Spain to buck Trump trend and legalise thousands of migrants
New decree offers status to roughly 500,000 residents, in contrast to the deportation focus of Trump’s administration and some EU leaders
Spain’s government announced on Tuesday it will grant legal status to potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants living and working in the country without authorisation, the latest example of how the country has bucked a trend towards increasingly harsh immigration policies championed by US President Donald Trump and seen across much of Europe.
Migration Minister Elma Saiz said the beneficiaries would be able to work “in any sector, in any part of the country”, and extolled “the positive impact” of migration.
“We are talking about estimations, probably more or less the figures may be around half a million people,” she told public broadcaster RTVE.
However, the Funcas think-tank estimates the number is higher, stating that around 840,000 undocumented migrants lived in Spain at the beginning of January 2025, most of them Latin American.
Spain’s new rules for immigrants
The measure will affect those living in Spain for at least five months and who applied for international protection before December 31, 2025.