Spain’s Regularisation under Sánchez: Model or Surrender?

Spain’s Regularisation under Sánchez: Model or Surrender?

Welcome to a new episode of Integration or ReImmigration, I’m immigration lawyer Fabio Loscerbo.

Today I want to speak to a UK audience about a debate unfolding in Spain, but one that raises a much wider European question: is large-scale regularisation a model for governing migration — or evidence that the system has lost control?

That is the real issue.

My argument is not that regularisation is inherently wrong. The question is on what legal basis it is granted.

If broad regularisation occurs without assessing whether migrants have genuinely integrated, then immigration law risks becoming a response to administrative failure rather than a system governed by principle.

And this is where two models diverge.

One relies on periodic regularisation when irregularity becomes too large to manage.

The other says residence should be stabilised through verifiable integration — work, language, respect for the law and real social participation.

For a British audience, this may sound close to a debate between broad amnesty measures and earned settlement based on civic integration.

And I believe the second model is stronger.

Because repeated regularisations can become a cycle of exceptions. An integration-based standard creates a rule.

That is also the foundation of my broader framework, Integration or ReImmigration.

The principle is straightforward: those who integrate remain; where integration fails, return policy remains part of the system.

Not indiscriminate regularisation, but integration as the legal basis of permanence.

And that is why the Spanish case matters.

It forces a larger question: should migration be governed through recurring exceptions, or through stable criteria?

I believe the future lies in criteria.

And so I ask: is Spain offering a model — or exposing the limits of the regularisation approach?

Thank you for listening, and I’ll see you in the next episode of Integration or ReImmigration.

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