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6 Conclusion
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to judge as Spain in the meantime has entered a catastrophic economic recession, which has limited the list of occupations in demand of labor.
Various regularizations have been put in place in order to reduce the number of irregular immigrants living and working in Spain. As eligible immigrants necessarily have traversed periods of irregularity, this specific solution must be said to reflect a severely restricted ability amongst Spanish legislators to foresee and implement measures to halt irregular immigration before it grows out of control. The fact that several such processes have taken place strengthens the impression of reactive, rather than proactive politicians. Further, other measures, like the annual quota system for foreign workers to enter legally to work in Spain, also functioned for a long time in this reactive manner. This is because nearly all immigrants who were selected in the program already lived irregularly in Spain. The central dilemma of the regularization processes is that they clearly oppose short term goals to longer term goals in immigration policy. As an advantage, they have eased social pressure and, as large groups of undocumented persons might introduce a general feeling of insecurity in society, while irregular immigrants themselves have to lead unfavorable clandestine lives. In addition, the regularizations include an obvious economic incentive for Spanish governments, whereas regularized immigrants mean tax-paying immigrants.
The problem is that with each regularization process, the vow of it being the last of its kind grows less credible. In this way, the longer term immigration policy goal of showing a firm attitude in the fight against irregular immigration is undermined.
The impression of the immigrant admission policy as an exclusive domain of the central government is ruptured by more recent devolutions of competence from the state towards the autonomous communities. Catalonia has been the first autonomous community which has obtained the competence to issue work permits, which is a central aspect of admission policy. The case of devolution to Catalonia might potentially signify an evolution towards decreasing central coordination on the policy field if the system will be expanded to other Autonomous Communities as well.
Winning coalitions of Spanish immigration policy have varied, from the ones favoring a liberal policy to the ones favoring more restrictions and tighter control. The rightist PP has been consistent in its reactionary stance. However, it has been unable or
105 unwilling to seriously implement its tough stance, as the growth of irregularity increased during its reign from 1996 to 2004. The take-off of the Spanish economy at the time probably induced further irregular immigration, as demands for unskilled labor boomed. What the PP government achieved in economic growth, might in turn have undermined what the same party perceives as a central subgoal, namely strict and efficient border control.
The socialist PSOE has seemingly had a more double faced approach, whereas it is the government party that was the first to succeed in creating a potentially successful system for legally contracting third country nationals. The process leading to this reform was visibly a result of a winning coalition within the Economic and Social Council (CES). Here, both the labor unions and the employers´ organizations were able to invest in their common interests on immigration policy. Together with a general sentiment that favored the labor-oriented side in the PSOE in that something had to be done with the foundations of the immigration system, it was possible to go through with the new regulation. On the other hand, readmission treaties for irregular immigrants with the countries that were to be eligible for the contracting system were imposed simultaneously. Consequently, this shows a certain compromise between different camps within the PSOE.
In addition, the economic crisis seems to have skewed the balance of power within the PSOE. The party has pursued a tougher stance on immigration than earlier, especially since the arrival in office of the current minister of Labor and Immigration Celestino Corbacho 2008. However, it is difficult to assess if this shift in the power of definition on immigration in the ruling PSOE is to be treated as a populist answer to the current economic crisis. As an alternative, it might be a part of the general trend of an evolution in the approach to the immigration policy that has been visible amongst centre left parties throughout Europe. The most interesting aspect of this strategy is that these parties have adopted the rhetoric and practice that was earlier the exclusive domain of populist parties of the right. Critical voices though, underscore the risk in pursuing this strategy and assert that “immigration hostile voters won´t vote for the PSOE when they can vote for the original, the PP” (Saliba 2010 [telephone interview], author´s translation).
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As the case of the passing of the first immigration law revealed, the European Union has exerted considerable external pressure when it comes to delimiting the options available for Spanish politicians on the immigration policy field. It has been affirmed that the European Union has been the most important myth producer in the institutional environment of the Spanish immigration policy field. However, Spain has been able to take advantage of loopholes of the country´s formal immigration cooperation commitments. For instance, the regularization processes which have taken place in Spain clearly ran counter to the wishes of Spain´s partners in the EU.