Spanish police warn mass migrant regularisation could overwhelm the system

Police warn the regularisation could overwhelm the system

An internal warning from Spain's National Police has put figures on the worst-case scenario: the extraordinary regularisation process for migrants could reach three million people once family reunification is included. That figure, far above initial forecasts, has triggered a war of words between the Ministry of Inclusion and the police forces.

The figure that doesn't add up

Senior officers in the immigration department estimate that by the end of the process there will be three million people with legal residence, not the numbers announced at the outset. The problem, according to these sources, is twofold: management has been placed in the hands of the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, and the police have been sidelined from powers they consider their own. The capacity to process applications and the identity verification mechanisms are creating a backlog that, they warn, will turn into an administrative collapse.

Where do those arriving look to?

Some readings go beyond management. Several analysts argue that Spain's regularisation works as a gateway into the EU: once citizenship is obtained —in a few years— the new citizens will be able to move freely across Europe. France and Italy, with their own irregular migrants, would see part of that pressure shift towards Spain. This is the so-called displacement effect, a flow nobody officially acknowledges but which runs through police reports and community meetings.

The suspicion of an electoral motive has not been shelved either. The idea of registering two and a half million descendants of Spaniards —grandchildren, great-grandchildren or great-great-grandchildren— to scrape up seats in consular elections is doing the rounds in the corridors of Congress and on social media. Among those being regularised are people who have paid up to 5,000 euros to mafias to obtain their papers. There is a difference between paying for the paperwork and settling wherever the benefits are highest. In the short term, some argue, it is best not to shake the tree; in the medium term, a Spanish passport opens every door.

The system holds up despite everything

Despite the noise, the system is used to holding its ground. But this time the outlook is different. The most pessimistic calculations factor in pension costs, civil servants' wages and social benefits in an equation that, they say, has a limit. When the markets decide to stop financing the deficit, the bill will come due. The question is no longer whether the collapse will arrive, but what comes after: austerity, unrest and a police state that, paradoxically, those denouncing the chaos today could end up clamouring for.