08/09/2026
I've spent my life crossing back and forth between Spain and Minnesota: 15 years living in Minnesota as a legal immigrant, teaching Spanish immersion here in the US. So when I saw Spain's new regularization law this year, and the news out of the US on immigration enforcement, I couldn't just scroll past either one. This is my perspective, coming from someone who's actually lived the legal immigrant experience here, not just read about it. Here's what I've been thinking about.
Spain isn't the first country to do this.
United States, 1986: Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act. It legalized close to 3 million undocumented immigrants who'd been in the country continuously since 1982, through a one-year application window (1987 to 1988). It paired legalization with new penalties for employers who knowingly hired undocumented workers. It's remembered as a mixed success: it legalized millions, but the enforcement side was weak, and it didn't stop future undocumented immigration.
Italy, 2020: In the middle of COVID, Italy ran a "sanatoria" limited to domestic, care, and agricultural workers. Around 200,000+ people applied in a narrow window (June to August 2020). It was heavily criticized for how slow and restrictive it was; two years later, only a fraction of applicants had actually received their papers.
Colombia, 2021: Facing a massive wave of Venezuelan migration, Colombia launched the ETPV (Estatuto Temporal de Protección), a 10-year legal status for Venezuelans who'd arrived by a set cutoff date. It ended up covering close to 2 million people, one of the largest regularizations in the world, and studies since have shown it raised wages and formal employment among migrants without hurting local workers.
Turkey, since 2011: The largest example on earth, though it works differently. Turkey has hosted the world's largest refugee population since the Syrian civil war began, peaking at 3.7 million Syrians under Temporary Protection Status in 2021, still around 2.3 million registered today, plus roughly 240,000 who've since become Turkish citizens. It's not a path to permanent status by design, and since the fall of the Assad regime in late 2024, Turkey has been actively encouraging, and in places pressuring, Syrians to return home.
Canada, 2021 to present: Talked bigger than it delivered. Trudeau's government pledged to explore regularizing undocumented workers (estimated at 300,000 to 600,000 people) but never built a broad program, only small sector pilots, covering roughly 10,000 people combined through healthcare and construction-worker pathways. The immigration minister eventually admitted there was no political consensus to go further.
Germany, 2022: Passed the "Chancenaufenthaltsrecht" (Opportunity Residency Law), a one-year probationary residence permit for long-term "tolerated" migrants who'd been in the country since 2017. Conceptually the closest match to Spain's one-year bridge model, but narrower in scope.
Spain's version, by comparison, is bigger than almost all of these relative to its population. Nearly 1.2 million people applied before the June 30, 2026 deadline, more than double what the government projected and about 4% of the current population of ~50 million. Only Turkey and Colombia have handled larger absolute numbers, and both were responding to a specific refugee crisis next door: Syrians fleeing a civil war, Venezuelans fleeing economic collapse. Spain's is a different type of program. It's not tied to one nationality or one crisis. It's open to anyone in the country who arrived before January 1, 2026 and can prove five continuous months of presence, regardless of where they're from or why they came. The grant itself is also modest by design: a one-year residence and work permit, not permanent status or a direct path to citizenship. After that year, people move into Spain's normal immigration categories and start the standard clock toward long-term residency and eventual naturalization, just like anyone else. So it's best understood as a broad, nationality-blind "on-ramp" for people already living and working in the country.
Now look at the opposite approach: the United States, right now.
Under the current ICE enforcement push, the US has gone hard the other direction: aggressive raids, expanded detention, and a program actively paying people to "self-deport" (a $3,000+ exit bonus). The numbers tell the story. ICE has carried out more than 356,000 removals in fiscal year 2026 alone (October 2025 through July 2026), already ahead of the roughly 320,000 removed in all of fiscal year 2025, and on pace to challenge the modern-era record of about 438,000 set under Obama in 2013. June 2026 set a new monthly arrest record at over 43,000. As of this summer, ICE was holding nearly 66,000 people in detention, up about 10% from the year before, and DHS has also claimed, more controversially, that a couple million more have "self-deported" since Trump took office, though independent researchers say that figure is inflated and the real number is far smaller. Either way, the direction is clear: more raids, more detention, more pressure to leave. And it's not just undocumented people feeling it.
I have friends, Spanish teachers I knew from my years teaching immersion here in Minnesota, who came on legal visas. I visited them here. Some were treated fairly. Others weren't. Several ended up going back to Spain, not because they had to, but because the climate here made it not worth staying. I know the same thing happened with people in nursing and healthcare: skilled workers this country needed, who left. That's not a hypothetical to me. That's people I know, by name, who packed up and went home.
So, pros and cons of what Spain is doing:
Pros:
- Brings people already working off the books into the tax and social security system: real fiscal upside
- Fills real labor shortages (agriculture, hospitality, care work, construction)
- Reduces the risk of exploitation for people with no legal protections
- More realistic than trying to deport a million-plus people already embedded in communities, with kids in Spanish schools
Cons:
- Risk of a "pull factor": could encourage more people to enter irregularly, hoping for the next regularization
- Fairness concern for people going through legal immigration channels the slow way
- Short-term strain on housing, healthcare, and schools if uptake outpaces projections, which it already has
- EU friction: other member states worry that once someone's regularized in Spain, they can move freely across the Schengen area, which isn't just Spain's decision anymore
Where I land:
I'm not in favor of how the US has handled this. The approach here has cost this country good, hardworking people, some of whom I know personally, in fields we actually need workers in. But I'm also not sure Spain's approach is the right one either. Both feel like extremes to me. And honestly, neither one feels like it's really about improving the country or caring about the people involved. It feels like both sides are playing to their voters, not solving the problem.
What I'd want is something in the middle: a real path to legal status for anyone who's willing to work hard, follow the rules from that point forward, and contribute positively to the country they've chosen to build a life in. Not blanket amnesty, and not mass expulsion. Something that actually rewards effort and integration.
What I really want is a freer market: one that moves on its own, where it's easier for people to work and live wherever the opportunity takes them. Controlling that flow, deciding by decree who's allowed to work and where, runs against the basic logic of capitalism itself; a system built on open markets shouldn't treat access to labor as something to be gatekept, and a real capitalism should value that mobility instead of restricting it. That doesn't mean no checks at all. Of course we should know who's coming in, screen out real security risks, keep basic order. But that check should be simple and fast, not a multi-year bureaucratic maze that pushes people into the shadows while they wait.
What's your take on this?
