Illegal immigration in Spain. Let them stay

But Spanish tolerance worries the neighbours

“THE scheme has been a great success,'' declared Spain's labour minister, Jesus Caldera, last weekend. He was marking the end of the Socialist government's three-month amnesty, under which 700,000 illegal immigrants will be given work and residency permits. Unlike north European countries, which have been tightening up on immigration, Spain has taken a brave step. Yet the risk is that the amnesty will encourage more illegal immigrants - who may go beyond Spain.

The scheme was simple enough. Annually renewable residence and work permits were granted to anybody able to prove he had lived in Spain since last August, and had a six-month work contract. Ecuadoreans made up 21% of the applicants, followed by Romanians, Moroccans and Colombians. Another 400,000 residence permits may be given to relatives.

Mr Caldera forecasts that 90% of Spain's underground economy will now come to the surface. The numbers of registered workers will increase, boosting social-security payments. Health and education can be better planned, a step towards integrating the new residents. Mr Caldera insists there will be no more amnesties; he also pledges to crack down on black-market labour and to expel illegal immigrants.

The Spanish amnesty has not been popular in other EU countries. German and Dutch officials have called for an early-warning system under which EU members would inform each other of immigration initiatives. The French interior minister, Dominique de Villepin, has dismissed the notion of amnesties. The Spanish media made much of immigrants trying to enter from France. Several hundred Pakistanis living illegally in France have been thrown back there. “Spain is considered an easy ride,” says Ana Pastor, the opposition People's Party (PP) spokesman. The newspaper El Mundo writes of “avalanches of migrants, who could bring with them problems of crime and integration.''

The National Statistics Institute produced figures last month showing that Spain has now overtaken France as a favoured destination for immigrants. The numbers have quadrupled to 3.7m a year. The amnesty is unlikely to stem the flow: the stretch of water that separates Morocco from Spain represents one of the widest income differentials in the world.

Only this week the Spanish police intercepted five vessels carrying dozens of Africans from the Moroccan coast to the Canary Islands. Last year the authorities stopped 740 craft carrying 15,675 illegal immigrants in the Straits of Gibraltar and the waters round the Canaries. Spain has declared six amnesties in 15 years, several of them under the previous PP government. A recent academic study called for a long-term policy, because the amnesties were “a call to others to make the journey”.

Rickard Sandell, a migration expert at Madrid's Elcano Royal Institute, says it is too early to analyse the effect of the latest amnesty. He says that earlier amnesties have not in fact led to significant bumps in the secular upward trend in immigration. And he suggests that “in principle, the retroactive date [of August 8th] should eliminate suspicions” that an amnesty simply attracts more immigrants.

The amnesty has come at a time when the EU is considering a single policy for immigration. Mr Sandell dismisses the very notion, saying that “Spain has to put in place mechanisms to produce regular foreign labour appropriate to Spain's needs.” It might help if the EU did more to foster the economies of its north African neighbours, but the “Barcelona process”, which was meant to do that, is largely moribund. Maybe it could be revived to mark its tenth anniversary this year.