The law that seeks to regularize more than half a million migrants has already completed a year of parliamentary process. An anniversary without much to celebrate. The negotiations are still stuck and there has barely have movement in recent months to write a text that puts according to the complicated parliamentary majority of the investiture. Add set messages to the PSOE to activate the most reluctant partners to approve these regulations.
Regularization came to Congress in the form of popular initiative. A text that collected more than 600,000 signatures and that has the support of 900 social organizations. The rule began to be processed with a surprising majority, 310 votes in favor, including those of the PP, and the only rejection of Vox. In that session, however, the groups that supported discussing the text already anticipated differences that a year later continue to block the negotiation.
All the voices consulted agree that the negotiations are stopped and there are hardly any advances. The groups that try to build a text that serves to prepare a report in the presentation, the previous step before the work in the commission, have gathered several times, but fail to break the contradictions between the amendments already presented.
The only significant step in all these months started from an agreement at the beginning of the political course between adding and PSOE to unlock the law, exhaust the period of amendments and activate the presentation phase. But even that step forward also involved problems: the observations that recorded the texts such as PNV and Juns enraged the movement that promoted the initiative.
The text that gathered the signatures and that began to process Congress a year ago is committed to extraordinary regularization without conditions, that allows the papers to be achieved to those who failed to obtain the residence due to the difficulty to meet the different requirements included in the ordinary route.
The amendments presented by JUNTS and PNV seek to incorporate criteria for those who try to benefit from the procedure: contract requirements or job offer or have been previously employed or be asylum seeker, among others. The regularization campaign already fears that parliamentary process ends the original approach of its proposal, giving way to another “exclusive” and asks that future negotiations conclude with the “respect for the essence” of the initiative.
Sources from some parliamentary groups on the left consider that these amendments can also produce a “trapicheo” at the time of hiring and remember that there are many people who are working, but have no contract.
The same leaders point out, on the other hand, that there is a blockade by Junts, which is waiting for the pact that sealed with the Socialist Party for the transfer of immigration powers to Catalonia, a law that both forces recorded in Congress, but has not yet taken the first steps. Some sources consulted trust that the process can pave things even if that drags a paradox: the transfer of competitions does not have the support of many of the leftist parties in Parliament.
Some groups on the left consider that everything actually depends on the will of the Socialist Party. Throughout the legislature, they remember, the Government has achieved support for several initiatives in exchange for important commitments with Junts and other Congress forces. Proof of this is the law to transfer immigration powers to Catalonia, which was born from a pact with Junts in exchange for its abstention to one of the first decrees that the Executive brought to the lower house. The feeling that the voices consulted have is that if the socialists push the law, it will end.
In recent days, the spokeswoman to add in Congress, Verónica Martínez, directly appealed to the Socialists.
“There can be no more delays or the proposal that reached the plenary can be decaffeinated, we ask the PSOE for the processing, or you are with rights and coexistence or you are with racism,” the spokeswoman, the spokesperson for adding, the spokesperson for the initiative, on the initiative, on a hard year. “An ILP that demands something as simple as women, boys and girls stop being in a situation of hiding,” he insisted on a press conference.
The PSOE is limited to moving that they continue to speak with all the forces waiting for a new meeting of the presentation.
The regularization movement already denounces “lack of will”
The regularization already denounces the “lack of will” to carry out its proposal of law. After a year with hardly any advances, who are behind the campaign say they are frustrated by the paralysis of the process. “We feel frustration more than disappointment. Because there is no real answer. No one is encouraged to say ‘this is not going to be done.’ Why don’t you say? They have not wanted to sit to respond to citizens, and the Citizen Movement that is behind the ILP is still here,” says Edith Espinola, one of the spokesmen of the platform.
The government’s socialist wing has never been in favor of extraordinary regularization and with hardly any conditions, such as that raised by the ‘regularization already’ movement. Its approach is committed to “flexible” the general requirements for permits linked to roots, one of the few ways that the regulations contemplate to grant the residence card to people without papers, which requires at least two years of survival in Spain in a clandestine way before starting to request it or a job contract offer.
Since 2020, the PSOE has defended the individualized study of each case and reduce the required conditions to give residence and work permits in Spain. With that supposed objective, the Government approved last November a reform of the Regulation of the Foreigner Law, which will enter into force on May 20. And it is to this extent that the head of Migrations is shield again and again, Elma Saiz, every time they ask him about his position on extraordinary regularization. From their department, although they say it is valued the parliamentary “debate” on the initiative arising from a citizen movement, they argue that the entry into force of the new legal framework will give a more “stable” solution to access the authorizations.
According to the calculations of the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migrations, the new standard will facilitate the regularization of 300,000 people. However, the reform multiplies obstacles to the regularization of a specific group: asylum seekers whose protection demand is denied. In practice, these new demands can push thousands of people living and work regularly in Spain. A dozen organizations – among those found by the Children, Cáritas, Red welcomes or Cear – have resorted to the regulatory change before the Supreme Court.
While the Executive defends the new regulation as a solution, the group that promoted the ILP fears the possible negative effects of the reform. “We are very aware of what will happen as of May 20 -the effect of their entry into force.”
“If people could regularize with the Law of Foreigners that already exists, our proposal would not be needed. But many do not get a contract with the requirements they ask, they work but not under the required conditions … you have to take into account the specific cases of people who will not reach those minimums. And that is what they are not doing,” concludes Espinola.
Source: www.eldiario.es
