Years in Hiding: The Uphill Struggle of Undocumented Immigrants in Spain

Sunbaked skin adds several years beyond one’s age. Although he arrived in Madrid with the vigor of thirty 15 years ago, now at 45, his body reveals fatigue exacerbated by the lingering effects of COVID that kept him bedridden for months. Grias Uddin, born in a small village in Bangladesh, has spent the last fifteen years making a living on the pavement, selling cans of beer, soda, and water to tourists and pedestrians in central Madrid, about 8,500 kilometers from where he was born. Despite all this time spent here, he does not exist to the state. He has lived without papers, off the administrative radar. He has never had a permit or legal residency authorization in a country that is also his own. That may soon change.

In the corridors of Congress, the fate of around half a million immigrants who have been in Spain for years but have lived in secrecy and irregularity is currently being decided. The popular legislative initiative (ILP) that gathered over 600,000 signatures for an extraordinary regularization of immigrants has been unblocked after more than a year of ostracism, with renewed support that the PSOE has decided to provide after long opposing it. According to its proponents, the measure would target those in the greatest precariousness, pushed to the margins: seasonal workers in agriculture, live-in caregivers, street vendors, and tens of thousands living in the underground economy. These are the ones who have remained outside the 200,000 immigrants who have been legalized annually in recent years through the most common route: proving roots in the country. They have not succeeded due to an insurmountable obstacle: an adequate employment contract.

Uddin has tried for years to secure such a contract, but it has proven impossible. An employer willing to hire him would have to navigate the necessary paperwork and wait months for a Foreign Affairs office to approve Uddin’s residency permit, even when it’s a position that needs to be filled immediately. The other option for someone like him is illegal, but it’s what many are pushed into by the requirements imposed by law: buying a job contract. “There’s no money for a contract,” Uddin responds in broken Spanish when asked why, after 15 years in Spain, he still hasn’t obtained papers. For that paper, which would pretend to establish a labor relationship between him and a company, he has been charged between 5,000 and 10,000 euros. There’s an enormous chasm that condemns him to irregularity.

Ana Julieta Vallejo’s employers prefer her without papers. Colombian, 50 years old, she arrived in Spain in November 2022, working in the same roles as the tens of thousands of Latin American women before her: in cleaning and as a live-in caregiver for the elderly. In many cases, the condition with the families that hire her is that she remains undocumented. “They refuse to pay social security; it costs them more money,” she says in a video call with EL PAÍS from Palma de Mallorca. In fact, she has even offered them a deal: if they give her the papers, she would pay part of the social security, “but even then,” she hasn’t succeeded.

Vallejo migrated to Spain after hearing that there was work. “People talk about there being a lot of work here, and yes, I won’t say otherwise, there is work, but when you get to the trouble of papers, that’s where the illusion ends.” She hasn’t had luck in other sectors either: although she constantly sees signs advertising for “stylist,” “manicurist”—which is what she did in Colombia—the requirement is residency permission. “Doors close when you don’t have papers,” she declares. Almost three years in clandestinity is the minimum toll that most immigrants must pay before gaining regularization. Over recent years, the required time has decreased through successive reforms. In fact, the most recent one, which came into effect last May, allows for regularization after two years in Spain. But with a work contract, primarily.

Clandestinity takes its toll. Being at the mercy of casual jobs, she has been on the brink of sleeping on the street. The only thing that saved her was a friend who took her in when she couldn’t afford a room. She solved her meals through organizations that support migrants. “I have had moments when I thought about giving it all up and returning to Colombia, but I also wonder what I would return to,” she says. She has risked everything to be in Spain and although she has nothing here, she would also have to start over in her country. Though she thinks about her daughter there every day. “I live in two worlds: I wish to be there, but at the same time here because I need to save to buy a house there.”

Uddin feels the same way. In Bangladesh, he left his four children (aged 25, 22, 16, and 15) whom he hasn’t seen since 2010 when he arrived in Spain, as he cannot travel to see them. He lives in the Lavapiés neighborhood in a bunk bed in a room with eight people, in a flat where a total of 16 live. He is registered with an organization that supports Bangladeshi immigrants, but when he goes to the doctor, he has to juggle to avoid being sent an unpayable bill later.

They want to work, and the Spanish economy needs them. Between late 2019 and late 2024, 76% of all jobs created in Spain were occupied by immigrants, according to the annual report published by the Bank of Spain last May. Employers continue to complain about the difficulty of finding labor, and the number of unfilled vacancies has reached a record high, with over 152,000 at the end of the first quarter of 2025, according to the INE.

The heat is unbearable in the makeshift home of pallets and plastic where Bamba Cissé lives. He answers the call with EL PAÍS outside, where he spends the day to avoid baking under the makeshift roof that serves as his home. Born in Gambia 50 years ago, he arrived in Spain in 2007 aboard a small boat that landed in Tenerife. Although he is nearing two decades in Spain, he has never had a permit to live here legally, nor has he been registered with any administration. However, he has worked the fields in Níjar (Almería), harvesting tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, and zucchini. Europe’s vegetable patches are nourished by migrants like him and others in the same settlement from Morocco, Ghana, Senegal, and a few from Latin American countries. The population has grown exponentially because the fields need them, but the housing stock hasn’t kept pace. They end up crammed into shanty settlements, many of them undocumented.

Cissé is not working right now. A bike accident years ago when he was leaving work is taking its toll. If he spends many days collecting produce, the pain in one leg becomes unbearable. But if he doesn’t work, there’s no money to eat. For years, he has tried to obtain his papers, but he always gets rejected. The main hurdle is that the work contracts he manages to secure from some employers don’t meet the requirements. In many cases for immigrants like him, the prospective company that would hire them doesn’t have the necessary economic means or has debts with social security, or the Foreign Affairs offices believe they have hired too many workers already and don’t justify new hires. In other cases, simply because many of those contracts are fake and obtained on the illegal market. Right now, Bamba Cissé is waiting for a response to his latest application through the roots pathway, this time with the help of a lawyer from the Jesuit Service for Migrants (SJM).

Cissé not only wants his papers to work legally and secure a dignified retirement now that he has passed 50. He also wants to see his children again. When he embarked on that small boat past his thirties, his two kids were newborns. Today they must be teenagers nearing 20. He speaks with them frequently. He longs for his documents so he can hug them again.