Undocumented migrants celebrate Spain's plan to legalise their status

Undocumented migrants living in Spain have welcomed a government decision to offer hundreds of thousands of people a way to stay in the country legally.

Madrid earlier this week said it would grant residency and work permits to all foreigners who arrived in the country before 31 December 2025, have lived there for at least five months, and have a clear criminal record.

Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says that – far from being a drain on social services as critics claim – migrants play a crucial role in keeping the country’s welfare state standing.

Bringing half a million workers into the formal economy, he argues, will only strengthen the country’s social security system.

The extraordinary move contrasts sharply with the harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric and deportation efforts ramping up in the United States and much of the European Union.

Hussain Dar, an immigrant from Pakistan, has been in Spain for almost a year and is struggling without a residency or work permit.

He moved there after completing his Master's degree in the United Kingdom where he failed to extend his residency due to harsher immigration laws.

Unable to legally work in Spain yet, he’s used up all his savings to get by, sold his computer, and is now thinking of selling his phone.

He’s slept on Barcelona beach a few nights after being unable to pay his rent. But now at least there is hope.

"It's really beneficial for us, and a lot of people who are away from their families, they would be able to go back to their country and then come here for round two," he said while waiting in a queue outside the Pakistani consulate in Barcelona to get his criminal record certificate.

Dar is among some 15,000 Pakistani citizens estimated to live in the north-eastern region of Catalonia illegally, who could potentially benefit from Spain’s move, said Murad Ali Wazir, Pakistan's consul general in Barcelona.

“Mostly the undocumented people working here, who are used to being exploited, they could not find jobs, they are being documented. So it's a part of general amnesty which is declared by the [Spanish] government," he said.

The window to apply for legal residency in Spain is short, from April and to the end of June. To make sure everyone gets their required criminal record certificates in time, the consulate is opening until 11pm and even on weekends.

“I didn’t expect that this country was going to be so good, the weather, the people, the culture,” Dar said.

Spain's Minister of Migration has vowed that the government's mass regularisation effort will be efficient, with extra resources dedicated to process applications in a maximum of three months.