The fate of about half a million foreign people in Spain is being decided in the halls of Congress. The popular legislative initiative (ILP) of extraordinary regularization of immigrants lives a new impulse after staying reluctant to support it, and has conversations with parliamentary groups to tie the necessary votes. And there is a fundamental actor who wants to claim his seat in these negotiations: the initiative promoting organizations, which and now fear that in those pacts end with a very limited reach, far from the original objective of not leaving anyone out. “We are not currency,” they have warned Wednesday at the gates of the Victoria Columba Congress, spokesman for the regularization platform.
Columba and several other promoters of the initiative have held a meeting in a Congress room with deputies throughout the arch of the left. “We have come to raise a broad demand, with respect to the ILP of regularization and not shoot at the feet a citizen participatory process that meant so much effort,” said Columba. All the formations that were in the encounter – we can, add, ERC, Bildu, BNG and the PSOE – have shown their support for extraordinary regularization, but two of the key groups to ensure that it goes ahead —PNV and Junts – were absent.
According to several of the meeting attendees, the PSOE has seen that it does not yet have the support of these two formations although it maintains that open dialogue. The position that the PP will assume, which at the time supported that the ILP was processed in Congress but does not want to give the government average, is still an unknown.
The possibility of extraordinary regularization of immigrants has risen: those who seek to take advantage must demonstrate that they have been in Spain, to give up their requests if they are asylum seekers, not have a criminal record or a return order and not suppose a risk to national security. It is proposed to give a residence and work permit for a year without demanding prior contract. And they could benefit from her who have arrived in Spain before December 31, 2024.
The organizations that promoted it, meanwhile, point out as high as possible. For them, regularization must accommodate all foreign persons in Spain at the time the rule is published in the Official State Gazette (BOE) or at least those who were before May 20, when the new rules of the game for immigration began to operate. Its point is that it is the opportunity to “put the accountant to zero” and from then on to apply the new regulatory norms.
They also distance themselves from foreigners must take at least one year in Spain – organizations do not set a minimum permanence time – and defend that the mechanism to demonstrate the stay in the country for the obstacles that many immigrants face in to be able to access it is not to prove. Among its claims is also that the window to take advantage of is more than six months, since they consider it an incompatible term with the reality of many of the foreigners who are in rural areas and those who make it difficult for them to abandon their workplaces to initiate the procedure and manage the required documentation.
For organizations that have promoted it, the purpose of the initiative was not to use it as a “patch” A, although they seek to give a solution to the 275,000 asylum seekers who will be dedicated to irregularity if they reject their requests (something that occurs in most cases). What they defend are that immigrants do not have to withdraw from asylum to benefit from regularization.
At this Wednesday’s meeting, the possibility that if the ILP fails to get ahead in Congress, the Government does it via Royal Decree, has also been raised to the PSOE. “Let it be brave”, in the words of the regularization platform. However, that is an alternative that, in principle, the government does not contemplate. Instead, he is convinced that he will get the support, among other things because the business (the CEOE), which claims workers, is one of the most interest that is approved.
The suspicion among driving organizations increases because they do not know “the small print” of the government’s proposal, something that parliamentary groups are not at the moment. This Thursday, organizations will meet with the Secretary of State for Migration, Pilar Cancela, who has been meeting with the groups to raise the proposal that the Government has.
