The Council of Ministers approved last Tuesday to initiate the urgent processing of an extraordinary regularization of migrants. The Moncloa initiative, thanks to an agreement between the Government of Pedro Sánchez and PODEMOS, is carried out through a Royal Decree that avoids the control of the Congress of Deputies. We are talking about a massive regularization, without control or guarantees, which will be applied generally, without distinction of nationality and applicable to all those people who were in our country before the 31st of last December.
This measure, which will benefit more than half a million people, is being taken without parliamentary debate and behind the citizens' backs, as President Sánchez is accustomed to doing, knowing that he does not have a parliamentary majority and convinced, as he is, that "popular sovereignty is overrated".
Once again, President Sánchez prioritizes his political calculation over the consensus that should exist in a procedure of such magnitude, which furthermore clashes with the regulations of the EU's Pact on Migration and Asylum and with European recommendations themselves. Because let's not fool ourselves, a generalized regularization with so little rigor and without strict controls has a direct effect on migratory flows and carries a real risk of a "pull effect" towards our country due to its condition as the southern border of Europe and, especially, towards the Canary Islands for being the first entry point.
The questions raised by the government measure are many. How and under what conditions will hundreds of thousands of people be integrated?, what impact will it have on public services?, with what help will the autonomous communities and city councils face the new situation?, what additional resources does the State contemplate? Without a doubt, these are essential issues that the Government fails to answer because it neither knows nor cares. In fact, the only thing Sánchez is interested in is approving it now to please PODEMOS and, lacking a parliamentary majority, continue with his strategy of bartering to stay in the chair and not call elections.
The truth is that, as it has been proposed, we are facing a new blunder by the socialist Government that has not taken into account something fundamental: that without planning and real integration capacity, no one's life is improved, but rather precariousness is chronicled. If we take into account that our basic public services are currently under strong pressure, a regularization of this magnitude without complementary measures will inevitably lead them to collapse.
It is not hidden from anyone that the immediate access of hundreds of thousands of people to all the benefits of public healthcare, education, social housing, transportation, social assistance, or free justice, to cite some examples, will put our system in check because neither additional mechanisms have been put in place nor has the necessary financing been established to carry them out. Or is it that, after seven years of doing nothing in terms of public housing other than favoring squatting and squatters, the Government is going to pull hundreds of thousands of public housing units out of a hat to cover the current demand plus that of new residents who, it is presumed, will be at greater risk of vulnerability? Ignoring this reality, which is extensible to the rest of public services, is simply recklessness
From the Popular Party we defend, and have always defended, the need for an orderly, effective, and legality-respecting immigration policy, but what the socialist Government is doing goes in the opposite direction. It is a massive regularization that will further aggravate structural problems and generate greater social frustration.
The responsibility of a serious government is to manage migration with clear rules, with integration capacity, and with planning that protects the interests of all. Spanish citizens cannot be left with the burden and consequences of a decree that, far from being a responsible solution, has been reduced to a political gamble tailored to the particular and partisan interests of Mr. Sánchez