- cross-posted to:
- stupidpol@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- stupidpol@sh.itjust.works
As countries on both sides of the Atlantic ramp up deportations of undocumented migrants, Spain’s left-wing government is preparing to give legal status to hundreds of thousands of irregular workers. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has championed the amnesty as a way to not only give informal workers legal protections, but to also bring more money into a social security system increasingly under stress by the country’s ageing population.
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At a minimum you can’t really go on about how an aging population demands more austerity if you aren’t in support of something like this.
We’re an irregular immigrant unable to return to our original country safely and our student visa ran out sadly. Very happy this is being passed. So many homeless people around just wanting to work along with us. We’ve been working under the table and have been wanting to pay taxes and contribute. Can’t believe we’re saying this but can’t wait to work again especially in a country that cares about its people.
I’d love if this worked to bring more revenue, but there’s no room for unskilled labor in Spain with the current (high) unemployment rate. This regulatory change acts like a call to even more immigrants to come in. And as in all of history, the higher the unemployment, the easiest it is for employers to exploit workers
Also, unskilled immigration specially from African countries is overall a net loss for the country, tax wise. I’d love if it wasn’t like this, but a government can’t claim to be socialist while flooding an already flooded work market and housing market with half a million immigrants just like that.
Again, I’m the first that’d be happy if this was even remotely useful to increase our quality of life, but it just isn’t, it puts more stressed on a country that’s hanging on a very thin edge.
Spain’s independent fiscal authority (AIReF) estimates that in 2017 non‑European immigrants had a positive net annual fiscal contribution of about €4,200, mainly because they’re younger and draw fewer pensions in the short run.
Also, the ‘half a million’ you mention is being discussed as a régularisation, not necessarily 500k new arrivals overnight.
Finally, if you have a source that shows ‘unskilled African immigration is a net tax loss in Spain’ (with definitions and data), share it…
This? from 2006? I’d consider this very much a different kind of immigration to the one we have now, It was two decades ago
also feel free to check what I answered in the comments to another user justifying my initial comment with sources and such
Also, unskilled immigration specially from African countries is overall a net loss for the country, tax wise. I’d love if it wasn’t like this, but a government can’t claim to be socialist while flooding an already flooded work market and housing market with half a million immigrants just like that.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
Before I give you mixed spanish sources, this is one of the best european made analysis on the topic of Immigration net revenue or loss by country (from the netherlands)
https://docs.iza.org/dp17569.pdf
Now these are spanish sources:
- https://www.elmundo.es/espana/2025/09/28/68d7ff8221efa0370d8b4589.html If you scroll down you can see graphs on “max education level reached” by immigration groups vs locals,
for example, africans in this graph only reach superior education or university 10% of the times, where locals are at 48.9% and latin american immigration at 31.5%, europeans at 28,8%, asians at 26%, and so on
Now, regarding work, just bellow that table on the same source, we can see the “activity rate” (so people that are either working or doing something towards it), locals 87%, average sits around 83%, africans are at 69%. For ocupation (which means they are actively working) 51%, while immigration from asia, europe, and locals sit above 70% points at all times, locals are at 80%.
For a final unemployment rate statistic of 8% for locals, 16% for second generation immigrants, and 25% for current generation immigrants (from africa)
(source: 4ºtrimester 2024 INE (national institute of statistics of spain))
You also have this study specifically on net tax win/loss, with sources at the bottom of it
https://fundaciondisenso.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/20250024_InformeXXIX-1.pdf
And again, I don’t have any problems with immigration, but studies exist from a reason, and they are clear as water, I’d love for every person to have a chance to educate themselves, have a good job, start their life and so on. But that can’t be at the expense of the people already at the country they are moving to.
Hi. Thanks for bringing the data. I found this source that talks about low skilled immigrants impact reanalysed in US but might extrapolate to other cases. Suggests that they are actually a net positive but of course it is debatable. That said, it is quite sad that nationalism and individualism became so standard around the west. Africa and Latin America have historically been the backyard to do what the imperial west pleases for ages. A bit of solidarity does not hurt, and the impact on quality of life that this has for immigrants is never considered in the total positive, just “the economy”. We’re worse off bc of super rich parasites. Let’s stop this reverse robin hood.
how is this not borderline racism?
How is data racism?
Data might lead to racism. Or data might show racism. But data is not racism.
Data is meaningless without context, bias and choices about what is taken as data and how it is taken. Data is a direct expression of the biases we bring to the table when we first begin with a question.
If you believe data cannot encode racism into it, you are a fool.
As I said, data cannot be racist. The methodology to obtain it might be.
But then you should not attack the data, you should attack the methodology.
Any good study will explain their methodology along with the data obtained with it.
Racism is the prejuice of a group of people based on their skin color. I’m not making a prejuice because I’m not speculating, and also, I’m not grouping them by skin color even, I also mentioned and showed that first gen immigration assimilated better, and latin americans too. I’m giving you data of what’s been happening, not what I like or not, this is a serious topic
What’s the deal? I’m giving the data, I don’t have any problem with any race, in fact, I also talked about south american immigration (be it white or black people from there) getting close to the levels of employment and studies of locals which means immigration with them is working, and a cool (and necessary) thing called “assimilation” is happening.
