Spain’s Migration Minister: Country Needs "Millions of Migrants" to Address Demographic Challenges

According to the minister, Spain will have no choice but to welcome several million migrants. "The demographic trajectories are there, it’s going to happen, we won’t escape it," said José Luis Escriva, not only to describe the current situation, but above all to consider a better future for the kingdom, sparing it from enormous difficulties.

Indeed, according to José Luis Escriva, "the country’s demographic trajectory is so worrying" that "we will need 8 or 9 million people, just to keep our active population at the same level". The Spanish Minister of Social Security, Inclusion and Migration, who spoke thus on Thursday, January 16, at the OECD Forum on Migration in Paris, also stated that "the Spanish economy will need millions and millions of migrants in the coming years" to maintain its current level, and its neighbors must also be "prepared to massively integrate the exiled populations".

In neighboring France, notes francetvinfo.fr, the Spanish minister’s statements echo the remarks of the former High Commissioner for Pensions, Jean-Paul Delevoye, which had caused controversy. The latter had estimated at the end of November that the "European demography and its aging" would require "50 million [people] of foreign population, to balance the active population in Europe in 2050", recalls the French media.

For her part, Ylva Johansson, the European Commissioner for Migration, notes that Europeans "want to welcome people who will contribute to our economy". Europe must "better manage irregular arrivals", by allowing "those who have the right to stay", because "they are welcome, we must welcome them", she adds, before concluding that political leaders must rather reassure Europeans, by showing that "we control immigration".