Spain's Prime Minister Holds to Lonely Stance on Immigration

With most European leaders talking tougher about immigration in the face of a rise in far-right populism and Trump administration warnings that they could face "civilizational erasure" unless they tighten their borders, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez stands apart. The Iberian nation has taken in millions of people from Latin America and Africa in recent years, and the leftist Sánchez regularly extols the financial and social benefits that immigrants who legally come to Spain bring to the eurozone's fourth-largest economy. Spain's choice, Sanchez often says, is between "being an open and prosperous country or a closed and poor one." The elements include:

• Growth: The prime minister's bet seems to be paying off. Spain's economy has grown faster than any other EU nation for a second year in a row, due in part to newcomers boosting its aging workforce. "Today, Spain's progress and strong economic situation owe much to the contribution of the migrants who have come to Spain to develop their life projects," Sánchez said in July after anti-migrant clashes rocked a small southern Spanish town. Spain's central bank estimates the country will need around 24 million working-age immigrants over the next 30 years to sustain the balance between workers and retirees-plus-children.
• Elsewhere: Centrist leaders across Europe are facing rising pressure from anti-immigrant far-right parties, despite a significant decrease in illegal border crossings into the EU over the past two years. In France, where the once-ostracized National Rally far-right party has built support, centrist President Emmanuel Macron now speaks about what he refers to as the migration problem. "If we don't want the National Rally to come to power, we must address the problem that feeds it," Macron said last year after France passed new restrictions that he described as "a shield" needed to fight illegal immigration while helping to better integrate migrant workers. While running to be German chancellor this year, Friedrich Merz vowed to toughen the country's migration policy. Days after he was elected, Germany boosted its border security efforts.

• Economic drawback: Economists say Spain's millions of immigrants complicate another political issue: the country's increasingly unaffordable housing market. Jose Bosca, an economist at the University of Valencia, said that alongside pressures from tourism and short-term rentals in cities, Spain hasn't built enough housing to accommodate its new residents. "If you integrate so many people, but you don't build more housing, there could be problems," Bosca said. In response, Sánchez's government has pledged to fund more construction—especially of public housing—and also floated measures to crack down on wealthy foreigners buying second homes in the country.
• The politics: Ssnchez's progressive government, too, has seen pro-immigration proposals stall. Last year, it amended Spain's immigration law to facilitate residency and work permits to hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in the country illegally. At the time, Migration Minister Elma Saiz said Spain needed to add as many as 300,000 taxpaying foreign workers per year to sustain its state benefits, including for pensions, health care and unemployment. Critics, though, said the changes to the law had many shortcomings and even hurt some migrants instead.
• One key: Sanchez's immigration approach, including his remarks about immigrants' contributions to Spanish society, is consistent with those of the country's past progressive governments, said Anna Terrón Cusi, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute think tank who previously worked on immigration policy for Spanish governments, including Sanchez's. "What has changed a lot internally is that there is now very anti-immigration rhetoric from Vox, especially against Muslim immigrants," she said, referring to the far-right Spanish party that has been polling third, behind the ruling Socialists and center-right People's Party. "But Sanchez, unlike other European leaders, responds by directly and strongly confronting this narrative."