Spain to defend controversial amnesty to illegal immigrants

By David Cronin

Date: 17/02/05

Spain will next week defend its decision to grant an amnesty for up to a million illegal immigrants at EU level.

Some of the Union's countries, particularly Germany and the Netherlands, have voiced concerns that those who obtain residency permits in Spain will then move to other EU countries.

But Jesús Caldera, the Spanish labour minister, will seek to allay their concerns about the regularisation of illegal immigrants by issuing one-year residency and work permits. Officially the measure is designed both to boost income tax and social security revenues and to shield immigrants from exploitation.

Caldera is to state his case before next week's meeting of EU justice and home affairs ministers (24 February). The gathering is also to consider suggestions from the European Commission and Luxembourg's EU presidency for an "early warning" system under which each member state would notify its counterparts of national immigration decisions.

Madrid, though, has not yet decided if it would agree to an 'early warning' scheme. "First of all, we have to ask what this is?" said one Spanish diplomat. "Until now 'early warning' has been a phrase used in the financial realm - with the Growth Stability Pact."

The European Commission has urged a discussion on the idea of such a scheme but denied it was criticising Spain, which last year accounted for one-third of all net immigration into the Union.

Spanish Interior Minister José Antonio Alonso responded to criticism of the amnesty plan by saying that the EU "must get tougher on immigration from eastern Europe".

"In security terms, the eastern frontier is where the most dangerous immigration originates," added Alonso, in what was seen as a hint to Germany, where a large-scale scheme granting visas to Ukrainians involved in trafficking of human beings was recently unveiled. A state secretary in the foreign ministry stepped down over the scandal and the centre-right opposition has asked for Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer's resignation too.

At present, there is no obligation for EU countries to consult each other about granting work and residence permits.

Joanna Apap, a justice specialist with the Centre for European Policy Studies, said she did not believe an early warning scheme should be set up as steps to legalise immigrants were "fully a matter of national sovereignty".

The Spanish amnesty, she argued, was "not going to produce floods of migrants going elsewhere because they [those granted permits] would be illegal in another country".

Preview of the Justice and Home Affairs Council, taking place in Brussels on 24 February 2005. Among the items to be discussed was an 'early warning system' on national immigration decisions. Spain had been criticised by other Member States for its decision to grant an amnesty for up to a million illegal immigrants.