{"id":400164,"date":"2026-01-31T06:49:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T06:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/400164\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T06:49:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T06:49:07","slug":"its-like-a-gift-from-god-undocumented-foreign-workers-welcome-spanish-amnesty-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/400164\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s like a gift from God\u2019: undocumented foreign workers welcome Spanish amnesty | Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not everyone has been enthused by the Spanish government\u2019s decision this week to buck European political trends by announcing plans to regularise 500,000 undocumented migrants and asylum seekers<\/a> to boost \u201ceconomic growth and social cohesion\u201d.<\/p>\n

Alberto N\u00fa\u00f1ez Feij\u00f3o, the leader of the conservative People\u2019s party (PP), described the move as a reward for \u201cillegality\u201d that would bring more people into the country and \u201coverwhelm our public services\u201d.<\/p>\n

Santiago Abascal, who leads the far-right Vox party, attacked the measure as a nefarious effort to facilitate an \u201cinvasion\u201d designed to replace Spaniards with foreigners.<\/p>\n

But for the young Bangladeshi man sitting in a cramped NGO office in central Madrid on a rainy Thursday, the announcement was nothing short of a miracle. For him, the decree raises the prospect of a future that need not be spent pounding the streets and selling cheap umbrellas in all weather to earn between \u20ac200 (\u00a3173) and \u20ac400 a month.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have my papers so I can\u2019t get a proper job,\u201d said the man, who came to Spain<\/a> 14 months ago and asked not to be named.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really worry about paying my rent and I\u2019m also trying to support my wife and daughter, who I left behind. I can\u2019t get public housing or go to the doctor. I\u2019m out on the street all day in the rain and the cold and the sun, just trying to earn a living.\u201d<\/p>\n

That, he added, was why he had been so delighted by Tuesday\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so excited,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s like a gift from God that will help keep me going.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Madrid base of the Valiente Bangla Association, which provides food, toys and Spanish language books for undocumented workers and their families. Photograph: Pablo Garcia\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Sitting next to him, Mohammed Elahi Alam Alam, the president of the Valiente Bangla Association<\/a>, which works to help undocumented migrants, also welcomed the decision by the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers\u2019 party (PSOE), saying it was long overdue recognition of reality.<\/p>\n

It was also a necessary counter to Vox\u2019s stated intention of deporting 8 million people of foreign origin<\/a>, including their Spanish-born children.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are people who don\u2019t want immigrants here \u2013 the fascists \u2013 but who\u2019s going to work in the fields?\u201d Alam asked. \u201cImmigrants. Who\u2019s going to work in the restaurants? Immigrants. Who\u2019s going to look after people\u2019s families? Immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mohammed Elahi Alam Alam says immigrants do the jobs shunned by Spanish people. Photograph: Pablo Garcia\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Evidence of Valiente Bangla\u2019s multi-faceted outreach work crammed Alam\u2019s office: sacks of potatoes for communal, charitable meals; megaphones; children\u2019s toys; and a stack of Spanish language books.<\/p>\n

Many of those eligible for regularisation, however, will not need to work on their Spanish. Rosa (not her real name), who came to Spain from her home country of Colombia almost two years ago, is one of the huge number of Latin American women who work informally as cleaners, cooks and carers. Many are badly paid and some are mistreated by their employers.<\/p>\n

Rosa said: \u201cA lot of us have sacrificed so much to come here in search of a better life and yet some days you get up and think: \u2018I just can\u2019t do this any longer \u2013 I\u2019m going to go back.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people deliberately hire undocumented people because they know they won\u2019t need to pay them what they should or cover their social security.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Rosa, the regularisation programme is the chance to get a job that pays more than \u20ac120 a week, and to access the protections and benefits enjoyed by legal workers.<\/p>\n

Despite the shrill political opposition to regularisation, it is far from unprecedented in Spain; PP and socialist governments enacted similar programmes between 1986 and 2005<\/a>. Research suggests such initiatives can yield economic benefits for newly legalised workers and for government coffers.<\/p>\n

Joan Monr\u00e0s, one of the authors of a study into the 2005 regularisation<\/a> of almost 600,000 non-EU immigrants, said tax revenues increased by about \u20ac4,000 per regularised immigrant a year, adding that the policy had not led to \u201cmagnet effects\u201d in encouraging further arrivals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first part of the paper looked at whether there was a \u2018pull effect\u2019 or not and we concluded that there wasn\u2019t \u2026 there was no relative change in the flow of migrants,\u201d said the labour economist.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething else we saw very clearly was that the career paths of immigrants who entered the social security system improved significantly. A good example of this was domestic workers who entered the labour market. After starting off working for families, within six months, they\u2019d started working for larger companies and earning higher salaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

The decree is also not the first time the administration of Pedro S\u00e1nchez has defended the moral and economic case for immigration as Spain struggles with an ageing population and low birthrate<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pedro S\u00e1nchez, Spain\u2019s prime minister, says migration is a driver of economic development. Photograph: Olivier Hoslet\/EPA<\/p>\n

He said in October 2024: \u201cThroughout history, migration has been one of the great drivers of the development of nations while hatred and xenophobia have been \u2013 and continue to be \u2013 the greatest destroyer of nations. The key is in managing it well.\u201d<\/p>\n

But his government\u2019s words and policies have infuriated the far right in Spain and beyond, and fake news stories about the regularisation have proliferated on social media. Although the measure will confer official resident status on successful applicants, it will not give them citizenship and the accompanying right to vote in general elections.<\/p>\n

On X this week, Elon Musk reposted a claim that S\u00e1nchez was using the move to conduct \u201celectoral engineering\u201d adding: \u201cWow.\u201d<\/p>\n

S\u00e1nchez reposted the SpaceX tycoon\u2019s comment with a reply of his own<\/a>: \u201cMars can wait. Humanity can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amid the squabbling and point-scoring, some of those who have spent years campaigning for regularisation have called for reflection about what the decree means and why it is needed.<\/p>\n

Catholic groups, including the migration department of the Spanish conference of bishops, see the measure as \u201can act of social justice and recognition<\/a> of so many migrants who, through their work, have long contributed to the development of our country, even at the cost of keeping them in an irregular situation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Edith Esp\u00ednola, a spokesperson for the Regularisation Now! movement, said the decree would go a long way to restoring the rights that so many people had lost when they crossed borders in search of safety or a better life.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegularisation makes you feel like a citizen and a person,\u201d she said. \u201cIt stops you feeling like an object and it lets you fight for your rights. You know those rights are yours but they\u2019re never really yours until you have a plastic card that says you\u2019re a resident of this country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regularisation, she added, allowed people to work, study and live with dignity. \u201cIt means that you can break through that invisible border. It means you can feel a little bit more human from the moment that you have that plastic card.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not everyone has been enthused by the Spanish government\u2019s decision this week to buck European political trends by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-400164","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}