immigrants are from Latin America, North Africa and eastern Europe.

The amnesty was introduced at a time when the European Union is debating the need to establish a single policy for immigration. Due to low birth rates and an ageing population, the EU will need to look to immigrants to fill 20 million jobs between 2010 and 2030.

Cheap foreign labour has been a key driver behind Spain’s economic prosperity, curbing inflationary pressures, fuelling consumption and helping push the country’s unemployment rate down to 10% from about 23% ten years ago.

Spain has implemented six amnesty programs in the past 15 years, with the number of legal immigrants quadrupling to more than two million at present. But as the Spanish economy boomed in recent years, illegal immigration flows persisted.

According to the latest data from municipal records, there are about 1.4 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the country.

The Spanish government expects to grant another 400,000 residence permits to children and close relatives of undocumented workers joining the amnesty, Minister Caldera said during a visit to one of the social security offices that remained open until 9pm last night.

Undocumented workers from Ecuador led the amnesty pool with more than 21% of total applications, followed by immigrants from Romania, Morocco and Colombia, according to official statistics. More than 42% of total applications were from female workers.

Among the amnesty’s requirements, applicants had to show that they don’t have criminal records and that they have been listed on municipal registries since at least August. In Spain, municipal records are used by immigrants for healthcare eligibility.