Around 50,000 immigrants in Malaga province await government regularisation plan

Awaiting the extraordinary regularisation for migrants who are already in the country, which the Spanish cabinet approved on Tuesday, Diario SUR has estimated that between 40,000 and 50,000 people in Malaga province could benefit from the measure.

The figure has been calculated on the basis of comparing the number of people in the province with a legal residence permit and those who are registered as living here but lack a permit.

What does the one-off measure approved by the Spanish government mean? It concerns migrants who are already in the country but don't have legal residency.

It is aimed at people seeking international protection who have submitted their application before 31 December 2025.

It also includes people who have been in Spain for at least five months prior to 31 December 2025, as long as they can prove that. Proof can be obtained through any public document: a 'padrón' (municipal registration), rental contract, any receipts or a combination of all.

If the application is accepted, individual applicants receive a one-year work permit, while families are granted five years. The processing period is three months at most, but applicants will be able to start working legally as soon as the application is accepted.

How many people will benefit from the measure in Malaga province? According to 2024 data, there were 116,453 immigrants with a residence permit and 172,000 with a 'padrón', which does not mean that they were legally allowed to stay in Spain. The difference of around 50,000 constitutes the people who could benefit from this extraordinary measure.

Diario SUR has also made provisional 2025 calculations, using undocumented numbers. According to those, the number of people awaiting regularisation of their status in the province is around 40,000.

This last figure, however, could be distorted, because there are 13,187 more Ukrainians with residence permits than appear on the local census. The difference could be attributed to the fact that many might have arrived to the admission centre in Malaga city but then moved to other parts of Spain.

To compile these estimates, SUR has cross-referenced data from the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration and the national institute of statistics. While the former records granted residence permits, the latter collects information from the census.

A recent study by Funcas suggests that the figure calculated by SUR may be overestimated, given that the number of people without a residence permit in the whole of Spain may currently be around 840,000.

Humanitarian organisations have criticised the regularisation procedure applied until now, stating that it condemns migrants to live two years in irregular residential and employment status. The authorities cannot return a person to their country if they do not have documentation to show where they are from. Moreover, if a country does not have an extradition agreement with Spain, a return is much more complicated.

While expulsion is difficult, regularising one's status is also challennging. In order to obtain legal residence in the country, it is necessary to provide proof of census registration and proof of continuous residence in Spanish territory for at least two years prior to the submission of the application, with absences of a maximum of 90 calendar days.

As for asylum seekers, once they have made a request for international protection, they can work legally until the procedure is resolved. If they are denied refugee status, however, they lose the right to work and have to start their residency application again: the two-year residency counter is reset to zero.

The regularisation proposal approved by the government is therefore extraordinary, as it sits outside the rules that operate in normal circumstances. Organisations have welcomed the new measure.

The president of the Moroccan assocaition for the integration of immigrants in Malaga, Ahmed Khalifa, said: "We positively value any measure that allows thousands of people who already live, work and contribute to Spanish society to be removed from the administrative limbo. Regularisation is not a privilege, it is a tool to guarantee rights and responsibilities, provide legal security and strengthen social cohesion and co-existence."

According to Khalifa, regularisation is the recognition of a state of invisible co-existence and "a question of social justice and common sense". While awaiting full details, Khalifa calls for the process to be "clear, accessible" and accompanied by "sufficient resources".

Addressing the working conditions of many immigrants, Comisioners Obreras says: "The administrative situation of part of the foreign population in Spain is a classic dysfunction of our system that fundamentally harms the population in question, which exists in dynamics of social exclusion, over-exploitation of labour and clandestinity."