Paperwork for the Foreign Petitioner

Besides that sprinkling of Europeans looking to get their residence papers, or the new TIE card, the majority of those people in the queue outside the Police extranjería are from other parts of the planet.

Notably in regions with agriculture workers, like Almería, Cádiz and Murcia, or builders (Madrid and Catalonia).

The system is ‘first at the door’, but it doesn’t always work like that. You see, the sign outside says ‘Full, come back tomorrow’. Even if you got there precisely at 8.00am.

Of course, there are several ways to skin a cat. In Almería, one needs to pay some handy fellow 200 euros to get in. In Madrid, it’s the same, and in Catalonia (of course) it’ll cost you 300€.

Who shares this money? Well, it’s clear that someone in authority would have to turn a blind eye. But, hey, foreigners don’t have the vote, or representation or a champion…

Maybe one can find a ‘reservation’ through some cheesy agency, or with Wallapop (here) or Mil Anuncios (here and here). Antena3 runs a segment about this (found on YouTube here).

It goes without saying that the foreigners, los extranjeros, are sick of this. ‘Migrant groups protest at a police station in Barcelona due to the lack of appointments to regularize their situation’ says 20 Minutos here. If they don’t get their NIE renewed in time, it says, they could lose it altogether.

From Para Inmigrantes here, we read (Oct 2019) ‘Reservations in "re-sale" for appointments at the Immigration office.  Obtaining an appointment at Immigration is of vital importance for immigrants. However, getting a ‘number’ has been almost impossible for a while now. The damage for those interested is major: "Without an appointment, there are no papers. Without papers there is no formal job, no bank account, no rent. There is no tranquillity". It says that many people resort to locutorios (the small phone agencies that are found in working-class areas) where they can pay up to 300€ for an assignment.

El Mundo looks at the other issues for third-worlders: ‘…Gathering the necessary paperwork at the place of origin, receiving them after a few months and preparing them (or translating them, if it is not a Hispanic country) can cost more than 1,000 euros. In addition, there are the bribes that some officials of those countries demand for their role, say citizens of Pakistan and Senegal. The whole effort can be wasted if the supplicant can’t get a date and time over at Extranjería before the paperwork is timed out…’.

El País (July 11 2020) also reports on this here: ‘The collapse of the police stations blocks the procedures of foreign citizens. With thousands of pending procedures and the limited capacity to manage them, the pre-appointment business is booming again and they are sold in offices, call centres or Wallapop for up to 200 euros…’.  

Noticias de Trabajo says that the Ministry of the Interior is aware of this situation and it adds: ‘…Both the National Police and the Ministry of the Interior are keen to discover how there could be certain people who know ahead of time the moment in which the appointments in Immigration are due to be offered to the public…’.

Between the Covid making appointments harder, and the long queues, and now the mafia, it’s a struggle to get one’s bureaucratic obligations resolved these days…