Sumar announced an agreement with the PSOE to reactivate the popular initiative to regularize some 500,000 migrants who already live and work in Spain. Thus, the second vice-president of the government, Yolanda Díaz, tweeted: “Half a million people are about to obtain their rights. Half a million people who live and work in our country and who are our neighbors. Let’s not waste another minute. “Against racism, rights.”
Diaz reacted in this way to information from the newspaper Público which has advanced the agreement between the two formations. According to information from Público, Sumar and the PSOE have reached an agreement to unblock the ILP and reactivate its processing, blocked in the period of partial modifications.
Last April, Congress supported the development of the popular initiative with the only vote against Vox, supported by more than 600,000 signatures, to regularize about 500,000 migrants. From there, it moved to the parliamentary process, subject to amendments and a future final vote.
As Público recalls, the period of partial amendments has been extended up to ten times, with the risk that the ILP will be abandoned, and it adds that parliamentary sources from Sumar close to the negotiations have confirmed to Público that at the meeting that will take place this Tuesday, the Council of Congress will agree to conclude this period of amendments this Wednesday.
This is how the ILP came to Congress
The Popular Legislative Initiative calls for an extraordinary regularization of those who already live and work in Spain because “the criteria for access to residence are very restrictive and very difficult to comply with” and on the other hand, “the administrative procedure implemented is slow, bureaucratic and has a large margin of discretion when granting authorizations or renewing them.
Lamine Sarr, spokesman for the movement that brought the regularization of migrants to Congress, said during the ILP’s registration in Congress: “We suffered all kinds of racism until we arrived here.” “For many people in an irregular situation, it is impossible to obtain papers,” Sarr defended: “Among them, there are families with children who cannot access health or education, they find themselves in the wheel of a perverse system that keeps them in extreme precariousness.” Sarr, a Senegalese, upon arriving in Spain, was forced to work as a mantero to survive, and recalled that among the almost half a million people in an irregular situation, there are day laborers, temporary sex workers and children who “were born in Spain.” Spain inherits the immigration status of its parents.
The text gives the Government six months to approve a royal decree with the procedure for regularizing the administrative situation of foreigners who are in the national territory before November 1, 2021. The promoters defend that, without its regularization, their fundamental rights are violated. are prevented from contributing economically to society and the public services that citizens need cannot be planned or sized.
The initiative recalls the work of irregular migrant communities during the pandemic in essential sectors such as care, home delivery or fruit and vegetable collection, when they paid “a very high price in the form of infections and deaths”. “Our society owes a debt of gratitude to one of its most vulnerable groups,” the text says.
The initiative began two years ago, when the “RegularizacionYa” movement, made up of migrants and anti-racist organisations from all over Spain, launched a massive campaign to collect signatures.
The Constitution provides that citizens can present their own legislative proposals to Congress by submitting 500,000 signatures. In February 2023, the Central Electoral Commission confirmed that the initiative had obtained the half million needed to begin its parliamentary process. More than 700,000 people gathered.
Spain has a precedent with the regularization undertaken in 2004 by the socialist government headed by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
