The last reform of the Aliens Act will enter into force on 20 May. What's behind it?

We are still looking at the impact it will have, but it seems that the political will behind the reform is clear: Cancellation of the Popular Legislative Initiative of the Regularization Now movement. In fact, the citizens' initiative would lead to the regularisation of a large number of people in an irregular situation.

Among other things, the reform will make the deadlines for regularization shorter, right?

The intention of the reform is presumably to reduce the deadlines for achieving regularization, speed up procedures and make them simpler. It is true that the period will decrease from three years to two years. However, residence permits will only be issued to persons who, as in the past, meet certain specific requirements and are required to apply for appointments in offices for foreigners; in offices with the highest number of workloads and the lowest number of staff. It is useless that the legislature intends to regularize people if there is then not enough staff to resolve these files within the deadlines set.

What does this office overload entail?

To give an example, the resolution of a file currently takes seven months, although the law clearly states that the administration has a maximum period of three months. As a result, a person awaiting the file, if he wishes to work, will have to wait in practice for another seven months in addition to the two years required by law.

The impact of the reform on asylum seekers has been controversial.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Many migrants who qualify for asylum are seriously uncertain about the reform. Asylum seekers are those who have been persecuted for their sexual orientation, political ideology, religion or nationality, and we do not know what will happen to them. The reform will leave a vacuum there, and to demand regularization through entrenchment, they will have to renounce asylum. In other words, it will force the most vulnerable people to give up their asylum in order to regularize it.

Nor does the reform of the law provide a solution to the current problem of socio-labour entrenchment.

No, I don't. It is not possible for a person to arrive here with a tourist visa, to have a work contract within the three-month period granted by the visa, and yet to have to wait two years to be regularized. He will have to stay in a legal limbo for two years, being careful not to receive criminal proceedings, with all that this entails: economic expenditure for him and the administration, physical and psychological exhaustion... The reform does not provide a solution to this, which is why some institutions have appealed to it. In fact, when the reform comes into force, the door will be opened to resources and instructions, and we do not know what kind of chaos this will lead to and how it will affect migrants.

Are the rights and freedoms of migrants enshrined in the law observed in everyday practice?

There are legal mechanisms for people to migrate safely or to regularize their status. What's the problem? That there are many obstacles and obstacles for these people to take advantage of the law. Every day we see that the institutions systematically violate the Aliens Act.

Where do you see these violations?

Take, for example, the fact that a migrant named Mohamed wants to migrate to Spain. His wife is in Spain and he meets all the requirements for a reunion: he has verified that he has financial resources, no criminal record, adequate housing... The Aliens ' Office and the Government ' s Sub-Delegation had granted him a residence permit, but when the decision in favour of the consulate of his country of origin arrived, the request was put on hold and that person was prevented from obtaining anything that was permitted by law. Regularization would allow the integration of foreigners into Spanish society and their arrival here through the safe, legal and orderly channels referred to by the institutions. But this brake is systematically put in place to prevent regularization.

Several organizations have also denounced the denial of the census to unregularized persons.

Many migrants are denied their right and obligation to register. Let us not forget that it is an obligation, both for this person and, above all, for the City Council, to register the citizens who live there. Registration provides access to other rights: regularization, having a health card, and social services. But they do not allow them to register: sometimes the landlords of the house and, in many other cases, the social services. Administrative staff often ask them for evidence to ensure that they live in that locality. But if the only mechanism that this person has to prove that he lives in it is the social services, and the social services demand proof from him, how will he prove it? It makes no sense and blocks migrants. According to the expanding discourses, it seems that migrating is easy and simple. But the reality is another: there is nothing easy and the rights of the most vulnerable people are repeatedly violated throughout the process.

The organic law governing the rights of immigrant persons also refers to their rights to integration.

The law is useless if these rights are repeatedly trampled upon and disregarded, and not enforced. We cannot comply with the People Integration Act if we prohibit immigrants from accessing the system: if we do not allow them to register, if we prevent them from being regularized, if we do not allow them to work legally, and if we essentially deprive them of the opportunity to own themselves. And if it takes years to achieve all this, what do we encourage these people to do? To total exclusion. We completely dehumanize them and then label them as vulnerable because we don’t allow them access to the system.

Anti-migration speeches often use the concept of insecurity.

Those concerned about security need to know that the only way to ensure security is to give all citizens more rights. In other words, ensuring that no one in your neighborhood, town or city is socially excluded is the way to build safer towns. This is the real problem: that the people in our community are condemned to total social exclusion.

Do legal violations also occur at borders?

Oh, yeah, yeah. And not just in Spanish. We have pushed the borders out and left them in the hands of countries that do not respect human rights. We have agreements, laws and directives on human rights here, but we pay other countries to do the dirty work. Our hands are stained with the blood of people who die at the borders. To say that we respect people’s rights is useless if we also push the borders out, militarize the borders of Spain and put up barriers to prevent people from passing through.

Alarm messages have been triggered because "too many people" are arriving.

In 30 years, 255,000 people have entered Spain from the Canary Islands. But if we take into account that 190,000 Ukrainians have been received in two years, the number in the Canary Islands is not very high. So who's interested in transmitting a sense of alarm? It can be clearly seen that behind this there is a political intention and visible racism.

How can legal alternatives be created so that there are safe ways to migrate?

There is no need for alternatives; compliance with the current law would suffice. It is enough that a person with documentation and who can pay for a travel ticket does not put obstacles in the way of coming here. If we do not put people from Europe or the United States of America in difficulty, why do we not do the same with people from the South?