With a critical deadline just hours away, several non-governmental organizations across Spain are making a last-ditch effort to help undocumented migrants register for the country’s special mass regularisation program before it closes on Tuesday.
The program, which offers a one-year residence permit, has drawn far more interest than officials expected. Between April and June, the Spanish government received close to double the 500,000 applications it had projected. By Friday, the total number of submissions had climbed to 1.27 million, according to Cesar Perez, the union leader for Spain’s immigration officers.
Rights organizations CEAR and Cepaim are urging migrants to submit their applications even if they are still waiting on required documents from countries such as Mali, Iran, or Venezuela. Spain is estimated to have around 840,000 people working without legal status, and obtaining legal residency through normal channels can take more than a year.
Elena Muñoz, coordinator of CEAR’s legal team, described the final push underway at her organization. “We’re carrying out a final check of all the people who have come to our offices and who may have been missing some documentation at the start of the process,” she said. “If a case is not yet complete … we will submit it before June 30 so that they do not miss the opportunity to benefit from the regularisation process.”
Juan Segura, director-general of Cepaim, explained that migrants are being encouraged to apply now because doing so will give them additional time to supply any missing documents afterward.
Experts have noted that migrants from conflict-affected nations such as Iran and Mali have run into obstacles when trying to get documents authenticated at Spanish consulates — a process that has also proven difficult in Algeria and Nigeria. Venezuelans, meanwhile, have faced delays in obtaining apostilles for criminal record certificates. Spain’s policy changes earlier this month also forced some asylum seekers to switch to this regularisation process with little time to prepare their paperwork.
“This meant some Venezuelans had less time to gather the necessary documents,” Segura said, adding that extending the deadline would be advisable given the difficulties many applicants now face.
However, Spain’s Migration Ministry has stated it has no plans to push back the deadline.
Silvana Cabrera, who leads an NGO in Valencia, reported that the application platforms had experienced technical problems in the final hours. “It’s a distressing situation … many migrants may not manage to register,” she said.
NGOs are also concerned about what happens after the deadline. CEAR has argued that a permanent solution is needed so that migrants are not required to spend two years in an irregular status before they can obtain residency. Advocates also fear that at least 20% of the roughly one million applications submitted could ultimately be rejected, largely because of missing documents and limited flexibility within the administrative process.
One applicant, Jose Luis Quiroga, a Colombian migrant who arrived in Spain just hours after the eligibility cutoff date, submitted his application on the advice of the NGO Aculco. “There’s no certainty, but it seems unfair they wouldn’t approve my application just because I was four hours late,” he said.
