The number of immigrants living in the European Union hit a total of more than 64 million in 2025, a record high, as millions of working people seek a better life in the face of the wars and social disasters shaking the world and look for a new start.
A large proportion of new arrivals have headed to Germany and Spain where birth rates are declining. The capitalist rulers there are trying to take advantage of the influx of what they consider cheap labor to fill jobs in their industries and to drive down wages.
Spain’s government rolled out a “regularization” program April 20 to give immigrant workers who have already moved there a one-year permit to live and work. Applicants must have lived in the country for the past five months and prove they have no criminal record. Immigrant workers rapidly joined long lines outside post offices to submit applications. Estimates of the numbers eligible range from 500,000 to 840,000.
The capitalist class in Spain has boasted the highest economic growth rates in Europe for the last three years. The new work permits ensure bosses a supply of exploitable labor to take advantage of this capitalist expansion. Immigrants fill jobs at the bottom of the pay scale, under worse conditions.
They “work at small and large companies, harvest the food that’s on the table,” social-democratic Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told the New York Times Feb. 4. Without immigration, he said, countries in Europe “will experience a sharp demographic decline that will prevent them from keeping their economies and public services afloat.”
The work permits are temporary and subject to annual renewal, which ensures the employing class needed flexibility to cut back or enlarge the number of immigrants whenever they deem it necessary.
Bosses in Spain complain they face a labor shortage, especially in agriculture. They hope thousands of foreign-born workers living and working in uncertain conditions will offer them a tool to drive down the wages and conditions of all workers.
The scheme is billed as an “amnesty” by many in the media. But it provides neither citizenship, voting rights, nor permanent residency. Only after five years on the program are immigrants permitted to apply for permanent residency.
Similar measures have been adopted on six previous occasions by governments in Spain since 1986. The new “regularization” scheme is at odds with the growing restrictions on immigrants adopted by some rival ruling classes elsewhere in Europe, whose economies are stagnating, like in Italy.
Berlin widens attacks on immigrants
Beginning in 2015, Germany’s government substantially expanded the number of immigrant workers in the country from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, where the toilers face devastating conditions as a result of the rulers’ wars. Berlin approved 1.5 million asylum requests between 2015 and 2024.
In the face of recent years of economic stagnation, however, the government is now targeting immigrants. Last year Berlin ended fast-track citizenship that allowed immigrants to apply for naturalization after three years. The government has also expanded the grounds for expelling immigrants. Deportations topped at 21,311 between January and November in 2025, a 16% rise over the same period the year before. At the same time, 30,000 more left “voluntarily” after being served notices they must go.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced March 30 he wants 80% of the more than 1 million Syrian refugees in Germany to leave.
Berlin’s goal is not to expel all immigrants, but to increase the difficulties they face, providing the employers with a layer of the working class that live in fear of being thrown out of the country and who the bosses look to super exploit. As in the U.S., these attacks highlight the necessity of the labor movement leading a fight to end the second-class status of workers without “papers.”