MADRID, June 15 (Reuters) – Spain’s government has received around 900,000 applications from undocumented migrants seeking legal status under a programme that initially expected \u200chalf a million requests, the Migration Ministry said on Monday.<\/p>\n
The measure, \u200caimed in part at integrating undocumented migrants into the formal labour market, is seeing strong demand \u200bin a country that has remained open to immigration even as other European nations close their borders.<\/p>\n
Non-profit refugee aid organisation CEAR expects applications to exceed one million by the time the programme ends in two weeks.<\/p>\n
Spain’s economic growth has far outpaced \u200cmost European peers in the \u2060past two years, partly driven by migrants who have boosted key sectors such as hospitality and elderly care by plugging \u2060labour shortages and increasing social security contributions.<\/p>\n
Spain has granted 360,000 temporary work permits since April, representing about 40% of all requests received, the ministry added. People are allowed \u200bto begin \u200bworking as soon as their applications are \u200badmitted for processing.<\/p>\n
Pilar Cancela, secretary \u200cof state for migration, told Reuters the state has the capacity to handle up to one million applications between April and June, noting that requests would outnumber permits granted.<\/p>\n
Spain has long suffered from chronic delays in its immigration system, with thousands of migrants from Colombia or Senegal waiting years for asylum, which is \u200crejected in over 90% of cases.<\/p>\n
These strict \u200bpolicies have left roughly 840,000 undocumented migrants waiting \u200bfor years to obtain other forms \u200bof residency, while living in the country and working off \u200cthe books as they go through \u200bthe process, according to \u200bthink tank Funcas.<\/p>\n
“This is an extraordinary programme, but there should be a structural measure to facilitate access to work and residence permits, in order \u200bto avoid creating groups \u200cof people living on the margins of society,” CEAR Director Monica \u200bLopez said in a press conference on Monday.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Corina Pons; \u200bediting by Charlie Devereux and Louise Heavens)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MADRID, June 15 (Reuters) – Spain’s government has received around 900,000 applications from undocumented migrants seeking legal status…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14323,19092,19093,17,899,3852],"class_list":["post-40759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-applications","tag-cear","tag-migration-ministry","tag-spain","tag-spain39s-government","tag-undocumented-migrants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}