[Previous entry: "Excuses, Excuses:How the Right Rationalizes Racial Inequality in America"] [Next entry: "'Bin Laden's nightmare' seeks Islamic reformation"]

05/08/2005:

"Spain grants amnesty for 700,000 migrants"

Spain declared an amnesty yesterday for about 700,000 illegal immigrants - bucking a Europe-wide trend of cracking down on economic migrants, while striking at exploitation of those working secretly and fearfully in the black economy.
The Socialist government claimed that a three-month qualification period that ended at the weekend - during which illegal workers and their employers could apply for residency and work permits - had attracted most of the country's illegal workers.

"We can feel very satisfied," said the labour minister, Jesús Caldera. "Almost 700,000 jobs brought out of the black economy - that represents 80% to 90% of all such jobs held by immigrants in Spain."
Officials said that, with workers' families included, more than a million people would no longer have to hide from police or labour inspectors.

Long queues had built up outside government offices as the deadline for the amnesty drew near. Ecuadorians, Romanians, Moroccans and Colombians made up most of the applications. "If you get the papers, you go from being nobody to being somebody ... you exist," one Ecuadorian, Alvaro Salgado, 30, told Reuters news agency as he queued to apply on Saturday.
Full:guardian.co.uk