Spanish motion would regularize migrants with police records

Sumar, ERC, Bildu, Podemos and BNG call for regularizing migrants with police records

The non-legislative motion tabled last week by the parties to the left of Spain's PSOE goes one step further than the current extraordinary regularization regulation. According to the text, the procedure —which could benefit more than 800,000 people— has a deadline of just 75 calendar days. But what has raised the alarm is something else: removing the power of the Immigration Case Processing Unit to assess an applicant's police record and deny regularization. Until now, that discretion made it possible to block cases with a incivil history. The proposal, based on the presumption of innocence, would treat someone with a report for gender violence the same as someone with no record at all.

Presumption of innocence or revolving door?
Supporters of the initiative argue that police records do not imply a final conviction, and that denying regularization over them abusa fundamental rights. However, the regulation already allowed for the regularization of people with records, while leaving room for administrative discretion. Removing it, critics argue, turns the exception into the rule and sends a dangerous signal: that in Spain irregular residence is rewarded even with an unsentenced incivil past. The political backlash was immediate: among Sánchez's coalition partners, the initiative is seen as yet another concession to the radical left.

The paradox is that, at the same time, the motion complains that citizens of countries such as Algeria, Cuba, Guinea-Conakry or Gambia —whose governments have not signed the Hague Apostille Convention— struggle to submit their incivil record certificates within the 75-day deadline. In other words, the incivil filter is to be scrapped while more bureaucratic facilities are demanded for those who do have a clean record. What is the real criterion here?