Spain’s illegal migrant ‘amnesty’ receives 1.2m applications in just 10 weeks

Likely to rise to over 2m, as dependents are brought over

Part-Communist govt gets nearly 2½ times expected number: 60% male, 60% under 34

Only 7% self-applied; the rest had professional help, typically from immigration lawyers

Spain’s left-wing government has been deluged with 1.2m applications in just 10 weeks under the amnesty known as “Extraordinary Regularisation” that it announced for illegal migrants. The government predicted a total of 500,000 would apply. The final total is 140% more than it told the Spanish to expect.

Stand for Our Sovereignty in association with Brexit Facts4EU and The Campaign for an Independent Britain, probes the shocking illegal migrants amnesty which has divided Spain from the rest of the EU. This report has been shared exclusively in advance with GB News.

We start with a word about Gibraltar, which Sir Keir has managed to separate from the UK in one of his final acts as Prime Minister.

After three centuries Gibraltar’s borders are now Spanish

This is the same Spanish government which lobbied the EU Commission hard over Gibraltar. Up against the Europhiles of the current UK government, then led by Sir Keir Starmer, critics say the Commission found negotiations with them to be relatively simple.

Despite the 313-year-old international treaty governing Gibraltar’s sovereignty by the United Kingdom, Gibraltar’s borders are now in effect controlled by the Spanish.

This is Spain’s sixth amnesty for illegal migrants. For this latest ‘regularisation’ – the largest by far – applicants only had to prove they have no criminal record and had spent at least five consecutive months in Spain last year.

Of the total applications received, the Ministry has confirmed that only 20% might qualify for international protection. Only 7% of the total applied themselves, with the rest relying on professional advisors including from overseas. The majority of these were immigration lawyers.

The current composition of Sanchez’s coalition government includes members of the Spanish Communist Party, Socialists’ Party of Catalonia, and United Left, amongst others.

The potential effect on the UK

Most illegal migrants are young, from Latin America and Africa

Colombians are the largest nationality represented. Two out of every three applicants come from Central and South America, while 23% are African, with 8% coming from Asia.

Effect on unemployment

Proudly, the Spanish Ministry says 160,000 more workers have registered for employment due to this ‘regularisation’. It makes no mention of the impact this may have on the high levels of unemployment amongst native Spaniards.

“The registration of foreign workers with Social Security has shown strong growth in the first half of 2026…. The rate of increase has been accelerating since the end of April, when the regularisation process for foreign nationals was launched.”

– Spanish Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, 02 July 2026

The latest youth unemployment figures for Spain show that 454,000 young people were unemployed in Q1 this year. That’s a rate of nearly one-quarter (24.2%) of its young people. This compares to the UK’s rate of 16.2% which has risen dramatically in the last two years and is considered far too high by commentators. Spain’s rate is almost 50% higher than the UK’s.

Quiet arrival of huge numbers of dependents, ‘after the fuss has died down’

The initial applicants are just part of the story. Facts4EU’s research shows there may be over 50% more dependents as original applicants, who will subsequently apply for ’family reunification’.

We know this as a result of the most comprehensive series of reports ever produced on the Home Ofiice’s ‘EU Settlement Scheme’, which we published early last year. The Home Office’s only data on family dependents applying to this scheme relates to those who applied after the deadline had closed.

This was a scheme for legal EU migrants who had settled in the UK during the years of the UK’s membership and as such they would have been expected already to have their dependents with them. Even so, the new, extra dependents total 600,000 and represent 44% on top, bringing the figure up to around two million – long after the deadline had passed.

In Spain it is likely that a greater proportion of dependents will end up being brought over in the months and years to come, under the same principle of ‘family reunification’. These dependents are likely to be older and less likely to form part of the workforce. They will have to be supported by the Spanish state.

Spain’s moves have not impressed the rest of the EU

Spain’s amnesty flies in the face of the wider crackdown on immigration across the rest of the EU. It is now an outlier and no other EU country has said it will accept the work and residence permits being issued.

Spain’s economy is highly dependent on tourism, and a large number of the migrants will be getting jobs in that somewhat fluid sector, which is relatively low-paid.

It remains to be seen just how bad the internal frictions within EU member states become, as a result of this amnesty and many other serious issues.

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Observations

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