More than 1,500 entities and social movements have joined this initiative that wants to combat the null social rights that people without papers have
More than 1,500 social entities and organizations in favor of migrants have started this weekend a collection of signatures to try to force the Central Government, and the entire parliamentary arch, to regularize the documentation of more than half a million immigrants who do not have a residence or work permit in Spain. A gesture already made by President Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in 2004which allowed to increase the collection of public coffers according to several academics in Catalonia. “Migrants in an irregular situation who live and work here they are in extreme conditions: with the restrictions due to the pandemic they have been the ones who have suffered the most because they have no social rights“, regrets Lamine Sarr, spokesman for the union of the keepers in Barcelona.
A table with posters, papers and many pens waiting to fill out the forms. This is how the campaign shelf was this Saturday #RegularizationNow in the Plaza de Catalunya in Barcelona (where nearly 500 signatures were registered) and in the center of 15 other cities throughout Spain, including Bilbao, Pamplona, Madrid, Valencia and Santiago de Compostela. It is a campaign to process a popular legislative initiative in the Congress of Deputies to ensure that the more than 500,000 people who cannot work legally in Spain nor do they have the right to live here can have the same opportunities as the rest of the population. Migrants who, in some cases, they risked their lives crossing the sea in a canoe or jumping the fences of Ceuta or Melilla looking for a better life in Europe. Others tried to apply for asylum but were denied this request.
Invisible in the statistics
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It is impossible to know how many people are in an irregular administrative situation in Spain. The entities grouped in this campaign calculate that there could be more than half a million, but their situation is so invisible that there are no official figures. Some even do not appear in the municipal census. The movement was born as #RegularizationNow in mid-2020, when the restrictions and confinement due to the coronavirus pandemic led people without a contract to desperately call the hunger queues and social entities. “It’s what pushed us to start this initiative; people without papers are excluded from all social assistance. They work, but without a contract. They cannot access unemployment, the ERTE, the Minimum Vital Income, they are prevented from accessing full health care… Everyone receives rights, except them. We are talking about an exclusion of human rights”, affirms Sarr from the union. “Our challenge is to change the immigration law, but until we achieve it, this urgent measure must be done, the situation is very serious”, he explains.
On June 19, 2020, aware of the discouragement of thousands of families, the entities and social movements processed a non-law proposal in the Congress of Deputies to start the long-awaited regularization process. They lost the vote, and that is why they are now starting this collection of signatures. They need half a million. Meanwhile, they try to help them as they can. “Many people are losing their homes, they are ending up on the street. Social services and administrations send us people excluded from the system every day so that we can help them, it is desperate,” adds Sarr.