Lansana Drame, 29 years old, remembers perfectly the day she arrived in Spain. On November 17, 2017, he entered the country after months of traveling by land and sea, in search of a better life and fleeing the poverty and violence of his country, Guinea-Conakry. But, eight years later, he still has not obtained papers to regularize his situation. Like him, there are hundreds of thousands of migrants who live and work in Spain, but who find themselves immersed in a long process full of bureaucracy and restrictive requirements that hinder obtaining a residence permit and, consequently, lead them to vulnerability. and lack of protection. This is precisely where the ILP of extraordinary regularization was born.a popular initiative that landed in the Congress of Deputies in April and that aims to benefit at least half a million foreigners throughout the country.
The initiative was admitted for processing with the support of all parliamentary groups, except Vox, and is now in its amendment negotiation phase, during which the PSOE and Sumar have proposed extending the time frame for potential applicants. If the original text proposed that, in six months from its approval, all foreigners who have been in Spanish territory since before November 2021 would be regularized; The modification suggested by the coalition partners would imply include them before December 31, 2023. Always subject to work, socio-educational, family and/or humanitarian reasons, this authorization will provide almost 500,000 migrants – of which a third are minors – with the possibility of having a residence and work permit.
“Not having papers is ruin and a big problem, because you have to pay where you live, electricity, food… everything,” Drame account to 20 minutes in a phone call from Malaga (Andalusia), where he works as a seasonal worker on an avocado plantation. Mary Nelly Alvarado, a 35-year-old Honduran, would also be one of the beneficiaries of this regularization that the Lower House is now debating.. She waits optimistically for the initiative to be approved while working as an intern caring for an elderly person in Bilbao (The Basque Country). “If I had papers, I think I would accomplish many goals, and the one that matters most to me right now is studyingwhich at the same time would open many more doors for me,” explains Alvarado, who left three children between 7 and 10 years old in his country to be able to give them a better life.
Go out into the street with fear
If this ILP goes ahead, it will be the tenth extraordinary regularization of foreigners approved in democracy in Spain: five were carried out under the PP Government and another four with the PSOE, the last being almost 15 years ago, in 2005. Agustín Ndour was one of the beneficiaries of a regularization promoted by José María Aznar in 2000. and he was also one of the main promoters of the initiative, which managed to gather more than 600,000 signatures to reach the Congress of Deputies. “It began to weigh on me and generate a certain burden of conscience that I was not doing enough,” the 55-year-old Senegalese confesses to this newspaper. According to Ndour, most people are not aware of what not having papers in Spain really means. “You can’t imagine what it’s like to leave your street and looking from one side to the other afraid that a police officer will stop you and ask for your documents and return you to your country,” he says.
The best known and most recurring permission is usually the one granted due to social roots, and can only be achieved by proving a continuous stay in the country of at least three years. That is why it has now been proposed to change the time frame to the end of 2023, since those who arrived before 2021 would actually already be in a position to request regularization through the usual channels. “It is not going to be a massive regularization, because it will be tied to a series of conditions, which is what they are now debating in Congress,” says Ndour, who recalls that even this regularization implies having to renew the papers, first a year, then in two periods of two years, then after five years, to be able to opt for Spanish nationality once ten years have passed.
“Not having documents is like being in prison, because you can practically do nothing”
Even so, having it represents a great change for migrants, who until they get the papers are immersed in vulnerability and lack of protection in every sense, not only in the workplace, housing or even healthcare. “The fact of being able to open a bank account, of being able to return to your country to visit your family after so many years… are small details that, perhaps, an ordinary citizen does not notice, but they are very important Not having documents is like being in prison, because you can practically do nothing,” he says.
Furthermore, adds Ndour, this type of extraordinary regularization not only benefits the applicants, but also the rest of society. In the end, the Senegalese says, foreigners in an irregular administrative situation They end up working anyway, but in the underground economy and without any rightssuch as unemployment or vacations. “That’s why we always insist that we would all benefit. It’s good for the economy too,” he insists, recalling a report by the PorCausa Foundation that estimated that each regularized immigrant would benefit the State with an estimated average net fiscal contribution of 3,500 euros per year.
“It’s like they don’t exist”
While this initiative is debated in Congress, Jesús Barcina, who also participated in collecting signatures two years ago, Help undocumented foreigners by welcoming them into your home and accompanying them throughout the regularization process. “Our experience is that a little support makes it much easier for them to get papers, because they have a place to be, monitoring and support so they can study and lead a normal life in that process,” the sociologist and social educator.
The biggest obstacle, for Barcina, is that on many occasions it takes up to eight months to issue a work permit for people who already have a pre-contract. “We had a woman at home who stayed ten months and became regular, but she could not start working until eight months and 21 days later. “You can’t get a job for a year and tell your boss that he has to wait for you for eight or ten months.”he explains. A problem that this extraordinary regularization would fix, since it provides for a mechanism to provide the NIE to all people who are going to hire within a maximum period of 15 days.
Students also encounter numerous obstacles. “I know kids who have completed Bachiller or ESO and they are not given the official degree until they are regularized. They give you a certificate so you can enroll in university, but it can even happen that they finish a degree, have a problem and are expelled and have to return to their country without the degree. The same with scholarships, they cannot access them, because in the end it is as if they did not exist. “They are situations of great vulnerability and level of injustice,” he denounces.
An ILP supported by opposite poles
Both Barcina and Ndour are hopeful about an initiative that they believe will see the light of day in the coming months. “The most beautiful thing about this ILP is that it has been able to bring together very opposite poles. Even in the collection of signatures, They supported us from nunneries to the Communist Party“says Ndour. He experiences it with special emotion, since he was on the other side almost 15 years ago. “I have the feeling of doing what I had to do, because having suffered it myself it was like a duty for me. Now I just hope that they give the last push so that it is definitively approved,” he concludes.
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