The Government reforms the Immigration Law to facilitate the regularization of 300,000 migrants and expedite work permits

The Council of Ministers has given the green light to the reform of the Immigration Lawwhich aims to simplify the requirements to obtain residence and work permits through ordinary means. The standard will also exceptionally regularize the situation of asylum seekers who have had their request for international protection denied. The Government also seeks to strengthen the protection of the rights of migrants and unify authorization management by the competent bodies.

The Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saizdetailed the keys to the reform in the press conference after the Council of Ministers. “This will serve to combat mafias, fraud and violations of rights, but also to meet the needs of the labor market. The most important thing is that we reduce bureaucracy“, he has advanced. The priority of the rule is, according to the Government, to streamline procedures and processes such as family reunification and regularization for work or training reasons. The Ministry estimates that, with this reform, “an average of 300,000 people per year can be regularized.”

The norm reduced from three to two years the time that a migrant – in an irregular situation – must have lived in Spain to be able to process a residence permit for “social roots“. The Government will also recognize the “socio-laboral roots” – previously, “labor roots” – to citizens who present a job offer of at least 20 hours per week. The current law set the minimum number of countable hours at 30. The new regulations will come into force six months after their publication in the Official State Gazette (BOE).

“The text includes all the entry routes into our country for people who come to seek a better future, often accompanied by their families. Spain has seven million foreign people with valid residence documentation. It is essential to have an adequate regulatory framework that responds effectively to their special situations and needs,” the minister continued. This reform, announced for the first time in December of last year, arrives several months late.

“The immigration policy of Government of Spain It is transversal and is absolutely focused on the inclusion of migrants once they arrive here, as well as combating catastrophisms with truthful information. We have structural flaws on which we have to double efforts if we want our country to be a completely open and prosperous place,” defended the minister. Spain loses 17 billion euros a year due to the employment and educational discrimination suffered by the foreign population, according to data from the Ministry.

Rooting, a key figure

The regulation contemplates five modalities of roots: “socio-training”, “family”, “social”, “socio-laboral” and “second chance”. The latter allows the regularization of people who have had a residence permit in the last two years and have not seen it renewed. Saiz has highlighted, above all, the “flexibility of the requirements to be met” and the authorization to work, also on their own, for hundreds of foreigners. Likewise, it promises to be “demanding with legal requirements” and with respect for human rights. The reform of the Immigration Law advances independently of the popular legislative initiative (ILP) to regularize half a million migrants, admitted for processing by Congress in April.

“The regulation opens doors that were previously closed through three keys: training, employment and family”, she slipped. The minister took the opportunity to highlight that Spain is “the only country in the European Union that has a figure as important as roots” and recalled that the Government’s speech is “absolutely necessary” at the height of xenophobic and anti-migration policies. The World Bank estimates that they are necessary about 250,000 migrants per year to sustain the Welfare State.