Spanish
Catholic Church entities consider the extraordinary regularization of immigrants that the Spanish Government is undertaking from this Tuesday "an act of social justice."
The Department of Migrations of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, Cáritas, the Network of Entities for Solidarity Development (Redes) and the Spanish Conference of Religious (Confer) celebrate the beginning of the process in a joint statement.
They consider it an act of recognition of these people, who, with their work, "have been contributing to the development" of Spain for some time, even at the cost of being in an irregular situation.
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Catholic entities highlight that the measure has been demanded by broad sectors of society, which led to the gathering of more than 900 organizations of all kinds and collected more than 600,000 signatures for the processing of a popular legislative initiative, blocked due to lack of parliamentary agreement. They consider that the extraordinary regularization is an essential complement to the Immigration Regulations, offering a response to those who cannot avail themselves of the ordinary channels. They explain that the regulation excludes numerous vulnerable groups, such as people unable to prove the two years of residency required, often due to loss of documents in situations of precariousness or emergency. Also, to undocumented immigrants who cannot access the registration card due to excessively rigid procedures, those who have difficult employability due to age, disability, homelessness or chronic illness; or workers who fail to present a prior formal contract due to the slowness of the administration. Church entities warn that it also affects families with children in an irregular situation who, even if they meet the requirements, will not be able to be regularized, and those seeking denied international protection, who are trapped in long periods of irregularity. According to the IX FOESSA Report (Fomento de Estudios Sociales y Sociología Aplicada) on social exclusion and development, almost nine million immigrants live in Spain. The irregular administrative situation in which many of them find themselves causes 68% to be in social exclusion. The latest data published by Caritas shows that 47% of the people assisted by the Catholic NGO in 2024 did not have their situation regularized, which is equivalent to approximately 550,000. A number that has not stopped growing since 2019, according to the warning.
