The Spanish Government plans to approve this Tuesday a modification of the Immigration Regulations to speed up and facilitate the incorporation of immigrants into the labor market.
The reform aims to improve hiring at origin, facilitate the regularization by roots of those who are already in Spain, allow foreign students to work and simplify the requirements to be employed as an employee.
The proposal of the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration proposes to relax the requirements that are currently required to obtain residence and work permits, in order to cover the growing vacancies in the Spanish labor market.
Residence with training commitment
Among the proposals appears the figure of “rooting by training”, which would allow people who have been in Spain in an irregular situation for two years and assume an effective commitment to training in sectors with job demand to obtain a residence permit.
The reformed regulation requires, in the case of employment roots, that the foreigner has remained in Spain for at least two years and has worked regularly or irregularly for a proven period of six months.
In the case of social roots, a period of residence in Spain of three years and family ties must be demonstrated or a report proving their insertion in society must be provided, but also a contract with a minimum duration of one year.
Among the objectives is also to set up a catalog of occupations that are difficult to cover, which allows knowing more exactly the needs of the labor market in order to improve hiring procedures at source.
Regarding foreign students, the ministry wants them to be able to combine studies with a job (with a maximum of 30 hours per week), something that is now prohibited, with exceptions.
Together with this measure, the aim is to facilitate self-employment for foreigners, now subject to multiple requirements and heavy investments.
Last June, foreign workers affiliated with the Spanish Social Security were 2.46 million, the historical maximum since data is available.
34.8% of foreign workers originate from the European Union and the rest come from non-EU countries. Among Latin Americans, the most numerous are Colombians (117,376) and Venezuelans (115,194).
Spain suffers from strong migratory pressure, mainly from the African continent. The year 2021 ended with nearly 42,000 people arriving irregularly, of which some 40,000 did so by sea, according to official data.