It is an almost mathematical certainty. In the opposition, the right promises hard hand in the management of immigration and always accuses the leftist governments of causing an “effect called” with their policies. The official data of the last 40 years, however, disassemble that discourse and reflect a balance that makes the immigration management of successive executives, regardless of their political color. From 1986 to 2005, for example, nine extraordinary regularization processes were carried out, five under executives of the PP and another four with socialist administrations. And the total number of regularized people is practically identical.
From Felipe González to Rajoy, passing through Aznar and Zapatero, popular and socialists have carried out extraordinary regularizations of hundreds of thousands of people and have issued work or residence permits and expulsion orders in numbers also very similar. According to experts, however, the influence of the ultra -right in the global public debate and in the electoral strategy of the Popular Party does now make the hypothesis of a paradigm shift that implies the path drawn for four decades.
“The current system is not reasonable, because anyone can enter illegally and, without the willingness to work, register, ask for the roots without permanence or contract requirements, and then ask for aid such as the minimum vital income,” said Alberto Núñez Feijóo last week in the conclave organized in Murcia with popular autonomous presidents to harden his anti -infraction speech. The opposition leader continued to feet together the Ultra argument that it is the migrants who collapse public resources and who more committed more. Because it is just this issue, that of immigration, which was chosen months ago on Genoa Street to try to plug the permanent escape of vox voters who point out almost all surveys.
In that encounter in Murcia with its regional leaders, Feijóo rescued the visa for points from the drawer, a proposal already aerated other times by the PP but never executed. “Serious crimes will imply that the right of residence is lost. And repeat crimes, even if they are mild, cannot be rewarded with permanence in Spain. If they do not comply with the law, they will leave the country,” he promised.
Official statistics throw any of the mantras that argue that it is the migrants who receive the most public aid and that the crime data is directly related to the foreign population. According to the National Statistics Institute, in 2005 there were 3.7 million foreigners in Spain and today, 20 years later, they are almost double and reach seven million. And the crime rate is nine points lower since then, according to the data of the Ministry of Interior. The last available report of minimum insertion income of the 2021-2023, and that collects the aid that are granted to people at risk of social exclusion, indicates that of the 305,340 holders, only 26.1% had foreign nationality.
The PP, more regularization processes than the PSOE
Beyond the current fixed photo, the review of the migratory policies deployed from the first government of Felipe González to the present day show that, in broad strokes, the road map of the different administrations has been shared. And that, therefore, it is not true that the left opens the borders or that the right closes them to lime and singing.
“Immigration is a very recent experience in Spain that has occurred since the late 90s, at that time we have received more than ten million people who came from outside. And it is a process that has occurred and has been absorbed with a naturalness and with a very striking softness compared to other cases of our environment. I think that part of that has to do precisely with the regularity with which this issue has been discussed from different administrations, regardless Gonzalo Fanjul, research director of the Porcausa Foundation, economist and international development specialist explains.
From 1986 to 2005, nine extraordinary regularizations for migrants who arrived in the country without order documentation have occurred in Spain. Of these, five occurred with governments of the PP (all with Aznar) and four under socialist administrations. The first one was carried out in 1986 Felipe González and led to the regularization of almost 40,000 people. Before leaving La Moncloa, González also carried out two other regularizations of 115,000 foreigners between 1991 and 1992.
The president who executed more extraordinary regularization processes was José María Aznar. In total, five regularizations to which more than half a million foreign persons between 1996 and 2001 were hosted. The most numerous, on the other hand, was the 2005 of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to which almost 580,000 migrants could be hosted. In total, 1.2 million regularized people from 1986 to 2005 in almost identical proportions between governments of PSOE and PP.
“There is a shared model in immigration management, among other things because the European Union has been adopting political directives shared by the two great parties. It must of the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid (CEAR).
Although the data from the Ministry of Interior are diffuse and incomplete and no details of the 80s and 90s are offered, experts also agree that there are no substantial differences in the figures of expulsion orders or repatriations of irregular immigrant people between the different governments. The latest statistics published thanks to the Transparency Law, collected by the data verification agency Neutral, The number of migrants expelled from Spain from 2005 to 2023 under the governments of Zapatero, Rajoy and Pedro Sánchez.
Ultra speech
What human rights organizations and experts in migratory movements fear is that the xenophobic and anti -immigration wave that runs through Europe this time this time implies a flying in the policies deployed in Spain for 40 years. And not because the PP again raises the tone from the opposition, something recurrent, but by a growing influence of extreme right forces as Vox in the strategy itself designed by the popular as an alternative of government.
“The migratory issue has now become a political battlefield and that will be a problem. By the way, absolutely artificial,” says Gonzalo Fanjul, which puts the focus on sociological studies such as CIS reflect a meteoric evolution of immigration as a problem for citizenship, an issue that did not even appear among the concerns of the Spaniards just five years ago.
“Society is being pushed to consider as a problem something that was naturally considered as such. And here the Popular Party moves with many difficulties, because, on the one hand, it is trying to make winks to voters more to the right that have a sensitivity similar to Vox's arguments regarding the issue of security and identity. But, at the same time, the Popular Party is a government party where the entrepreneurs have voice. Economic point of view, your people can be stirred.
Although from the UN Agency for refugees in Spain (UNHCR) avoid positioning themselves on political approaches regarding immigration management, its spokesman warns that no measure aimed at restricting the rights of migrants in Spanish sleep will alter the underlying problem. “The movements of refugees respond, above all, to expulsion factors in countries of origin, for armed conflicts, persecution for reasons, for example, of religion, politicians, for being a woman or member of the LGTBIQ+ community or for humanitarian crises. In the case of Spain, the peaks of asylum requests in recent years are explained mainly by crises in countries of Latin America or the central Sahel. International those who determine the arrival of people in search of protection, not internal measures in Spain, ”explains Paula Barrachina.
Since the popular legislative initiative backed by 800,000 citizen signatures to promote extraordinary regularization of migrants who has not run for 20 years, its processing remains stranded in Congress, arrived a year and a half ago to Congress. Disputes between some government partners and the drift of parties such as Juns, which competes in anti -immigration speech with the Xenophobic Aliança Catalan, keep a measure blocked that, according to data from Porcausa, could get out of the legal limbo to almost half a million people who already live and work in Spain in an irregular situation that does not give them right to almost anything.
Since adding they require the PSOE to unlock the processing and drives it from the Council of Ministers as Zapatero already did in 2005: with a royal decree that does not need to be valid in the Congress of Deputies. In Moncloa, for now, they discard that way. The PP, who voted for his day in consideration, has already announced his vote against.