In a study published in February 2018 and updated in April 2023economists Joan Monras (Federal Reserve of San Francisco), Elias Ferran (University of Valencia) and Javier Vazquez-Grenno (University of Barcelona) analyzed the consequences of a vast regularization of 600,000 extra-European migrants decided by the government Spanish socialist in 2005.
You are co-author of a study on the consequences of the regularization of 600,000 people in Spain in 2005. One of the main lessons of this work is that massive regularization does not induce a call for air…
In 2004, it was estimated that there were almost one million undocumented migrants in Spain. The regularization measure benefited around 600,000 extra-European migrants. But it did not cause any call for air in Spain. To realize this, we looked at the figures of non-European nationals living in Spain. And we found that these figures had not changed.
For example, if we look at the Ecuadorians, there has been no change, since their total number is around 400,000 in 2004 as in 2008. In the same period of time, the number of Moroccans increased by 150,000, but without any perceptible break in the trend after the adoption of the regularization measure, which suggests that other factors, independent of this measure, were at play.
We can explain this lack of air in particular by the fact that the regularization measure was aimed at people already present in Spain since, to benefit from it, it was necessary to fulfill conditions such as having already been present for at least six months in the country. and have a contract for at least the next six months.
We even believe that the regularization may have played against new flows, since it was accompanied by a strengthening of labor inspection controls aimed at combating undeclared work, which may have made it more difficult to hiring undocumented workers. However, we remain cautious about the long-term effects of the measure because, from 2008, Spain was affected by the economic crisis, which may have had the effect of reducing the demand for labour.
Have similar observations been made in other countries?
In 1986, the United States passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), an amnesty that allowed some three million immigrants to regularize their status. Research papers have looked at whether this law has caused an increase in immigration and they find not. This is not an absolute truth, it certainly depends on the contours of the policy implemented and the economic context, but there are various examples, in Spain and the United States, which find that regularization does not induce call for air.
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