The sheer amount of roughly one million illegal migrants in Spain seeking amnesty could lead to a “collapse” of the nation’s basic services such as housing, education, or security, experts warned.
Spain is presently in the final weeks of a widely-criticized mass amnesty process launched by the government of socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez that aims to grant half a million illegal migrants with “legal” residence status, work permits, and other benefits.
Despite the initial “half a million” estimates stated by Spanish officials in January, officials recently acknowledged that over 900,000 amnesty requests had been submitted by migrants, confirming estimates reported in mid-June
The Spanish newspaper ABC reports that the sheer number of applicants — almost double the government’s own estimates — has raised alarms among economists, demographers, housing specialists, and state security officials, all of which warned to the outlet of the “collapse” of basic services that the mass amnesty process could end up causing in Spain.
Alejandro Macarrón Larumbe, a demographer at the Center for Social Studies, Training, and Analysis (CEU-CEFAS), warned to ABC that Spain’s housing crisis will further deepen and worsen as a result of the incoming influx of migrants with “legal” status. Macarrón Larumbe affirmed that an orderly, temporal reduction of migration in Spain could instead have an opposite effect and alleviate the housing crisis.
“If there weren’t a constant influx of immigrants, the housing problem would be solved sooner: more people die than are born,” he said.
The demographer attributed the large discrepancy between the “half a million” amnesty applicant estimates from the government and the nearly one million applications presented to “political strategies” from the socialist government.
“They might get it wrong by the thousands, but not by the hundreds of thousands. They tell you they’re suddenly going to put in a million, and that’s a staggering number,” he argued.
Consequences to Spain’s security are another area of concern for experts cited by ABC. Unnamed sources from Spain’s Unified Police Syndicate warned the newspaper that police officers are handling “hundreds” of requests from the nation’s migrant services seeking additional information or to clarify fraud suspicions in some of the amnesty applications.
The officers reportedly find themselves concerned on whether their logistics will be able to “properly” process all applications in a due manner.
“From the outset of the process, these associations had already expressed their concern regarding whether or not a criminal record certificate would be provided,” ABC reported.
“The organization claimed to be the only one with the expertise to verify whether the document was genuine or a forgery,” the text continued. “It is worth noting that this document is mandatory and determines whether or not a person poses a threat to a country’s security.”
ABC noted that the expectation is that the final number of amnesty applicants could surpass the one million threshold once the application window deadline closes on June 30. Per the newspaper, the Spanish government is urging migrants to submit their applications even if the required documentation is incomplete — granting migrants a grace period that extends after the June 30 deadline to present the missing documents.
Furthermore, ABC stressed that the amnesty could trigger a much higher surge in Spain’s migrant population should amnesty beneficiaries opt to avail themselves of family reunification and other chain migration pathways present in Spanish law — echoing warnings reportedly issued by Spanish police officers to other outlets last week.