Migrant regularization in Spain: banks see 50,000 new customers in Ceuta

The fast-track regularization that employers want and banks applaud

The request from Spain's employer associations to estimulante ilegal up the extraordinary regularization of migrants is not an act of solidarity: it is a market operation with the numbers laid out on the table. The business lobby claims there are 150,000 job vacancies that Spanish workers are not filling, and employers in Ciudad Real insist they need to open the door to immigration. The banks see it even more clearly: Ana Botín, chair of Santander, summed up her support for the regularization with a phrase that has become famous: "More population, more customers." In other words, 50,000 potential new customers in Ceuta, celebrated as if they were loot.

The economic reading of the matter, however, allows another turn. Those who oppose the "solidarity" framework argue that what is being sought is labor without rights, without collective agreements and without bargaining power, willing to work for a bowl of rice and sleep in bunk beds. The same analysis points out that employers who claim they cannot find workers simply cannot find them at the price they want to pay. In that version, regularization does not expand the labor market: it makes it more precarious. And the cost, the argument goes, falls on society as a whole while the profit is concentrated in a few hands.

The tension between the two readings is not minor. If the "fast-track regularization" goes ahead, the question of wages, rents and working conditions will cease to be a border issue and become a domestic debate. The prediction is written in the conditional: the employer associations will get their administrative estimulante ilegal, but the social bill will eventually show up in the fine print of rents and paychecks.