Imagine you’re the leader of a nation, and you face a dilemma. Half a million or so people who are crucial to everyone’s daily lives inhabit your country. They care for aging parents, work at small and large companies, harvest the food that’s on the table. They are also part of your community. On weekends, they walk in the parks, go to restaurants and play on the local amateur soccer team.
But one crucial thing makes these half a million people different from other people in your country: They don’t have the legal documents that allow them to live there. As a result, they don’t have the same rights as your country’s citizens, and can’t fulfill the same obligations. They aren’t able to receive a higher education, pay taxes or contribute to Social Security.
What should we do with these people? Some leaders have chosen to hunt them down and deport them through operations that are both unlawful and cruel. My government has chosen a different way: a fast and simple path to regularize their immigration status. Last month, my government issued a decree that makes up to half a million undocumented migrants living in Spain eligible for temporary residence permits, with certain conditions, which they will be able to renew after a year.
We have done this for two reasons. The first and most important is a moral one. Spain was once a nation of emigrants. Our grandparents, parents and children moved to America and elsewhere in Europe seeking a better future during the 1950s and 1960s and following the 2008 financial crisis. Now, the tables have turned. Our economy is flourishing. Foreigners are moving to Spain. It is our duty to become the welcoming and tolerant society that our own relatives would have hoped to find on the other side of our borders.
The second reason that made us commit to regularization is purely pragmatic. The West needs people. Currently, few of its countries have a rising population growth rate. Unless they embrace migration, they will experience a sharp demographic decline that will prevent them from keeping their economies and public services afloat. Their gross domestic product will stagnate. Their public health care and pension systems will suffer. Neither A.I. nor robots will be able to prevent this outcome, at least not in the short or medium term. The only option to avoid decline is to integrate migrants in the most orderly and effective way possible.
It won’t be easy. We know that. Migration brings opportunities, but also huge challenges that we must acknowledge and face. Nevertheless, it is important to realize that most of those challenges have nothing to do with migrants’ ethnicity, race, religion or language. Rather, they are driven by the same forces that affect our own citizens: poverty, inequality, unregulated markets, barriers to accessing education and health care. We should focus our efforts on addressing those issues, because they are the real threats to our way of life.
Not many governments agree with regularizing migrants today. But more people do than we often assume. The regularization effort underway in Spain actually began as a citizen-led initiative endorsed by more than 900 nongovernmental organizations, including the Catholic Church, and it has the support of business associations and trade unions alike. More important, it is backed by the people: Nearly two out of three Spaniards believe that migration represents either an opportunity or a necessity for our country, according to a recent poll.
MAGA-style leaders may say that our country can’t handle taking in so many migrants, that this is a suicidal move — the desperate act of a collapsing country. But don’t let them fool you. Spain is booming. For three years running, we have had the fastest-growing economy among Europe’s largest countries. We have created nearly one in every three new jobs across the European Union, and our unemployment rate has fallen below 10 percent for the first time in nearly two decades. Our workers’ purchasing power has also grown, and poverty and inequality levels have dropped to their lowest since 2008. This prosperity is the result of Spanish citizens’ hard work, the E.U.’s collective effort and an inclusive agenda that views migrants as necessary partners.
What is working for us can work for others. The time has come for leaders to speak clearly to their citizens about the dilemma we all face. We, as Western nations, must choose between becoming closed and impoverished societies, or open and prosperous ones. Growth or retreat: Those are the two options before us. And by growth, I’m not talking only about material gain, but also our spiritual development.
Governments can buy into the zero-sum thinking of the far-right and retreat into isolation, scarcity, selfishness and decline. Or they can harness the very same forces that, not without difficulties, have allowed our societies to thrive for centuries.
For me, the choice is clear. And for the sake of our prosperity and human dignity, I hope many others will follow suit.
Pedro Sánchez is the prime minister of Spain.
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