The News
Spain is drawing educated immigrants in droves, lured by the low cost of living and a government that has made inward migration a centerpiece of its economic policy.
Madrid in particular is home to a growing number of American “Trump regime refugees,” the Financial Times wrote. There are also more than half a million Latin Americans living in the city — 12 times as many as there were 25 years ago. At the same time, the government has also made it far harder for non-European Union buyers to purchase a home in Spain, imposing a 100% tax on property sales to discourage second- or holiday-home buyers.
SIGNALS
Spain credits economic strength to migration
Spain’s socialist government has bucked a continent-wide trend of hardening immigration rules, with President Pedro Sanchez instead presenting an “empathetic and positive view” of migration, Le Monde noted in September. That openness, analysts said, likely drove Spain’s outlier economic performance last year — with Spain’s growth far outpacing Germany, France, and Italy: “It’s been done with a lot of tourists and a lot of immigrants,” one economist told The Guardian. A greater backlash may be coming, however: Locals increasingly hold international visitors responsible for shortages in housing, the BBC reported, and the government has recently imposed a 100% tax on property sales to non-European Union buyers.
Other left-leaning European governments embrace more restrictive migration
While Spain has made a point of welcoming migrants, the European left more broadly has begun to embrace restrictive immigration policies, The Economist noted last year, with an increasing number of leftwing politicians using language like “pro-integration,” rather than “pro-migration,” when speaking about the subject. In Denmark, for example, the country’s left-leaning Prime Minister Mette Frederikson has argued that the country’s welfare state is sustainable only by maintaining low levels of immigration, The New York Times reported. Others are toughening their stances in a bid to outflank anti-immigrant parties: Under pressure from rising support for the populist right, the UK’s Labour government recently published guidance stating that anyone who enters the country illegally should be refused citizenship as a default.