Spain’s immigration offices are threatening to strike next week in response to Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s amnesty plans for at least half a million migrants living in Spain without documentation.
Reuters reports that Spanish immigration officials consider the country’s systems unprepared for dealing with the volume of applications likely to be received.
Online applications for the amnesty are due to open tomorrow (Thursday) after Spain’s Council of Ministers approved the plans this week.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants will be able to apply for residency, provided they meet basic residency criteria such as having been in the country for five months.
In announcing the approval this week, Mr Sanchez said that it initiates a process of “extraordinary regularisation of people in an irregular situation in our country”.
“An act of normalisation, of recognising the reality of nearly half a million people who already form part of our daily life. And, also, an act of justice and a necessity.
“We recognise rights, but we also demand obligations. That those who already form part of our day-to-day do so under equal conditions, contributing to the sustenance of our country and our model of coexistence.
“Today, once again, I feel proud to be Spanish,” Mr Sanchez wrote on social media.
The Spanish PM additionally justified the move on economic grounds, writing that “Spain is ageing… Without more people working and contributing to the economy, our prosperity slows and our public services suffer”.
However, Reuters reports that immigration offices across the country have threatened to strike from Tuesday next week, a day after the in-person applications are due to open.
They do so in protest at the lack of resources devoted to the process.
“The government is once again implementing a new regularisation without giving offices enough economic resources to handle it,” Reuters reported Cesar Perez, a union leader for Spain’s immigration officers, as saying.
According to a Spanish union, just five of the country’s dozens of immigration offices will be tasked with processing the applications, the rest of the workload being distributed amongst a variety of bodies, including social security offices and NGOs.
Meanwhile, Spain’s plan has resulted in calls from some European politicians for a suspension of the Schengen system, or its reorganisation.
In neighbouring France, President of the National Rally Jordan Bardella responded to Spain’s amnesty plans by saying that the “Spanish socialist government, one of the most lax in Europe, has decided on the mass regularization of more than 500,000 illegal immigrants”.
“Tomorrow, they will be able to travel freely in France and even settle there, drawn by the generosity of our social system, which is open without conditions.
“This unacceptable and cynical decision must lead, in a first step, to suspending Schengen, and, over the longer term, to reserving freedom of movement exclusively for European citizens,” Mr Bardella said.
Similarly, Vice President of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group Charlie Weimers MEP posted on social media to say “shut Spain out Schengen”.
Spain last carried out a large-scale amnesty for migrants living in Spain without papers in 2005, under Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
On that occasion, almost 600,000 migrant workers were granted legal status.