As I recently reported, tens of thousands of migrants — mostly Moroccan males — poured into the Spanish African exclave of Ceuta on July 30, triggering one of the largest “European” migrant crises in months. More than 70 are reported dead and the official one-day total of illegal entrants has jumped to 69,000, but because there was no forward passage to Europe itself, most who survived the journey have returned home, even as various parties have begun pointing fingers to assign blame for the “Ceuta surge”.
The July 8 Opinion and the Spanish Amnesty
As I noted on July 31, those migrants had plenty of incentives to try to enter the European Union — economic opportunities key among them — but the basic reason why those migrants came now has to do with two recent developments in Spain.
The first is an amnesty, finalized in April, that offers long-term residency benefits to illegal aliens in Spain as of January 1 and who had resided in that country for at least five months as of that date.
Spanish authorities expected a half-million applicants for that “legalization” plan but had received more than one million applications as of early July, at which point nearly 610,000 applicants had been approved for benefits.
Nothing sends a clearer signal to would-be migrants that a country isn’t serious about its immigration laws than an amnesty (which is why few politicos, regardless of nation, have the temerity to use the term) and the prospect of a European Union (EU) work permit, regardless of how remote, likely seemed too tempting for many to pass up.
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