Spain in their quest for regular immigration (ARI)
Topic: The result of the recent campaign of extraordinary regularization Spanish suggests that immigration policies have been very inefficient in the past four years. This analysis seeks to quantify the magnitude of failure, as well as identifying ways to prevent the problem of illegal immigration from recurring in the future.
Summary: This paper argues that the outcome of Spain’s campaign of extraordinary regularization, which came to an end on May 7, 2005, indicates that their immigration policies have failed in terms of opportunities to regulate immigration in the range of around of 700000 people, or possibly 1-1 million dependents if they are included. For each step of this account an important story: almost no doubt that the outcome of the Spanish legislation on immigration are far removed from the intentions of the legislature. Therefore, it can be argued that the time has come for more far-reaching changes in the way that Spain has been their need for immigration. It can be argued that illegal immigration is the result of two structures of opportunity: (1) an attitude too relaxed for hiring illegal immigrants in an irregular situation, and (2) a mechanism to regulate immigration insufficient opportunities. The Spanish authorities are currently focusing on the first, I argue that there is good reason to focus on the latter.
Analysis: On Saturday, May 7, 2005, Spain completed what is probably one of the largest campaigns extraordinary regularization of illegal immigrants around the world to this date. We have not yet seen the final outcome of the process, but nearly 700000 applications have been submitted, indicating that the number of approved applications will be larger than all previous campaigns combined extraordinary regularization in Spain. What’s more, once it is granted, it is hoped that family members of the newly regularised immigrants will obtain a residence permit. The Minister of Labour and Social Affairs has indicated that the largest number of 400000 people could receive a residence permit in this “second wave” of regularization.
While it is probably hard not receive many requests for regularization in a country where the population of illegal immigrants has been estimated in the range of 1 million people, is the methodology for the regularization makes the impressive number of applications see. The campaign has not been a campaign targeting illegal immigrants. The main objective has been to change the illegal employment of illegal immigrants. What does this mean?
In principle, the process is that any employer interested in the use of a particular law of illegal immigrants the opportunity to ask the authorities to regularize the situation of immigrants. In other words, is the employer and not illegal immigrants who must apply for regularization through a formal commitment to employ illegal immigrants. In the absence of such an undertaking an illegal immigrant is unable to obtain either a work or residence permits. Since we can expect that a large proportion of employers willing to participate in this process already have some sort of “illegal” economic relations with immigrants who want to sponsor the campaign of extraordinary regularization process has been primarily a special to combat the growing black market economy.
Despite criticism from several institutions, and not least of the opposition, the fact is that 700000 illegal immigrants are in the process of becoming regular immigrants with a legal employment contract and that this is a major blow to the black market economy. From this standpoint it is very difficult not to recognize the success of the campaign in the fight against illegal employment of illegal immigrants and as a consequence of this is the lowest stock of irregular immigrants in the country. It has also shown that Spanish businessmen have a strong preference for legally hiring illegal foreign labour instead of when and if given the opportunity to access regular immigrant labour.
Given its particular methodology, there are some important lessons to be learnt from the process and in particular the astonishing results. The goal of Spain’s immigration policy over the past four years has been effective in providing an adequate number of immigrants to meet Spanish employers’ needs for foreign labour. The reason is, of course, that immigration is an important human resource that can help to generate faster and higher economic growth and prevent the recruitment shortfall in occupations that are hampered by staff shortages.
However, if this has been the target of existing policies on immigration, how is that Spanish businessmen are suddenly willing to legally contract 700000 illegal immigrants as long as they are regularized? What is more, how likely is that these employers was based on the work of these services 700000 illegal immigrants in one way or another before starting the campaign?
Obviously, this sudden demand for regularisation of illegal immigrants and to recruit legally is irrefutable proof that the mechanism for generating opportunities for regulating immigration to meet the demand for immigrant labour has been irretrievably under the dimensions and extremely inefficient in the past. The equation is simple. If the law and regulations governing the provisions to regulate immigration has actually met with legislators’ aims, not Spanish businessman probably would have bothered with the detailed and lengthy exercise of regularization of illegal immigrants, as their needs foreign labour have already been served by the legal mechanism available.
The logic of this argument in combination with the particular methodology used in the campaign indicate that while most illegal immigrants to be regularized is the biggest failure of immigration policies Spanish. We are still in a position to quantify the magnitude of that failure.
If we assume that an illegal immigrant who arrived in Spain before February 2002 and had regularized their situation through the procedure of ‘roots work “, as prescribed under Spanish law, the 700000 illegal immigrants in the process of regularization that have come most likely in Spain between February 7, 2002 and August 7, 2004 (the first to mark the start of the campaign and the latter being the deadline for eligibility for regularization - ‘roots work “basically states that proof of residency in Spain illegally for three consecutive years and possession of an offer of employment is necessary to qualify for a work permit. This procedure is virtually identical to that which applies in the campaign of extraordinary regularization, with the difference that ‘roots work’ is a permanent and continuous process of adjustment). This means that in the past two and a half years the actual demand for Spanish employers for foreign labour has been 700000 people, or around 280000 per year. At the same time, new ‘regular’ immigration per year, through the mechanisms recognized by law only accounted for more than 30000 per year including temporary workers. This is largely, Spain’s immigration policy have failed to provide around 250000 immigrants regular opportunities per year. In any measure this is a significant failure. As a result, they face a deficit immigration generated by existing policies, employers Spanish (forced by circumstances, given its willingness to turn in illegal contracts of a legal nature when given the opportunity) has given rise the satisfied their need for immigrant workers through the hiring of illegal immigrants in an irregular situation, with all the negative consequences of such laissez-faire implies.
