‘Country grows, we grow too’: 1 million migrants seek legal status in Spain 

Madrid, Spain – Badr Tmairi, 22, from Morocco, has spent six years living in Spain without legal status. He arrived at 16, alone, without his family. He held legal residency briefly after turning 18, but lost it when he failed to renew it in time.

“What I want is to get my papers back so I can work as a hairdresser and travel to visit my family in Morocco,” he said.

Tmairi is one of more than a million people who have now applied for regularisation under a new scheme that contrasts with a growing European trend against irregular immigration.

He has been homeless for the past year. Without documents, finding work and decent housing in Spain is difficult.

“It’s very encouraging to know that so many people submitted an application and are trying to regularise their situation, but that huge number is also proof that the state has failed in its duty to protect the most vulnerable,” Edith Espinola, president of the Active Domestic Workers’ Service Association (SEDOAC) and spokesperson for the Regularizacion Ya (Regularisation Now), told Al Jazeera.

Regularizacion Ya, a collective made up of migrants, has led the push for regularisation since 2020. The measure grew out of a broad social consensus and has been backed by civil society organisations, the Catholic Church, trade unions and business associations.

Living without legal status, Espinola said, condemns people to social exclusion, as it has for Tmairi. Without rights or protection from abuse, they are unaligned with most of the rest of the population.

The new initiative, Spain’s first regularisation process since 2005, began in April and closed on June 30. The government now has three months to resolve the vast majority of the applications submitted.

Of the 1,174,978 applications, according to the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, only 11,000 have received a favourable resolution so far. About 608,000 have been accepted for processing, granting provisional residency and work permits until a final resolution.

Rocio Neciosupe, 54, is a Peruvian migrant who has spent two years without legal status in Spain. “Regularisation isn’t a handout; all I want is to work. To work without fear and with rights, so that if I fall and I’m sick, I don’t have to go to work that day and can still get paid, like anyone else,” she said.

Neciosupe, a cleaner in private homes, is busy across six different buildings around Madrid. But she is currently recovering from a back injury sustained in a fall at work. Without documents or a contract, she has no right to sick leave.

Unable to afford to lose her income while she recovers, her husband accompanies her to work each day and helps her with tasks she cannot manage alone.

Rocio, her husband and their two daughters, aged 22 and 17, have all had their regularisation applications accepted for processing and are now awaiting a favourable resolution.

“I want to support the country I live in, and if the country grows, we grow too,” Neciosupe added.

It is precisely in the contribution and growth potential of people like her that the Spanish government has framed its case for the measure.

“By 2050, Spain’s GDP would be 19 percent lower, 90,000 bars would close, 50,000 classrooms would shut and 220,000 farms would disappear,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said recently in a public address.

Gonzalo Fanjul, director of ISGlobal’s policy and development team and head of Research at the porCausa Foundation, said: “If you look at what’s happening in the United States, there are already estimates of the impact of the government’s violent, hostile anti-migration policies. Whole economic sectors are struggling to keep functioning.”

One of those sectors is care work. With an ageing population, Spain needs trained workers to fill positions in that sector, among others.

Josselyn Aguirre, 32, is one of those workers. A nursing assistant, she migrated from Ecuador to Spain in 2024. Her original plan had been to move to the United States, but her visa application was rejected.

“My goal is to stay and help older people. I really enjoy working with them,” she said.

“Here, in my country and in other countries around the world, this sector is collapsing due to a shortage of staff. That’s why I believe that being able to regularise your status and contribute as a professional benefits everyone,” she told Al Jazeera.

Migrants and refugees who applied for regularisation had already been living in Spain, working in the informal economy for years; 57 percent are men, most come from Latin American countries, and six out of 10 are below the age of 34.

So far, 159,097 additional people have registered with the Social Security system as a result of the regularisation process.

With this measure, “Spain has made a bet on growth. We’re going to be a country of 50 million people,” Fanjul said. “But it’s not enough.”

Amid a European political climate in which anti-migration rhetoric appears to be gaining ground, Spain’s approach shows another path is possible, though “regularisation is only the beginning”, Fanjul said.

“The system has been reset, but none of the underlying reasons that brought us to this point have been resolved.

“For the state to open up legal, safe and orderly channels for labour mobility is simply common sense,” he concluded.

Espinola is in no doubt.

Despite criticism from those opposed to the regularisation, she stressed, “We have come out stronger. The migrant community has once again shown its capacity for mutual support in difficult situations.”

The regularisation process is not yet over, she added: “We will remain vigilant to make sure the more than a million applications submitted are processed properly.”