Spain Decrees One‑Year Legal Status for Up to 800,000 Unauthorized Immigrants

Spain’s government has announced it will use an expedited decree to grant up to one year of legal residency and work authorization to an estimated 500,000–800,000 immigrants currently living in the country without papers, making it one of Europe’s largest recent mass regularizations. Migration Minister Elma Saiz said Tuesday that foreigners who arrived before Dec. 31, 2025, can prove at least five months’ residence, and have no criminal record will be able to apply between April and the end of June 2026. The move, struck in a deal between Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialists and the leftist Podemos party, bypasses a stalled parliamentary bill and is being cheered by migrant-rights and Catholic groups that gathered 700,000 signatures for a similar initiative born during the COVID-19 pandemic. Podemos MEP Irene Montero explicitly contrasted the measure with the Trump administration’s hard-line enforcement in the U.S., “particularly in Minnesota,” underscoring how Spain is positioning itself as a counterexample to U.S. and European crackdowns. For U.S. audiences, the policy will offer a live test of whether large-scale legalization for long‑resident workers in key sectors like agriculture and services can be sold domestically and managed administratively at a time when Washington is moving in the opposite direction.