The Government will approve this Tuesday in the Council of Ministers a new reform of the regulations of the immigration law which, in addition to simplifying the conditions required for foreigners to obtain a residence and work permit, will exceptionally regularize asylum seekers whose request for international protection has been denied and they are currently living without papers in Spain, as government sources confirm to elDiario.es. Given the increase in requests for international protection in recent years, this temporary route is expected to bring out of hiding tens of thousands of migrants who lost their papers due to the rejection of their requests.
The reform aims to simplify the complex bureaucratic processes related to residence and work permits, shorten deadlines and reduce some of their requirements, which will facilitate the regularization of thousands of people also through the ordinary route. Among other changes, the new regulation reformulates the routes currently provided by law so that people living illegally in Spain can obtain a temporary residence and work permit, known as the roots route.
One of the most notable developments is the reduction in the length of time an undocumented migrant must have lived in Spain to begin processing a residence permit based on their “social roots”. A change reduced from three to two years which, although it may seem minor, can benefit people who arrived irregularly in Spain two years ago and who would no longer have to wait another year in hiding to request authorization. The ministry intends to “give priority to family ties with legal residents” and “relax the authorization of economic means”.
The figures formerly known as “social roots” and “working class roots” are merging into the new “socio-working class roots”. To request it, beneficiaries must present, as before, an offer of an employment contract, even if the minimum duration of this contract is reduced, from 30 to 20 hours per week. It will also make it possible to present several concatenated contracts for seasonal jobs in order to add to the minimum hours required.
The text includes a new regularization route, called “second chance root”, which makes it possible to regularize people who had a residence permit in the two years preceding the application but were unable to renew it “for other reasons”. as public order, security or health”. “. For example, people who did not respect the renewal deadline because they were on vacation outside Spain. This mechanism therefore broadens the scope of arraigo to cases of recent administrative irregularities, which until now had barely been considered.
Initially, in the first draft submitted for public consultation in July, this figure also included a second hypothesis of beneficiaries: asylum seekers who, after having resided regularly in the country for a certain time, found themselves without papers. due to a negative response. to your request for protection.
However, this point was modified after the suspicions expressed within the Government during its processing and consultation with different ministries. The Ministry of the Interior has always warned against the presumed risk of “instrumentalization” of asylum requests as a means of obtaining a residence permit. The result is the introduction of a transitional route which, although it will allow the regularization of thousands of people without major requirements, will ultimately not provide a stable route of access to documentation for this group.
This transitional route will grant a temporary residence and work permit based on roots to those who find themselves in an irregular situation at the time of entry into force of the new regulation, provided that they register an asylum application and that this -it is finally rejected. A previous version of the rule provided that it was enough to prove six months of residence in Spain, as reported by El País, although this media could not confirm whether this period of stay is maintained as a requirement in the latest version. of the text which will reach the Council of Ministers. In 2023 alone, 163,218 people requested international protection in Spain.
The regulatory reform carried out in 2022 introduced the roots of training, which allow irregular migrants residing in Spain for two years to access a temporary residence permit, but not a work permit, with the aim to follow training that could open doors in sectors lacking labor. After completing the course, beneficiaries could apply for a residence and work card if they got a job offer in the sector on which the course was based. However, thousands of people have not been able to obtain this transfer from one authorization to another due to certain deficiencies detected in the application of the mechanism.
With the new “socio-formative roots” included in the regulations, the department headed by Elma Sáiz says it is seeking to correct the cracks identified over these two years. Government sources say the changes will provide “more flexibility” in the accreditation of course registrations. For example, if the registration had an official deadline for its formalization, the request for authorization for socio-formative rooting must be submitted within two months preceding the start of this deadline. Registration documents can be accredited up to 3 months after authorization is granted. The types of training accepted are also expanded, including basic levels and compulsory training for adults.
Family roots, expanded during the 2022 regulatory amendment, are very limited in the new regulations. After becoming one of the figures by which the greatest number of people were regularized last year, thanks to the granting of stay to ascending and descending relatives without practically any financial conditions, it is now limited to minors and to disabled people of nationality of other countries of the country. EU, EEA or Switzerland.
The new regulations reserve the greatest scope of family reunification for the creation of a specific regime for foreign parents of citizens of Spanish nationality. As one of the preliminary versions of the document explains, this figure, common in other community countries, did not exist in Spain and, in 2022, an attempt was made to regulate from family roots, expanding the hypotheses existing.
“However, this figure faces significant limitations. Its exceptional character and its own configuration as roots do not allow us to speak correctly of a status of family member for a full Spanish citizen,” they explain in the reform projects. For example, reunification for residency purposes was not considered when the family member was in their country of origin or origin (since the possibility of applying for a visa was not considered), which happened if the family bond was broken or the possibility that the one member of the family could reunify.
In the case of children, they can request this authorization until the age of 26. The objective is, in addition to promoting family life, to facilitate “the integration of young people into our labor market”. Regarding the statutory procedure, a distinction is made between cases in which the Spanish citizen is in Spain and the family member is not, those in which both are outside and “exceptional cases in both of which could be found on the national territory.
The reform will also affect job search visas, the duration of which will be extended in order to increase the length of time applicants can stay in Spain to find employment and apply for their residence permit, with less risk of falling into the ‘irregularity. The regulatory change will also benefit foreign students, by easing the transition from study permits to residence and work permits.
The regulatory change will be approved this Tuesday while the development of a bill continues, promoted by civil society, for extraordinary regularization with practically no conditions for all people who reside illegally in Spain. Although the Ministry of Inclusion positively appreciates the debate on this initiative in Congress, it is committed to regulatory reforms such as the regulation because it considers it a “more stable” means of regularization and with more “security legal “.
However, the citizen movement Regularization Now insists on the need for generalized regularization without conditions, without linking it to the labor market, so that the humanitarian approach prevails over what they consider to be a “utilitarian” point of view with which they fear ending up leaving the country. “A lot of people behind.”
