Spain is the only country where two years undocumented leads to papers

Two years of registration and a contract: a route that exists in no other developed country

An immigrant enters as a tourist, stays, registers at the local town hall, and after two years can apply for papers with the right to work. It is not a law passed by one particular government: it is article 127 of Spain's immigration regulations, and it has been in place for twenty years. Between 2019 and 2023 Spain deported 25,803 people and regularized 466,175 through arraigo. Eighteen times more regularizations than expulsions. Between 2013 and 2023, more than 1.17 million people used this route.

No other developed country has an automatic mechanism of this kind. Portugal scrapped its Manifestação de Interesse, which worked in a similar way, in June 2024. Italy holds extraordinary regularizations every eight or ten years, the last one in 2020. France requires three to five years, 24 pay slips and a discretionary decision by the prefect. Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark have nothing of the sort. In the United States you can remain undocumented for twenty years with no legal route if you entered without a visa. In Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Argentina or Chile, overstaying a tourist visa does not regularize your status over time: you have to leave, pay a fine and start from scratch.

Arraigo has deep roots

Law 4/2000, passed under Aznar's PP government, created the figure. The 2005 regulations, under Zapatero, set it at three years of irregular stay. Rajoy kept it in the 2011 regulations. Royal Decree 1155/2024, of 19 November, lowered it to two years. Minister Elma Saiz signed the rule. The list of those responsible is bipartisan and boring: nobody dismantled it because nobody had an interest in doing so.

On top of this came an extraordinary regularization: RD 316/2026, in force from 16 April to 30 June 2026, regularized anyone who had been in Spain since before 1 January 2026 with just five months of presence. It is now closed. What remains is the two-year arraigo.

The calculation nobody makes: housing, wages and the pull effect

With a salary of 1,300 euros and rent of 1,000, the numbers do not add up. With a room at 400 or 500, they do. As long as a room costs less than half a minimum wage, the flow continues. Italy is the mirror image: in Milan, rooms go for 900 or 1,000 euros. There it stops. The adjustment comes through price, not policy.

Some argue that this population sustains domestic consumption and prevents a technical recession. The annual health and education cost of half a million people has never been calculated. And the impact on low wages and rents is already visible in any city.

Citizenship after two years: the Ibero-American shortcut

Article 22 of the Civil Code allows Ibero-Americans to apply for nationality after two years of legal residence. A Venezuelan who arrives, registers at the town hall, waits two years and obtains arraigo can apply for a passport shortly afterwards. In the United States, the spouse of a citizen waits three years of permanent residence plus exams and fees. Twenty years in bureaucratic limbo is not fiction.

The scenario nobody wants to look at

If a crisis like that of 2008 hits and employment collapses, the first to fall are the low-skilled sectors. Thousands of regularized people would be left without work and without a safety net. The system is on the edge of the cliff, but nobody has an incentive to stop it: it is cheap for employers, it swells party membership rolls, and it justifies more counters for the administration.

The unsettling figure: 18 times more regularizations than expulsions. It is not a failure of the system. It is the system.