Migration Busy days for administrations

[LalaMimi]

Only five days are left before Spain launches an exceptional operation that could lead to the legalization of thousands of illegal immigrants… and make Moroccans the biggest foreign community on Spanish territory…

Feb. 7 will be the starting day of a three-month operation that could lead to the regularization of up to 800,000 illegal immigrants living on Spanish territory.


“Up to 100,000 Moroccans should benefit from these regularizations,” estimated Mustapha Lmrabet, president of the Association of Moroccan Workers and Immigrants in Spain (ATIME).


This is the first time such an operation has been launched in several years. Illegal immigrants who can prove they have been living in Spain for more than six month and who do not have a criminal record will be able to obtain one year residence permits if their employers accept to take the necessary administrative steps.


Hundreds of agencies and 2,870 civil servants will be mobilised to make it possible for the operation to take place in the best conditions. However, the Spanish government is worried that they might not prove enough. Consequently, officials called for people not to submit their files all at once in order to avoid excessive queues.


In addition, government officials insisted that this operation is not a general amnesty but rather a selective regularization aimed at those who already have a job.


The Spanish government has stressed that only employers will be able to deal with the administration, except for very few cases. The only thing immigrants can do is to convince their employers to take advantage of this transitionnal phase to regularize them.


This operation comes only days after statistics published by the Spanish Ministry of Employment revealed that Spain's legal foreign employees figures went beyond one million people (1,076,744). This means that, as soons as the 800,000 people expected in the legalization operation are included in official figures, the number of foreign workers residing legally in Spain will nearly double.


Moroccans in Spain should be the first beneficiaries of the operation: the potential 100,000 new legal Moroccan workers would be added to the present 172.664 who already have benefited from the Spanish social security scheme.


However, the necessary administrative procedures might prove more difficult for Moroccan citizens than for those from other countries since, unlike nationals of Argentina, Ecuador or Venezuela, Moroccans will have to go to Barcelona to obtain documents concerning their criminal record.


In addition, the Spanish government, through its, Secretary of State for immigration Consuelo Rumi, warned candidates against the use of fake contracts, insisting that an extremely detailed verification will be applied to each document.


Despite this, several mistakes made by the Spanish government itself might complicate the situation further.


“The announcement [of the operation] was made hastily, before knowing how and when it would be launched. It had the effect of an invitation and led to the sacking of several immigrants by their employers, and an increase in [immigration] frauds and mafias activities to a level never reached in Spain. This was called the Caldera effect, said the Social Policy Secretary of the opposition Partido Popular, Ana Pastor.


In addition, “[the government] is stretching the administration to its limits,” said Pastor, adding: “How can they regularize 800,000 illegals? This means that 12,000 applications will have to be dealt with every day.”

[LalaMimi]

The Spanish Minister of Employment and Social affairs said Feb. 2 that the legalisation period for foreign workers without residence permits, which starts today, will be “very short”.

He explained that employers in Spain will not be sanctioned, since most of them have employed such immigrants illegally, because they could not do it otherwise. However, Caldera and the Secretary of State to Immigration, Consuelo Rumí added that once this period is over, the law will be applied systematically and employers who have illegal immigrants working for them will undergo severe sanctions (including fines amounting to € 60,000).

In addition to these sanctions, employers can also face action from their employees if they can prove that they have been working for one year (“arraigo laboral”) and that they have spent at least two years in Spain without leaving its territory.

However, although these measures led the Spanish Police Confederation (CEP) to predict that about two million people would become legal residents in Spain in the two years to come, as immigrants bring their families, it seems that they will be difficult to apply, since regularization offices will only be open from 16:00 to 19:00.

According to the Spanish authorities, the legalisation period, which starts today, should make it possible for 800,000 people, 100,000 of which are Moroccan, to make their presence on the Spanish territory legal.

This is a “very positive” measure, said Mohammed Lmrabet, the head of the Association of Moroccan Workers in Spain (ATIME). He also said they should facilitate the situation of immigrants who contribute a lot to the economic development of the country and that the “the ball is from now on in the camp of the employers”.