Spanish Bishops Call for Granting Legal Status to 500,000 Illegal Immigrants

How stupid is the Spanish Episcopate? This seems like a way to lessen support for their position on the proposed desecration of the Valley of the Fallen.

From The European Conservative

By Javier Villamore

Advocating an unpopular migration policy amid outrage over the church’s support for secularizing a Civil War memorial seems a strategic misstep.

The Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE) appears set on continuing its collaboration with the socialist PSOE government under Pedro Sánchez. After its recent agreement with the government to transform the Basilica of the Valley of the Fallen into a secular space, the CEE is now proposing to give half a million illegal immigrants legal status in Spain.

Luis Argüello, archbishop of Valladolid, is urging the PP and the PSOE to dialogue and overcome “sterile polarisations” to tackle a problem that, he said, affects “dignity and the common good.” 

The initiative, promoted by Catholic charity Cáritas, CEE, and Confer (the Spanish Conference of Religious Orders), collected 612,000 signatures in support in 2023. According to the bishops, the current regulation leaves thousands of people in a “legal limbo”—‘undocumented’ people without access to papers, families with minors, chronically ill people, or workers without a formal contract. “What should we do, expel them all or regularise their situation?” the archbishop asked, recognizing the state’s right to control migratory flows. 

A segment of the right wing advocates for mass expulsion, arguing that existing Spanish and European policies not only fail to curb immigration flows but actively promote them.

This might not be the best time for the CEE to set itself up as a mediator on an issue as polarised as immigration, however. The church’s recent support for transforming the Civil War memorial Valley of the Fallen to a secular space has provoked protests in front of the organization’s headquarters on March 31st. A hundred demonstrators, with banners and shouts of “traitor bishops, you are desecrators”, accused the church of bowing to the government and betraying its values. 

Choosing this moment to push for mass regularisation instead of defusing internal and external tensions seems like a strategic mistake.

This is not the first time Spain has faced such processes. Since the transition after the death of General Francisco Franco, governments have resorted to extraordinary regularisations on seven occasions: 1985 (10,000 people), 1991 (110,000), 1996 (21,000), 2000 (163,000), 2001 (235,000), 2005 (578,000 under Zapatero, the largest so far) and 2011 (more than 150,000). These measures, promoted by both the PSOE and the PP, have led to the forced legalization of 1.3 million immigrants in total.