Governments in nearly every wealthy country — and a number of less wealthy ones — have struggled for years with a seemingly intractable dilemma.
More immigration would grow their economies, increase tax revenues and supplement shrinking workforces. But there are few topics more politically charged than immigration, and accepting large numbers of migrants risks provoking voter backlash and creating political instability.
The result: Many governments are working to keep immigrants out, even as central bankers and economists urge them to let more in.
Spain, which has one of the lowest birthrates in Europe and a shrinking native-born work force, may have found a way through that impasse. Last month, its center-left government said it would give hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants a path to obtain legal status. The government, which instituted the measure by decree, appears confident that the political upside will outweigh any negatives. And it builds on a longstanding liberal approach to immigration, including previous amnesties for undocumented migrants.
“Migration is the only way forward,” Borja Suárez Corujo, Spain’s secretary of state for social security and pensions, said in an interview. “It is obviously a huge challenge to integrate people that come from abroad. But if we want our society to maintain and to make progress, we do need people for that.”
Opposition parties have criticized the government’s move. The center-right Popular Party said the new immigration policy would overwhelm public services. A spokeswoman for Vox, Spain’s far-right party, said it “attacks our identity.”
Changing policy could still be a gamble in a country where Vox has risen from zero to nearly 20 percent support in polls in the last decade.
But Spain’s government has drawn on a broad societal coalition, including many business leaders and the Roman Catholic Church, to enact a policy that seems politically unthinkable in the United States or many other rich countries. How did it build support for the policy? And could its approach to immigration be replicated elsewhere?
Avoiding triggers
Spain has long allowed undocumented immigrants to regularize their status within a few years of arriving if they can prove they have roots in the community, such as employment, family or social ties. Citizens of many Latin American countries have been able to travel to Spain on visa waivers or tourist visas, and some then stay more or less permanently.
That policy, and the recent amnesty, avoids some of the biggest triggers for anti-immigrant sentiment.
Polling has shown that there is considerable support for immigration in many wealthy countries, even those where anti-immigrant far-right parties are surging in popularity. Data from More in Common, a political research group studying polarization in the United States and Europe, suggests that the support is often predicated on two important characteristics: Immigration must be seen as under control, and immigrants must be seen as contributing to the economy or supporting national interests.
Since 2019, nearly 40 percent of all new jobs in Spain have been filled by immigrants, according to government statistics. And there is strong evidence that immigrants contribute to the Spanish economy, especially when they can obtain legal status. A recent study found that an earlier amnesty allowed immigrants to move from poorly paid off-the-books jobs in domestic labor and construction into better-paying, formal jobs, and it increased annual tax revenues by about 4,000 euros per legalized immigrant.
Previous amnesties do not appear to have provoked significant fears that immigrants will steal native-born workers’ jobs. That may be because migrants tend to compete with other migrants, said Ismael Gálvez, a professor of economics at the University of the Balearic Islands who has studied the impact of migration on Spain’s economy.
“When it comes to work, what matters isn’t whether you’re from here or from abroad — what matters is that you’re a good worker,” said Sergi Balué, 46, a farmer in Catalonia who voted for a conservative nationalist party in the last election. He rejected the idea that foreigners were taking local jobs, saying that villages had fewer and fewer native workers willing to do the difficult, six-day-a-week job of farming.
The life of an immigrant in Spain
Marita González, 35, arrived in Spain in 2023 from Peru with her two young daughters. Today, she lives in Usera, a working-class Madrid suburb with a large migrant population, earning 750 euros a month for an off-the-books part-time job caring for two older adults. She supplements that with ad hoc work cleaning, cooking and ironing, but yearns for the stability that legal status could provide.
“We came to Spain to work, not to ask for handouts or depend on anyone. We need to work, and for that we need papers,” she said in an interview.
Right-wing politicians have long said that offering a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants would be a reward for lawbreaking. But in Spain, the government and pro-immigration campaigners have argued the opposite. Offering amnesty to people like Ms. González, they say, is a “pro-law” measure that will bring more immigrants into the formal economy, where they will be more subject to legal obligations and contribute to society by paying taxes.
That framing is designed to appeal not just to humanitarian sympathy, but to business owners, taxpayers and voters who prize law and order.
The perception of control
Data from More in Common shows that when people think that their borders are not secure, support for immigration falls.
In the United States, for example, the public perception that former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. lost control over the southern border fueled hostility and skepticism toward immigration, said Tim Dixon, the group’s C.E.O.
That’s despite evidence that immigrants are contributing significantly to the U.S. economy. A recent report by the libertarian Cato Institute found that noncitizen immigrants — many of whom were in the United States without authorization — created a fiscal surplus of $14.5 trillion from 1994 to 2023, paying far more in taxes than they received in benefits.
While many Americans worry that an influx of immigrants might cause native-born workers’ wages to fall, research suggests that is not the case. That’s because new immigrants not only fill jobs, they also help create new ones by consuming goods and services.
The way that undocumented migrants enter a country matters a lot for public opinion. The vast U.S.-Mexico border can create fears of uncontrollable immigration when crossings surge.
Unlike the United States or some other southern European countries, Spain has relatively low numbers of asylum seekers who cross land or sea borders without authorization. It has heavily fortified crossings in Ceuta and Melilla, which are Spanish cities on the North African coast bordering Morocco. And it finances, equips and trains Morocco and other countries to stop migrants before they reach Europe via the Canary Islands.
Undocumented migrants tend to arrive in Spain legally as tourists on visa waivers, often at airports, where they show their passports and declare their presence. They then overstay. That avoids provoking the sense that the borders are uncontrolled, because the government could close that pathway at any time.
Can it work elsewhere?
Spain has some unique attributes when it comes to immigration. It has a large pool of potential immigrants in Latin America who share its language and religious heritage — a factor that other countries cannot easily replicate.
It remains to be seen whether Spain’s most recent amnesty will succeed. But its framing of the immigration debate around the public’s need for order suggests some templates and tactics that could resonate widely.
One lesson: If people feel confident that the government has its borders under control, they will often accept high levels of immigration.
Australia, for example, imposed harsh measures to deter arrivals by boat, including setting up offshore detention centers on remote islands, where asylum seekers were held for years under brutal conditions. Once the public became convinced that the government was in control of its borders, sentiment shifted.
“The result has been a public acceptance of very, very high levels of immigration, because there’s a story of control there,” Mr. Dixon said. Today, more than 30 percent of the Australian population was born overseas, with many admitted because they were highly skilled workers.
A similar strategy also can work when migration is serving a nation’s geopolitical or humanitarian interests, not just economic ones.
In 2021 and 2022, the British government brought in hundreds of thousands of people from Ukraine and Hong Kong on special humanitarian visas. There were high levels of public sympathy for Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion and Hong Kongers fleeing China’s authoritarian crackdown.
Supporting the migrants aligned with Britain’s foreign-policy goals. But the structure of the programs mattered too: There was no need for people to cross borders without authorization, as asylum seekers usually have to do in order to apply for protection. “They were orderly arrivals, and they integrated well into the community,” Mr. Dixon said.
In each case, the key was not persuading the public to be more tolerant of immigration, but structuring immigration in a way that didn’t trigger their fears.
Spain has advantages that are difficult to replicate. But its strategy — demonstrating control over borders while making the economic case for immigration — may offer a solution to a knotty problem that is shared by nearly every wealthy nation.
Amanda Taub writes the Interpreter, an explanatory column and newsletter about world events. She is based in London.
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