A new legal settlement programme for immigrants in Spain: examining national pathways since its implementation in 2006

Andreu Domingo, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Albert Sabater, Centre d'Estudis Demogràfics (CED)
Xavier Franch, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

In 2005, the Spanish Government decided to carry out profound changes in the legislation on immigration to regularise illegal migration and after experiencing one of the most significant booms in migration in recent European history. The number of new migrants has risen from around 1 million in the year 2000 to over 5,5 million at the beginning of 2009, thus changing the proportion of foreign-born over the total population from 3 to 12 per cent. After the last extraordinary amnesty held in 2005, which added 578,000 legal migrants in Spain, a new settlement programme to tackle illegal immigration was launched. The programme, which allows access to legal status to migrants through social and labour channels, is managed by Provincial Sub-delegate’s Offices of the Spanish Government. The aim of this paper is to analyse different pathways of non-EU nationals who took part in the extraordinary regularisation programme in 2005 by taking into account their sociodemographic characteristics such as nationality, age, sex and type of work and/or residence permit from January 2006 to December 2009.