The PP’s change of heart in its discourse on immigration has caused contradictions in recent weeks with the autonomous regions where it governs. While Alberto Núñez Feijóo has hardened his positions, given the resistance of Vox in the polls and the emergence of Alvise Pérez in national politics, some of his supporters have asked the central government for greater facilities to be able to hire migrants due to the lack of workers in some sectors.
Towards the end of the summer, the leader of the opposition accused the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, of encouraging a “call effect” with his tour of several African countries to establish immigration control measures. Feijóo had already launched a harsh speech against immigration in the Catalan campaign, when he linked this phenomenon to the squatting of houses and at the end of July his party rejected the reform of the Immigration Law that sought to establish a mechanism for distributing migrant minors from the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla to other communities.
The PP, as in other matters, is constantly contradicting itself on the subject of immigration. Just a few months ago, the party voted in favour of Congress beginning the process of a popular legislative initiative for the regularisation of almost half a million migrants, although in that same debate it clarified that it would amend the text.
A few days ago, the PP gave details about this modification to introduce, as the extreme right usually does when speaking about this issue, links with crime.
“One by one, case by case, knowing their circumstances. Those who are working, those who come to undertake a life project in Spain will have their reality reflected in this bill. Those who, in other circumstances, whether with a criminal record or who come to this country for other things, obviously should not be included,” said the party’s spokesman, Borja Sémper, at a press conference in early September.
During his tour of Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia, the Prime Minister announced a “circular migration” programme, a mechanism for hiring workers in their countries of origin in sectors with more difficulties in filling vacancies, such as agriculture and construction. Once their contract ends – a fixed-term contract, which cannot last more than nine months each year – the employee must return home.
A program that is nothing new, one that PP governments have used in the past and that Feijóo himself had even defended until Sánchez’s trip. Despite this, the party came out in force after the president’s words. “It is a clear call for illegal immigration” that causes “hundreds of deaths” for which Sánchez is “jointly responsible,” said the parliamentary spokesman, Miguel Tellado, in an interview on esRadio. “A complete nonsense,” he added.
PP governments ask for facilities to hire migrants
But as in other matters such as regional funding, the party’s position at the state level is one thing and the needs of the governments in the territories are another. And in this gap contradictions also arise. Regional governments such as Galicia, La Rioja, Extremadura and Castilla y León have asked in recent weeks for greater flexibility to regularise migrants who can fill jobs with a higher level of vacancies.
The number of unfilled jobs has been on the rise in Spain in recent years and is at record levels for at least a decade. According to the National Institute of Statistics, with data from the first quarter of this year, there were 149,962 unfilled jobs in Spain. At the end of 2023, the biggest gaps were in public administration and in “wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles”.
In an attempt to fill these gaps in the labour market – a phenomenon that increases as economic activity grows and salaries improve – some autonomous regions are asking the central government for greater facilities for hiring migrants or implementing their own programmes along these lines.
The Ministry of Social Security and Inclusion, during the José Luis Escrivá administration, promoted a reform of the regulations of the Immigration Law that sought to facilitate access to the labour market for thousands of foreigners in Spain, through the reduction of formalities and the creation of new channels to request employment permits. The regulatory change was approved with the aim of expanding hiring in origin, allowing foreign students to work, making it more flexible for small foreign entrepreneurs to start businesses and, finally, creating a new way for people in an irregular situation to obtain papers through training courses in sectors that need personnel.
The Ministry, now headed by Elma Saiz, has been working for months on a new modification of the regulation. The public hearing period for the presentation of objections ended on September 10. The new text seeks, among other things, to ease the bureaucratic obstacles faced by immigrants in order to access a residence or a work contract.
Galicia
This is one of the avenues that the president of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda, recently insisted on when presenting an extension of the Galician training programme. The new edition will be endowed with one million euros and is expected to reach some 150 people. Rueda, who described the arrival of migrants to Galicia within the distribution between territories as a “flood without criteria”, maintains that the formula of training for employment “works” and “has to be part of the solution” that his government defends.
“The programme was very well received and more than a hundred migrants participated in this first edition and received training in hospitality, social health care, construction or work in rural areas, which are the sectors in which they can have more employability. 100% obtained a residence permit thanks to this training programme based on roots. And 70% currently have a permanent job,” said Rueda on 2 September when announcing the extension of the programme.
The Xunta believes it is necessary to make training more flexible as a way to regularise migrants, but “as long as this process is linked to training for employment and with comprehensive support” to seek “the complete integration of the person in the territory”.
The Galician government’s objections to the new regulations include more flexible requirements for migrants to enter the labour market in sectors where there are difficulties in finding labour, such as fishing or agriculture. It also calls for “more reasonable time frames” in the processing of applications by the central government.
Estremadura
The Extremadura Regional Government plans to formally request the central government to provide greater facilities for the hiring of foreign labour. This is a demand that the main agricultural organisations have forwarded to the Minister of Economy, Guillermo Santamaría, who has promised to defend it in Madrid as it is a state competence.
However, there are differences of opinion among employers. Although they all advocate making up for the lack of workers with migrants, Apag Asaja and Asaja Cáceres focus on unemployment benefits, which, in their opinion, discourage hiring, and UPA-UCE proposes hiring migrants who are already established.
But the countryside is not the only one that sees immigration as a solution to the lack of labour. The employers’ association of the construction industry in Extremadura has also called for the incorporation of migrant workers. According to the sector, 9,000 professionals are needed in that community, which is causing a slowdown in works that are already underway and a reduction in the planned promotions.
The president of the Extremadura Construction Confederation, Carlos Izquierdo de Tapia, advocated in a meeting this summer with the Government delegate to “legalize the situation of these people” in order to hire them and added that, although “there are those who criticize that they come [las personas migrantes] Others seek to integrate them into society and the sector is clear that it needs manpower, as it is a serious problem.”
Rioja
In the Government of La Rioja, Gonzalo Capellán, it is evident that there is a lack of labor in some sectors, especially those related to important agricultural campaigns for La Rioja such as fruit picking, pepper picking or grape harvesting, which is why they see the need to review the current regulations.
Once the draft of the reform promoted by the Ministry has been analysed, the local government reports that the Department of Education and Employment will meet with the sector to agree on a series of contributions in order to facilitate hiring and ensure the necessary presence of labour.
“The agricultural sector is special, and therefore the treatment must be equally special and adapted to the circumstances of the agricultural campaigns,” said these sources.
Castile and Leon
Castilla y León has also recently addressed the issue of immigration, in terms similar to those of its colleagues in Extremadura and Galicia. “We are clearly in favour of people coming from outside Spain to Spain being associated with the world of employment,” said this week the spokesman for the regional government, Carlos Fernández Carriedo, to advocate for “an orderly immigration” with people arriving with “a work contract” and allowing them to “integrate socially”, with the aim of covering the demand for workers in jobs that are difficult to fill.
The minister explained that the “reality” is that there are “thousands of jobs” in Castilla y León that are vacant and that the companies themselves report this shortage to the regional administration. That is why, in order to cover this demand, he has called for an “effort” both from Castilla y León and at a national level to “improve the training and qualification of workers to fill these jobs”. “This issue is a national debate that will have to be debated where appropriate”, say sources from the Vice-Presidency of Castilla y León.
With information from Santiago Manchado, Olivia García, Alba Camazón, Erena Calvo, Javier Ramajo and the Galicia edition.
Source: www.eldiario.es
