The socialist Spanish government’s amnesty scheme will allow illegal migrants to simply declare that they have no criminal record, rather than providing documentation from their native countries, sparking concern over criminals gaming the system.
Last month, the left-wing coalition government of Socialist PM Pedro Sánchez agreed to allow upwards of half a million illegals seek amnesty and obtain residence permits to remain in Spain.
While the scheme stipulates that amnesty will not apply to migrants with criminal records — other than the crime of entering Spain illegally — the regularisation decree published by the government this week revealed that Madrid will essentially be willing to take the word of illegal migrants about their past.
According to the ABC newspaper, an illegal will be able to make such a declaration if they can show that they have merely requested their criminal history from their country of origin or the country where they have resided in the past five years.
“If this information is not received within one month, the Administration will inform the interested party of this circumstance, who may submit a sworn statement of the absence of a criminal record,” the decree states.
Law enforcement sources told the paper that the system is bound to drive up migrant crime rates.
“Let’s not fool ourselves; if this information were requested from Spain by a third party, it would normally take us more than a month,” a police insider said. “The countries of origin aren’t going to have any special interest in cooperating… and that’s just talking about criminal records, not police records when there are many crimes that never go to trial, neither here nor abroad.”
Meanwhile, concerns have also been raised that the amnesty programme is creating a “pull factor” for more illegal immigration. The National Police have also reportedly noticed an influx of illegals residing in other European countries coming to Spain to try to take advantage of the amnesty scheme.
According to ABC, long lines witnessed in recent days outside of the Algerian consulate in Alicante were not a result of Algerians who live in Spain, but rather were in large part a result of illegals from France seeking to gain residence permits in the EU so they can return to France as legal migrants.
Despite the scheme potentially allowing more than two million foreigners to gain residence in Spain and, therefore, the ability to travel freely within the EU’s internal open border system, the Commission has so far refused to intervene to prevent the amnesty. This comes in contrast to the typically interventionist stance from Brussels towards domestic policies in conservative countries seeking to place limits on, for instance, abortion or LGBT education.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who lost the last election but remained in power after siding with Catalan separatists, has argued that the West must import more migrants to maintain its economies and public services.
However, the far-left Podemos party, with which he partnered to pass the amnesty programme, was more candid about their motivations, with Member of the European Parliament Irene Montero openly declaring that she wishes to “replace” her countrymen with foreigners.
“I wish for replacement theory, I wish we could sweep this country of fascists and racists with migrants, with working people,” she said last week. “Of course, I want there to be replacement: replacement of fascists, replacement of racists, replacement of freeloaders, and that we can do it with working people, whatever their skin colour may be.”
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