NATIONAL
Spain's immigration laws will be reformed to ensure "legal and orderly immigration" through steps such as limiting family reunification and punishing those who promote illegal immigration
06.10.09 - 12:12 -
Celestino Corbacho. / SUR
Spain's immigration laws will be reformed to ensure "legal and orderly immigration" through steps such as limiting family reunification and punishing those who promote illegal immigration. These were among the points made at the end of last week by Labour and Immigration Minister Celestino Corbacho at a session of Parliament in which the Socialist administration secured the rejection of a series of amendments proposed by the opposition although it offered to work with all parties to get consensual regulations passed.
Corbacho added that the government's bill was justified because in Spain there is a new immigration situation, with the number of foreigners living in the country going from 800,000 in 1999 to 4.5 million by March 2009 - nearly 10 per cent of Spain's 46 million residents - amid a savage recession that has pushed unemployment to 18 per cent.
The text proposed by the government includes a change in the system of family reunification, postponing that of seniors until they are 65 years of age, allowing certain "humanitarian cases" and making possible the reunification of de facto couples.
The current regulations allow the reunification of couples and minor children, as well as parents-in-law and parents, so that when the latter regularize their situation they become the ones who can take advantage of the law to continue bringing in other members of their families.
The new law will pursue those who promote irregular immigration, but it will in no way inhibit humanitarian reunification.
It also includes improvements in the fight against illegal immigration by increasing preventive instruments, enhancing the efficiency of repatriation procedures and expanding guarantees in different situations.
Also, the law establishes the creation of a registry of entries and exits from the country by foreigners to stop people from overstaying their visas.
In addition, the new rules regulate the authorization of residency permits for foreign women who are the victims of sexual violence so that the fear of deportation will not be an obstacle to the reporting of the crimes committed against them.
The text of the reform measures, the fourth to be produced in the last eight years, was approved last June by the government as a reform proposal to a law enacted in February 2000.
That statute was modified for the first time a month later, when the conservative Popular Party gained a majority in Parliament and pushed for a reform that sharply curtailed the rights of undocumented immigrants.
In the latest reform, in 2004, the law set forth the regularization of the status of immigrants without proper documents who had been sponsored for six months in Spain and fulfilled other obligations.
Speaking to reporters after Thursday's appearance in Parliament, Corbacho rejected the claim by leftist lawmakers and social organizations that under the government's proposals undocumented immigrants would be denied access to health care and education.
The spokesman for the main opposition PP, Rafael Hernando, renewed his party's attack on the mass legalization of 2004, claiming that it increased the number of undocumented migrants in Spain to nearly a million.
Pie de foto: Corbacho says the new law will pursue those who promote irregular immigration.
