Congress has once again extended the deadline on Tuesday for submitting amendments to the bill to regularise hundreds of thousands of undocumented foreigners who already live and work in Spain. The text, a Popular Legislative Initiative that had the support of more than 600,000 signatures and whose processing was approved last April, has been stuck for months on the same point. Despite the fact that the proposal obtained an unusual consensus in the Chamber at the time – all groups except Vox voted in favour of its admission to processing – parties such as Sumar and Podemos doubt the viability of the initiative and in the midst of a debate on the Government’s immigration policy, they have redoubled their pressure on the PSOE in recent days to advance its parliamentary journey.
The Congress Board has extended the process until September 11. Both the Popular Party and the Socialists have already expressed their intention to present amendments to the text, but these have not yet arrived and the coalition led by Yolanda Díaz has denounced that this practice only seeks to delay the deadlines. The parliamentary group already registered a series of questions to the Executive last week with the intention of pushing the PSOE to speed up the process.
The reality is that the initiative runs the risk of being shelved for the entire legislative period. Sumar takes it for granted that it will be difficult to obtain the support of the government partner. More so after the trip of President Pedro Sánchez to Mauritania, Gambia and Senegal, where he advocated “circular migration” and described as “essential” the return to their country of origin of foreigners who had arrived in Spain illegally. After distancing themselves from the socialists, Sumar sources acknowledge that the positions on this matter “are not close”. The first secretary of the Board, Gerardo Pisarello, defended regularisation in a press conference on Tuesday as a measure “beneficial for workers and the economy”. The Catalunya en Comú deputy focused on the PP’s “hypocritical” position, in his opinion, which criticises the Government for a hypothetical “pull effect” of Sánchez and at the same time recognises, in the words of its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the need to have “regular immigrants” as a workforce in Spain.
Although the Popular Party also supported the processing of the ILP, the public disagreement with the PSOE on migration policy has increased this summer, coinciding with the increase in arrivals in Ceuta and the Canary Islands – whose executive has threatened to take the central government to court over the management of migrant minors – and the rejection of the reform of article 35 of the immigration law to make the distribution of children and adolescents between communities obligatory. Regarding the processing of the initiative, the national spokesman for the PP, Borja Sémper, stressed on Monday that “if there is no good agreement, there will not be a good law; and if there is no good law, the PP will not support it.” Feijóo had announced hours earlier his party’s intention to present an amendment and stressed that, in the face of regularisations, it is necessary to study “case by case,” he reports. Virginia Martinez.
Just like Sumar, Podemos has insisted at the start of the year on the need to promote the bill. Ione Belarra’s party, which has compared the speeches of the PP and PSOE, goes further in its demands and advocates that it be the Government that nationalises migrants if there are not sufficient majorities in Congress.
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