NEARLY nine out of 10 migrants applying for Spain’s mass migrant regularisation scheme are from South America.
According to estimates by the Global Citizenship Foundation, a charity supporting the mass regularisation, 86 per cent of those applying for the scheme are South American.
Applications for the scheme, which grants a one-year work and residence permit to undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers, opened on 16 April and will close on 30 June.
The charity estimates that about a third of all accepted applicants will be Colombian – accounting for around 170,000 of the 530,000 migrants expected to be regularised.
Peruvians are expected to make up the second-largest group, with around 60,000 migrants, followed by Hondurans and Venezuelans at roughly 50,000 and 35,000 respectively.
US migrants are also set to benefit from the scheme with 1,000 Americans predicted to be accepted.
Moroccans account for 2.6 per cent of estimated total regularisations, with 12,000 expected to be granted citizenship while 10,000 Algerians estimated to be regularised.
Asia, meanwhile, accounts for around 2.6 per cent of the estimated total, with numbers spread relatively evenly across countries including China, Pakistan, India and the Philippines, none of which individually exceeds 1 per cent.
The charity estimates that 60 per cent of migrants who apply will be granted citizenship with the rest rejected due to ‘difficulties in obtaining the required documentation.’
Global Citizenship Foundation compiled the data in collaboration with thinktank Funcas and the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
The director of Global Citizenship Foundation, Jorge Serrano, told 20Minutos that, “This data dismantles the alarmist narrative that Spain is becoming Islamised, that many people from other religions and cultures are going to come.”
“The majority didn’t come in boats; they arrived in Spain through Barajas Airport, with tourist visas, and they have stayed here, becoming undocumented,” he continued.
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