Spain Migrant ID Process Faces 'Collapse' as 900,000 Seek Regularization

Spain’s largest trade union, Comisiones Obreras (CCOO), is warning that the next step in the country’s massive migrant regularization process is already failing. The union has called on the government to provide more police resources for fingerprinting, a key step needed to issue Foreigner Identity Cards (TIE). With the application deadline just hours away, over 900,000 people have applied for the extraordinary regularization program. CCOO says the system for booking fingerprint appointments is already overwhelmed, creating a bottleneck that threatens to block the entire process. “We have detected problems with both Social Security and the fingerprinting,” said Sofía Castillo, CCOO’s secretary for Migration and Care. She blamed poor coordination and a lack of staff at police stations. “The problems with the size of these police forces are something we have been pointing out for a long time.” The union, which has helped process more than 7,500 applications, says two-thirds of applicants are from Latin America, mostly Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela. The rest come mainly from Morocco and Algeria. Notably, 60% of those assisted by the union are women. CCOO has deployed nearly 200 staff across Spain to help with applications. The union stressed that many applications cover entire families, meaning the real number of people affected is much higher. The union’s warnings focus on vulnerable groups, including people already working in the informal economy, domestic workers, and migrants living in temporary settlements in areas like Almería and Murcia. “This is not over,” Castillo said. “The administration has three months to decide, and we will continue to push.” The union insists the process is a chance to fix a system that “condemned the foreign population to social exclusion and labor exploitation.” The Spanish government now has three months to process the record number of applications and resolve the fingerprinting crisis.