The Council of Ministers of Spain approved this Tuesday reform to the regulation of the Immigration Law that will allow incorporate thousands of foreigners into the labor market. Promoted by the Ministry of Migration, the initiative not only opens new ways for immigrants already living in Spain to regularize themselves and work legally but also will make it easier for employers to hire foreigners in their countries of origin.
This reform, indicated the Minister of Migration, José Luis Escrivá, aims to promote “regular, orderly and safe migration”through measures aimed at “improving the procedures of the Spanish migratory model, in many cases slow and inadequate, which generates prolonged periods of irregularity, with high social and economic costs”.
In turn, it is a formula that will allow the submerged economy to flourish after the coronavirus pandemic and alleviate labor shortage in key sectors such as transport, construction, hospitality and digitization.
Reform
The measure, which will enter into force in 20 days, has as a priority expand and improve the hiring of foreigners in origin, especially collective bargaining, until now limited to temporary jobs. As reported by the newspaper The countryfrom the approval of the text “these workers will be offered a four-year work authorization that will allow them to work for nine months for each year: if the workers return to their countries at each end of the season, they will be rewarded with a residence and work authorization for two years, extendable, with which they will be able to live and work in Spain as an employee and on their own”.
Also the model for hiring professionals from their countries of origin will be modified, which in Spain is determined by a catalog of occupations that are difficult to cover (ship, trainers and elite athletes, for example) that does not respond to reality. “The new regulation implies changing the way in which this catalog is prepared, updating it every three months, reducing deadlines and making contracting more flexible in sectors that will be determined, depending on the situation, by the Ministry of Economic Affairs,” explained the local newspaper.
The initiative also foresees a benefit for the nearly 50,000 students from countries outside the European Union who enroll in Spain every year: from now on will be allowed to work up to 30 hours per week and it will be easier for them to stay in the country to work when they finish their training.
It will also create a legal figure so that immigrants who have been in an irregular situation for at least two years have a way to obtain their papers. “This is the rooting by training with which a residence permit will be offered to train in occupations in which labor is needed and that, later, will allow work if the foreigner obtains a work contract,” the Spanish newspaper specified.
resistors
The new rule, which also favors family reunification, was approved this Tuesday despite some technical objections from the Ministry of Territorial Policy, which fears a saturation of the Immigration offices, and the Ministry of the Interior, which went so far as to say that the mafias they will use the reform to sell Spain as a destination for irregular immigration.
The head of the Ministry of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, was also reluctant about the initiative, stating that it will be difficult to explain to our European partners and our South African neighborswho are “permanently” asked to fight “more energetically” against irregular immigration.
