Spain: Regularisation process comes to an end
01 March 2005
The three-month regularisation process that began on 7 February 2005 closed on the night of 6 May with a provisional figure of 691,059 applications submitted by immigrant workers seeking to obtain a status as legal residents under the rules that were established by the Zapatero government. The employment minister, Jesús Caldera, estimated that once all the applications have been processed, and definitive figures are available, their total number will be over 700,000. The autonomous regions in which the most applications were submitted are Madrid (159,795), Catalunya (125,734) and the Comunidad Valenciana, in the Spanish south-east (98,534), and the most highly represented nationalities of the applicants were Ecuadorians (21.47%), Romanians (17.16%) and Moroccans (12.22%). Males accounted for 57.78% of the applications (365,382), among whom Moroccans were the most numerous, whereas 42.22% were women, over half of whom are Ecuadorian nationals.
The criteria that were applicable to the regularisation process were criticised by immigrant support organisations from the very start (see
Statewatch, Vol. 15 no. 1), who argued that it was too dependent on employers who employed "illegal" immigrants providing them with a work contract, and that it was proving difficult for applicants to obtain the documents that were required (such as their registration in the
padrón, the local council register of residents, or a certificate from their home country to confirm that they had no criminal records).
Reports also surfaced early in the regularisation process that the would-be applicants were suffering abusive treatment by officers in charge of public order as they gathered in large queues outside their consulates (most notably outside the Ecuadorian consulate), that employers fired some workers who asked them to help to regularise their position, and that some employees were being made to pay social security contributions for which employers should be responsible.
Migrants also staged a number of protests and lock-ins, most notably in Barcelona, to demand that the applicable conditions be relaxed. The government eventually agreed to widen the criteria for eligibility somewhat as the take-up rate had initially been less than was expected, although immigrant support groups argued that it was "too little, too late". The situation of a large number of migrants is set to improve, although there will still be a lot who were unable to apply for regularisation. Caldera argued that around 90% of the people eligible to be regularised will benefit from the regularisation, as a large part of the migrant population is either too old or too young to work, whereas the
Asociación pro Derechos Humanos de Andalucía (APDHA, Andalusian Association for Human Rights) claimed that at least 800,000 will remain in an irregular situation following a process that was deemed "insufficient" and which was criticised for merely viewing migrants as a "labour force" rather than people who should enjoy basic human rights.
El País, 7.5.05; Asociación pro Derechos Humanos de Andalucía press statement, http.//www.apdha.org, 6.5.05.