An Empirical Assessment of the 2022 Spanish Immigration Reforms

Overview & Synopsis

This paper examines Spain’s 2022 immigration reform, which relaxed the eligibility requirements of the country’s continuous regularization system, thereby accelerating pathways to legal status without introducing a one-off amnesty. Combining administrative and survey data, we exploit the reform using complementary generalized difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity, and instrumental variables strategies to estimate its effects on migration flows, immigrant labor market outcomes, and local economic conditions. We find no evidence that the reform generated “magnet effects”: neither immigration inflows nor the stock of irregular migrants increased following its implementation. Instead, the reform substantially shortened the period spent in irregular status, reducing undocumented immigrants’ waiting time for legal residence by approximately one year. While earlier access to legal status led to some suggestive improvements in job quality and labor market trajectories, we find limited evidence of short-run employment gains. We argue that this pattern is consistent with negative selection among immigrants regularized under the post-reform regime.