The question of how many people currently live in an irregular situation in Spain is very difficult to answer due to the very nature of the phenomenon, but the latest studies and data from the entities that care for these immigrants indicate that there are hundreds of thousands.
The Esenciales network, promoter of the popular legislative initiative (ILP) for the extraordinary regularization of immigrants, which collected more than 600,000 signatures of support and managed to get underway this Tuesday in Congress by passing the first parliamentary procedure, estimates that it is about 500,000 people. This data comes from an estimate made by the Por Causa Foundation, one of the promoters of Esenciales. The latest updated figures reveal that between 405,000 and 446,000 migrants were residing without papers in Spain at the end of 2021, but those responsible for the study consider that this figure is deflated by the pandemic.
“I feel very calm saying that the estimate has most likely returned to around half a million people,” said Gonzalo Fanjul, director of Research at the Por Causa Foundation, in an interview with EFE.
The figures “hit the ground” at the end of the great crisis in Spain, back in 2014 and, from then on, “grew rapidly” to a peak in 2019 to fall back into the pandemic: “and the foreseeable, and those are the data that we do not have, it is that this has risen again later,” Fanjul explained.
According to these sources, around 12% of non-EU migrants living in Spain are in an irregular administrative situation. The way in which the entity has arrived at this data is, first of all, by comparing the figures from the registry and the official residence permits.
According to the latest figures made public by the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, around 2.9 million non-EU foreigners had permission to reside in Spain at the end of 2023 and the latest data from the INE register, from January From 2023, they pick up around 3.9 million foreigners from outside the EU.
Assuming that there is a one-year difference between both figures, the comparison of both statistical sources would reveal the existence of around one million foreigners from outside the EU registered in Spain and without papers.
However, it is not advisable to stop at a simple subtraction: the crossing of other data such as the Active Population Survey or Social Security affiliations serves to “buffer the limitations of the registry” – for example, citizens who registered, but no longer they do not live in Spain – and would end up reducing the figure to practically half.
The social entities that care for these migrants, often in extreme vulnerability, do not have global data, but they also give some clues about the dimension of the phenomenon: Cáritas alone served about 500,000 people in an irregular situation in 2022, 43% more than in 2019.
According to data from the Esenciales network, 81% of the total group are Latin American people, with a predominance of women, young people and children; They estimate that in Spain 112,000 minors under 16 years of age are irregular. This outlined profile breaks some stereotypes, as highlighted by the coordinator of the For a Fairer World party and one of the main promoters of the ILP, Jorge Serrano.
“We have to get rid of the image we have that all irregular immigration are people who are jumping the fence or coming in boats, that is not the case: the reality is that the typical profile is a woman between 25 and 35 years old, many times with children in their care, who generally work in domestic service,” explains the activist.
Last year there was a spike in irregular arrivals in Spain of 82.1%, especially due to boats arriving in the Canary Islands, but this dangerous entry route continues to be a minority among the migrant population living irregularly in Spain.
The most common thing is that these people enter Spanish territory through Madrid’s Barajas airport and, at the end of their tourist permit, fall into a situation of “unforeseen irregularity.”
The mechanism contemplated by the Immigration Regulations in Spain so that a migrant can regularize their situation is roots. It can be granted because the interested person has been living in Spain for three years, because they have an employment relationship or certain family ties in the country or, since the summer of 2022, because they are committed to completing regulated training for a specific occupation.
According to a recent report from the Migration Ministry, as of December 31, 2023, 210,334 people in Spain had this type of authorization. Of the total, 9% (16,787) had previously obtained some type of permit and then fell into irregularity and the rest (193,547) did not have any prior authorization in Spain.
Compared to the previous year, these permits have increased by 68%, especially those for family roots, with a growth of 185% (86,204 people).
The average time of these people in irregularity is 2.9 years – 1.2 years less than in 2022 – and the most represented nationalities are Colombia (46,499) and Morocco (35,079), with a growth in the last year of 80 % and 76%, respectively.
