Spain declared an amnesty Sunday for about 700,000 illegal immigrants -- bucking a Europe-wide trend of cracking down on economic migrants, while striking at exploitation of those working secretly and fearfully in the black economy.
The Socialist government claimed that a three-month qualification period that ended at the weekend -- during which illegal workers and their employers could apply for residency and work permits -- had attracted most of the country's illegal workers.
"We can feel very satisfied," said the labor minister, Jesus Caldera. "Almost 700,000 jobs brought out of the black economy -- that represents 80 percent to 90 percent of all such jobs held by immigrants in Spain."
Officials said that, with workers' families included, more than a million people would no longer have to hide from police or labor inspectors.
Long queues had built up outside government offices as the deadline for the amnesty drew near. Ecuadorians, Romanians, Moroccans and Colombians made up most of the applications. "If you get the papers, you go from being nobody to being somebody ... you exist," one Ecuadoran, Alvaro Salgado, 30, told reporters as he queued to apply on Saturday.
Critics said the amnesty had attracted a flood of extra immigrants, including many who had been living illegally in France, Germany and Italy.
"There are now three times as many illegal immigrants as there were a year ago," said Ana Pastor, social affairs spokeswoman for the opposition conservative People's party. "Spain is considered an easy ride."
The newspaper El Mundo said in an editorial: "On the horizon one can detect new avalanches of migrants -- encouraged by this process -- who could bring with them problems of crime and integration."
Caldera denied the claims, saying police figures showed that illegal immigration was on the wane.
Police have expelled more than 1,000 immigrants -- many of them Pakistani -- back across the French border over the past month.
Spain, a country which still recalls the emigration experiences of millions of its own people, has seen a massive growth in immigration over the past five years as a booming economy has sought fresh, cheap labor.
Spain recently overtook France as a host country for migrants after seeing numbers quadruple to 3.7 million people, or 8.4 percent of the population, since 2000.
The sudden influx has, so far, caused relatively few problems and little heated political debate -- possibly because many of the newcomers are from Latin America and share the same language and religion.
Yesterday, however, government officials were still trying to calm tension in the Madrid neighborhood of Villaverde, where a Spanish youth was stabbed to death by an immigrant 10 days ago.
Migrants have turned around a recent population decline in Spain and have helped fuel consumer growth in the economy.
Spain has organized six immigration amnesties since 1990, several of them under the former People's party government.
"They are justifiable because they are the only way to deal with situations that are humanely and socially unsustainable and which harm the economy," commented the pro-Socialist newspaper El Pais yesterday.
Caldera said the amnesty would lead to an increase in social security contributions of about 1.5 billion euros a year.
Officials say the extra contributions will help offset a looming pensions crisis.
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