SPAIN’s plan to grant legal status to around half a million migrants has attracted a staggering 1.3 million applications – close to three times the government’s initial estimate.
The figure, sourced from the management platform Mercurio, comes just one day before the scheme is set to close on Tuesday.
Authorities told El Pais in mid-June that around 360,000 applications were being processed at the time, with each application taking approximately three months to complete.
The government has also said that several permits have already been approved across the country.
The regularisation scheme, launched in mid-April, grants eligible undocumented migrants a one-year permit allowing them to live and work legally in Spain.
The unprecedented demand means the programme is on track to eclipse Spain’s last major regularisation in 2005, when nearly 700,000 people applied and more than 570,000 obtained legal status.
Prime minister Pedro Sanchez, of left-wing PSOE, has defended the initiative as an economic necessity, arguing that hundreds of thousands of migrants are already living and working in Spain, often in informal jobs with few legal protections.
Discussing the scheme in February, one month after its official approval by parliament, Sanchez said: “Some say we’ve gone too far, that we’re going against the current.
READ MORE: Madrid is banking on recent immigration influx to repopulate inland ’empty Spain’ regions
“But I would like to ask you, when did recognising rights become something radical? When did empathy become something exceptional?”
He has since added that bringing more workers into the formal economy is expected to increase tax revenues, with studies estimating that each regularised migrant could generate a net fiscal benefit of around €4,000 through taxes and social security contributions.
The regularisation scheme stems from a 2024 popular legislative initiative that gathered more than 700,000 signatures and has received backing from hundreds of humanitarian organisations, trade unions, business groups, and the Catholic Church.
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