Pedro Sánchez has repeatedly rejected the claim that migrants are a burden on public services.
As images of violent immigration raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Minnesota fill our screens, carried out under the orders of an increasingly authoritarian government, Spain is charting a radically different course on immigration.
While much of Europe and the United States harden their borders amid the rise of the far right, Spain’s left-wing government is preparing to grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has not only defended immigration on moral grounds, but framed it as an economic necessity, one essential to sustaining Spain’s welfare state in the face of an ageing population.
Under the plan, around 500,000 people currently living and working in Spain without documentation will be regularised. Foreign nationals with clean criminal records who arrived before the end of 2025 and can prove they have lived in Spain for at least five months will be eligible for a renewable one-year residency permit. Those who applied for asylum before December 31 will also be able to apply. Applications are expected to open in April and run through June.
This would be Spain’s first mass regularisation programme in more than 20 years. The policy originated from a popular legislative initiative signed by roughly 700,000 citizens and backed by hundreds of civil society organisations, including the Catholic Church.
The move comes as Spain stands out as Europe’s strongest economic performer. While much of the Eurozone remains stuck in low growth, Spain posted GDP growth of approximately 3.2 percent in 2024, far outpacing its peers. In September, the government raised its 2025 growth forecast to 2.7 percent, citing strong domestic demand and rising investment. By contrast, Germany, France and Italy are expected to grow at barely 1 to 1.5 percent, leaving Spain in a league of its own.
This booming economy has drawn thousands of working-age migrants to Spain, many of whom currently labour in the underground economy. Undocumented workers, largely from North Africa and Latin America, are employed on construction sites, in restaurants and shops, on farms, and in private homes, caring for children, cleaning and cooking. They are indispensable to key sectors of the Spanish economy yet excluded from basic labour protections and social security contributions.
Sánchez has repeatedly rejected the claim that migrants are a burden on public services. On the contrary, he argues, bringing half a million workers into the formal economy will strengthen Spain’s social security system, under severe strain from an ageing population and falling birth rates.
Government data shows that the 76,200 jobs added in the final quarter of 2025, 52,500 were filled by people born abroad. That same quarter saw Spain record its lowest unemployment rate in 18 years.
“If you look at the demographic decline, the fertility rate in Spain is the lowest in Europe – so it’s really, really low,” said Jasmijn Slootjes, deputy director of the Migration Policy Institute Europe.
“There were a lot of skill shortages, labour shortages, and de facto a lot of irregular migrants are working, although in informal work. And through regularising you can, of course, get more tax payments, and you also get better matching [to] their skills – because people can actually work at their skill level. So it’s a very pragmatic approach.”
While Spain is not immune to the nativist backlash seen across Europe and the United States, fuelled domestically by the far-right Vox party, anti-immigration sentiment remains comparatively muted.
A 2025 report by the Spanish think tank Funcas found that public support for immigration was among the highest in Europe, with just 28 percent of respondents favouring restrictions in 2024.
“Even during years when unemployment exceeded 25 percent, support for immigration remained largely stable,” the report noted.
In a time when when much of the West is turning inward, Spain’s betting that openness, not exclusion, is the path to economic resilience and social stability is, it seems, paying off.
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