As the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants and asylum seekers brings tear gas, protests and raids to the streets of the United States, Spain is positioning itself as a counterpoint: a new land of opportunity.
In this nation of 48 million with long colonial links to the New World, an influx of predominantly Latin American immigrants is helping fuel one of the fastest-growing economies in Europe. The Spanish economic transformation is unfolding as the center-left government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has streamlined immigration rules while offering legal status to roughly 700,000 irregular migrants since 2021.
A landmark bill now being negotiated in the Congress of Deputies could grant legal amnesty to hundreds of thousands more — most of them Spanish-speakers from predominantly Catholic countries in Latin America. Those newcomers often enjoy visa-free travel to Spain, even as Madrid controversially works with Morocco, Mauritania and other countries to block irregular arrivals from the African coast, though Sánchez has also called for tolerance toward migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Africa.
Spain’s approach is attracting at least some migrants rejected or barred from the United States, including Venezuelans who are now subject to President Donald Trump’s travel ban.
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Yet the legislative amnesty push came not from a government plan but a grassroots effort backed by civil actors including small-town mayors, companies, migrant advocates and the Catholic church. Spain also has a history of normalizing irregular migrants who can prove steady work, with the last large-scale amnesty under the center-left government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in 2005.
Should Sánchez survive the corruption crisis — and Spain’s economy continue to thrive — his policies could set up this nation as the antithesis of Trump’s America: a migrant-friendly progressive paradise.
Washington Post: As Trump shuts out migrants, Spain opens its doors and fuels economic growth
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