Spain wants to regularize more than a million migrants to support its economy and pensions.

Faced with an aging population and a growing labor shortage, Madrid is relying on a vast regularization policy. More than a million undocumented migrants could obtain legal status by 2027.

In Spain, immigration has become a cornerstone of the labor market and an essential response to the demographic challenge. The government plans to regularize more than one million migrants over the next three years to support economic growth and ensure the financial stability of the pension system.

Since May 2025, a reform has allowed the regularization of 300,000 people per year, and a bill, currently being debated in Parliament, is already considering granting papers to 470,000 migrants who arrived before the end of December 2024.

According to Claudia Finotelli, a sociologist and professor at the Complutense University of Madrid, “between 2022 and 2024, 5.2 million jobs were created; 75% of these are held by people with dual nationality or foreign nationals.” Migrants currently represent 13.5% of the Spanish workforce and are expected to account for nearly 40% of new jobs in 2024 , primarily in construction, agriculture, and healthcare.

This is not the first time Madrid has opted for such a strategy. The 2005 regularization program generated an average of 4,000 euros in social security contributions per regularized migrant , and more than a million people have been able to obtain legal status since 2009 thanks to an individual scheme.

At the European level, the Spanish model stands in stark contrast to a policy often focused on deportations. However, other countries such as Portugal, Italy, and Germany have also implemented regularization measures. A report by the European Central Bank published in May 2025 points out that half of the new jobs created in Europe in recent years have resulted from the contribution of migrants , while the working-age population is declining by one million people per year.

Between 2019 and 2023, foreign workers filled two-thirds of the new jobs created in the European Union. It is estimated that the EU currently has between 2.6 and 3.2 million undocumented migrants.

For Madrid, the mass regularization of migrants therefore appears as one of the keys to future prosperity , at a time when baby boomers are preparing to leave the labor market en masse.

Source: Euronews