Eduardo González
The Government has announced the reception of 1,500 refugees from Central and South America over the next two years under the expansion of the National Resettlement Program (PNR, for its acronym in Spanish), approved almost a year ago.
The National Resettlement Program for the year 2023 was approved by the Council of Ministers on February 21, 2023, in application of the law regulating the right to asylum and subsidiary protection of October 2009. Almost three months later, on the 3rd In May, the Council of Ministers approved the expansion of this Program in order to open a complementary and additional route that would allow authorizing the arrival of refugees, preferably from Central and South America, whose profiles fit their capacity for integration into society. Spanish in attention to their employability.
In that same expansion agreement, it was established that the annual number of beneficiaries of this expansion should be determined jointly by the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration. Interior is in charge of executing the expansion of the Program with regard to international protection, while Inclusion, Social Security and Migration assumes, in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the processing and issuance of visas and, where appropriate, safe passage.
As published yesterday in the Official State Gazette (BOE), the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes, Félix Bolaños, has ordered, at the joint proposal of both Ministries, that the number of beneficiaries of the expansion of the National Program of Resettlement will amount, specifically, to 1,572. Of these, 72 people corresponded to the year 2023, while 500 corresponded to 2024 and another thousand to the next year, 2024.
These figures may be modified or adapted by means of a new ministerial order at the joint proposal of the two Ministries, depending on the needs detected, the execution of the respective projects and budgetary availability.
This expansion of the PNR is part of the agreement reached in June 2022 by the United States, Canada and Spain to identify, among the migrants from Central and South America trying to reach the first of those countries, those who may be eligible for one of the regular migration routes to the other two, such as international protection or work and residence permits.
The tripartite agreement, embodied in a joint declaration of the three countries in favor of safe, orderly, regular migration based on humanitarian principles from Latin America, aims to expand opportunities for regular labor migration, reinforcing the coordination of the different governments to recruit, fairly and ethically screen and support workers eligible for overseas employment and increase the protection of their rights.
