Between April and June of this year, the government will carry out the extraordinary regularisation of 500,000 immigrants. This is the seventh such occurrence in Spain's democracy, driven by both PSOE and PP governments. In the first, carried out in 1986 under the presidency of Felipe González, papers were granted to 38,294 people out of 43,815 applications received. The last one took place in 2005 with José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and to date, it was the most massive, with 576,506 immigrants legalised. In total, various regularisations have benefited more than a million foreigners.
Funcas, in a report that has generated much discussion in recent weeks, points out that the number of foreigners living in Spain illegally could far exceed 500,000 and may have reached 840,000, representing 17.2% of the foreign population from non-EU countries. It is expected that when this extraordinary process concludes, we will have a clearer picture of the population in an irregular situation in Spain. In the meantime, the figures are influenced by the concept of the call effect. Will there be a spike in irregular immigration due to the announced regularisation?
The Director of Social Studies at Funcas commented that “the entire Spanish migration system is generating a call effect.” The model assumes that after going through a long period in an irregular situation, administrative regularisation is eventually achieved through social, family, labour, and educational ties. In The Conversation, two Spanish researchers, Inmaculada Rodríguez-Zarzoso and Paul Elguezabal, published an analysis of migration flows from 196 countries of origin to 32 OECD destinations between 1996 and 2022. They concluded that the call effect exists, but with nuances. “It does not occur randomly or uniformly,” they explain. It will depend not only on the promise of papers but also on the social and family networks one has in the country. Additionally, the requirement of a prior residency period acts as a brake. “At least eight months of prior irregular residency is enough to completely neutralise the call effect.”
Among those who deny that such an effect exists, a study by the Overseas Development Institute and an article from the University of Cambridge emphasise that the influx of migrants is more related to fluctuations in the economic cycle of the country of origin itself. The complexity of the migratory phenomenon means that variables such as the condition of migration routes, whether they are more favourable due to being shorter and safer, also come into play.
A mantra is repeated these days: people who live and work with us will be legal like us. With or without the call effect, irregulars will continue to arrive. Let’s plan, yes, but also influenced by the effect of dignity.♦