On April 14, Spain’s Council of Ministers, or cabinet, approved a proposal to legalize more than 500,000 illegal aliens in the country.
As “Insider Report” noted in February, after the Spanish government initially endorsed the measure, the legalization would apply to illegal aliens who entered the country through December 31, 2025, lived in Spain for at least five months, and had no criminal record — besides entering Spain illegally. It is expected to result in more than 500,000 illegal aliens receiving legal status, though Spain’s conservative-leaning opposition argues that up to one million illegals could benefit.
Widespread Support
The amnesty proposal is being imposed via a royal decree, not the Cortes Generales (parliament). According to Elma Saiz, Spain’s minister of inclusion, social security and migration, eligible migrants could apply for legal status beginning on April 16 online and April 20 in person. The application window will last through June 30. According to social-media reports, thousands of migrants have already begun lining up to take advantage of the amnesty.
In a post on X, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez described the measure as “an act of normalization, of recognizing the reality of nearly half a million people who already form part of our daily life. And, also, an act of justice and necessity.” This is the first legalization proposal since 2005, when the Spanish government provided legal status to 577,000 migrants.
The current amnesty proposal originated as a popular legislative initiative signed by about 700,000 Spaniards, and is based on a previous legislative proposal supported by nearly every Spanish party. El País reports:
The regularization is being done through a decree to amend immigration laws, after a similar bill stalled in parliament. The main opposition group, the mainstream conservative Popular Party (PP), has already announced it will challenge the move, despite having voted in favor in Congress in 2024. At the time, lawmakers voted 310-33 to accept the proposal for consideration, with only the far-right, anti-immigration Vox party voting against it.
The Spanish government and Establishment-aligned groups are framing the amnesty proposal as a way to sustain Spain’s workforce amid critically low native birthrates, despite the erroneous notion of mass migration being economically necessary having been repeatedly debunked.
France 24 reports:
Migration Policy Institute Europe deputy director Jasmijn Slootjes said that Spain’s decision was partly in response to fears that the ageing native-born population won’t be capable of sustaining the kind of workforce the country needs to thrive.
“If you look at the demographic decline, the fertility rate in Spain is the lowest in Europe — so it’s really, really low,” she said.
“There were a lot of skill shortages, labour shortages, and de facto a lot of irregular migrants are working, although in informal work. And through regularising you can, of course, get more tax payments, and you also get better matching [to] their skills — because people can actually work at their skill level. So it’s a very pragmatic approach.”
In other words, rather than try to encourage higher native birthrates or let the free market adapt to fewer available workers, Spain’s government is attempting to manipulate the economy by importing (and giving legal status to) foreign workers.
Spain’s mass amnesty — and Europe’s broader, Establishment-orchestrated acceptance of mass migration over the last few decades, particularly since 2015 — is reminiscent of the late Roman Empire in A.D. 376, when Rome provided asylum to a large horde of Goths.
In his article “Rome’s Dark Night of Tyranny,” published in the February 7, 2005, issue of The New American, Steve Bonta recounts this fateful incident:
To escape the ravaging barbarians from the hinterlands, the Goths fled en masse to the banks of the Danube and sent envoys to the Roman emperor Valens, begging for permission to cross into Roman territory to escape the marauding hordes, and to settle in the province of Thrace. Valens, persuaded of the need for a mercenary and labor force to fortify and protect the northern boundaries of the empire, and anxious to expand his tax base, made one of the most fateful decisions in all of history: he opened the borders of the empire and invited the Goths to immigrate to Roman territory.
With the help of boats furnished by the Romans, the Goths poured across the Danube into Roman territory…. The Goths … soon rebelled against the Roman authorities. Before too many months, the Goths, led by their crafty general, Fritigern, were pillaging and laying waste to cities all across Thrace.
The Gothic rebellion culminated in the Battle of Adrianople in A.D. 378, in which the Goths and Alans decisively defeated the Roman Army. Historians generally consider this battle as marking the beginning of the end of the Western Roman Empire.
In his article “The Fall of Rome,” published in the October 30, 2006, issue of The New American, Dennis Behreandt notes:
It took 100 years for the Roman Empire in the west to disappear. It is noteworthy that, while it was incredibly violent, it didn’t happen through conquest alone. The Goths Christianized by [Christian apostle] Ulfilas did not seek to overturn imperial authority, nor did the Goths under [their leader] Alaric seek the end of the empire. Nor for that matter did the Vandals in Africa or Attila in central Europe. They all sought, to greater or lesser degrees, accommodation and self-rule within the empire, and settling there, eventually transformed Europe from the homogeneous state ruled by Rome into a continent of independent kingdoms. “In my view,” concluded historian Peter Heather, “it is impossible to escape the fact that the western Empire broke up because too many outside groups established themselves on its territories.” In the end, the Roman Empire, built by controlled immigration, perished under an onslaught of uncontrollable barbarian migration.
In modern-day Europe, mass migration is slowly erasing the Continent’s nations, both by eroding their unique identities and by expanding the European Union’s powers at the expense of its member states’ national sovereignty.
Ironically, as the Roman Empire declined and eventually disintegrated, its government bureaucracy vastly expanded — mirroring the EU’s continued expansion while its nations are flooded with migrants.
Will Spain and the rest of Europe go the way of Rome? Time will tell — though the future does not look bright.
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