Spain legalizes up to 500,000 undocumented migrants, sparking backlash

As the United States experiences antagonistic nett migration owed to President Donald Trump policies, Spain is heading successful the other direction, announcing plans to assistance ineligible presumption for up to fractional a cardinal amerciable migrants.

Spain’s Socialist-led authorities approved a royal decree connected Tuesday, allowing unauthorized immigrants who entered the state earlier the extremity of 2025, and person lived determination for astatine slightest 5 months and person nary transgression grounds to get one-year residency and enactment permits, with imaginable pathways to citizenship.

While galore European governments person moved to tighten migration policies — immoderate encouraged by the Trump administration’s hardline attack — Spain has taken a antithetic path. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his ministers person repeatedly highlighted what they picture arsenic the economical benefits of ineligible migration, peculiarly for the country’s aging workforce.

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Spain's Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, Spain's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Maria Jesus Montero and Spain's 2nd Deputy Prime Minister and Labor Minister Yolanda Díaz astatine the Spanish Parliament successful Madrid, Spain, Thursday, March 14, 2024.  (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Spain "will not look the different way," Migration Minister Elma Saiz told reporters astatine a property conference, saying the authorities is "dignifying and recognizing radical who are already successful our country."

The program has sparked a fierce governmental battle, arsenic conservatives and the populist Vox enactment person condemned what they picture arsenic an amnesty that could substance irregular migration.

Vox person Santiago Abascal wrote connected societal media that the measurement "harms each Spaniards," arguing critics of his enactment are motivated by fearfulness of Vox’s increasing influence. "They are not disquieted astir the consequences of Sánchez’s transgression policies," Abascal wrote. "They are disquieted that Vox volition summation much strength."

Alan Mendoza, enforcement manager of the Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital that "Spain’s determination appears calculated to summation the lure of Europe arsenic a destination for amerciable migrants successful general, causing problems for each of its neighbors. If Spain wishes to go a repository for specified people, past I’m definite different European countries would admit signing agreements to transportation their ain amerciable migrants there. Absent this, we volition each beryllium paying the terms for Spanish largesse."

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A migrant walks by a makeshift colony wherever migrants evicted from a erstwhile precocious schoolhouse past week are camping outdoors successful the mediate of wintertime successful Badalona, Spain, Dec. 26, 2025.  (Bruna Casas/Reuters)

Ricard Zapata-Barrero, a governmental subject prof astatine Pompeu Fabra University successful Barcelona, told Fox News Digital that "This is not a symbolic gesture, It is simply a nonstop situation to the ascendant European approach, which treats irregular migration chiefly arsenic a policing issue. Spain, instead, frames it arsenic a governance occupation — 1 that requires organization capacity, ineligible pathways and administrative realism alternatively than much detention centers and externalized borders."

Migrants successful Madrid, Spain, connected April 9, 2024.  (Francesco Militello Mirto/Nur Photo via Getty Images))

He said Spain’s migration strategy had been showing signs of strain for years.

"When hundreds of thousands of radical unrecorded successful irregularity for years, the contented stops being an idiosyncratic nonaccomplishment and becomes a structural one," Zapata-Barrero said. "In this context, regularization is not leniency — it is governability."

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Migrants hold to disembark astatine the larboard of Arguineguin aft being rescued by a Spanish Coast Guard vessel, connected the land of Gran Canaria, Spain, Nov. 14, 2025. (Borja Suarez / Reuters)

He argued, "In a Europe closing successful connected itself, Spain has taken a measurement that sets it isolated — not due to the fact that it is ‘softer,’ but due to the fact that it is much pragmatic," helium added. "Whether this becomes a exemplary oregon a counter-model wrong the EU remains to beryllium seen. But 1 happening is certain: Spain has launched a governmental experimentation that Europe volition ticker closely."

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.