As often happens with legislation, we need some time before they can assess how well the assumptions of a law working at the time to implement. Now, five years after the introduction of the existing legal framework on immigration, there is a strong indication that despite the good intentions inherent in most of the current law content, the final product is unable to meet in Spain immigration needs in an orderly and regular. He had worked the legal framework according to the legislators’ intentions, the campaign of regularization would have been unnecessary. Faced with this situation indisputable, it is probably the right time to consider a different approach to immigration, whether the cause of illegal immigration must be eliminated for the future.
Therefore, what the government and the opposition, and indeed any player interested in immigration, should now focus on whether or not it is not the regularization campaign has been an extraordinary success or a failure. The current government simply has done what no government would have had to do sooner or later. It has reduced a very important part of a problem caused by bad legislation. Many believe that the government chose to come to terms with the problem perhaps not the most ideal, but a compelling alternative has yet been suggested, capable of carrying surface around 700000 jobs in the economy and At the same time eliminating a very important part of the alarmingly large number of illegal immigrants. Whether the choice of method was correct or not, the question of method has been given too much attention. Instead, what now needs to be addressed is the cause of the problem and how to avoid it in future. If you do not simply mean running the risk of needing another campaign regularization extraordinary in the ordinary course of a few years.
Important Steps in this direction have already been taken. The biggest difference between the previous situation and how Spain is going to address the problem of immigration after the introduction of new regulations is to treat the illegal hiring of illegal immigrants. The idea is that doing much more difficult and more costly for illegally hiring illegal immigrants, the demand for illegal immigrants should weaken so that they and the incentives to emigrate illegally in Spain. The new strategy will be based on an increase in workplace inspections in conjunction with the imposition of heavier fines. The experience of other countries suggests that this is an effective way to combat illegal immigration. Therefore, if the strategy is implemented successfully illegal immigration should be less frequent. Obviously this is a good thing because it seems to have a political consensus that illegal immigration, and its close relationship of illegal recruitment, should be avoided.
Finally, new rules on how to implement the law that governs the legal status of foreigners and procedures to regulate immigration also introduce some changes. However, these changes are somewhat of only marginal importance, since in practice regulations only change how the existing legislation is being carried out. The law itself remains the same and therefore are the main mechanisms for generating regulate immigration. In other words, recruitment in the country of origin and ‘roots work “, that over the past four years have been the main mechanisms to regulate immigration, are kept for the time being, with only minor modifications.
The problem is that raising the stakes for illegal recruitment is only one side of the coin. No matter how successful the government is in the fight against illegal recruitment, such a measure is not cope with the demand to regulate foreign labour.
Assuming that the government is 100% successful in implementing their measures against illegal recruitment, the result would be that the Spanish businessmen would refrain from hiring illegal anyone, regardless of illegal immigrants or not. This, in turn, should effectively exclude illegal immigrants from the Spanish labour market, since it would only be able to access it through illegal employment. Under this scenario, the only means available for Spanish employers to meet their need for the recruitment of foreign labour would rely on existing mechanisms to regulate immigration, as stipulated in existing legislation. Failure to meet the demand for hiring immigrant labour regulation would result in one of two possible outcomes:
(1) Spanish companies requiring immigrant labour regulation, but unable to meet their needs would be forced to operate below capacity.
(2) Spanish companies requiring immigrant labour regulation that are unable to meet their needs for such work but are unwilling to operate below capacity, reassess the risk and costs associated with hiring illegal of illegal immigrants, as imposed by the Spanish authorities and resume hiring illegal.
Needless to say, both the damage the Spanish economy and prospects for economic growth. Moreover, the second option would simply mean a return to the situation prevailing before the campaign started regularization.
As the mechanisms for regulating regulate migration are generally the same as in the past four years, the question is: Is there reason to believe that these methods will be more effective because in the past? I think this is not the case. Of course, the annual quota for contracts in the country of origin could be adjusted upwards and the number of so-called three months searching for work visas for certain professions might be raised. But again this could have been done years ago, when the problem of illegal immigration became a problem and the black market economy began to flourish. However, nothing was done. Why? Elsewhere I have argued at some length that is the existing mechanism for regulating immigration itself, which prevents authorities correctly assessing domestic demand to regulate immigration (see immigration: a new policy priorities for Spanish, Report of the Royal Elcano Institute, 2004).
Contracting in the country of origin and the granting of work visas search limited to certain occupations, always depend on an evaluation of potential employers hired intentions. This is probably, if not impossible highly skilled occupations for which employers are willing to wait for the right candidate in turn. But when it comes to the type of occupations to which the majority of immigrants from Spain-ie, aspire, in domestic service, restaurants and hotels, and construction companies, this is a very volatile labour market sometimes with extreme turnover rates, where the needs of work must be resolved overnight. Using the authorities as an intermediate rider, needs assessment and contract at the same time provide the contractor with the necessary manpower immigrant, makes the process inefficient and rigid, while the majority of potential employers in these sectors have neither the means nor the necessary resources to predict their work even needs a short period of time ahead. Therefore, even if it is an explicit demand, is unlikely to be expressed. The result is that the government underestimates ultimately contractual requirements and consequently the number of immigrants who need to deliver.
