LET'S SEE what the European Union has to say about this; after all, there's free movement of people between its country members, and once immigants are legally in one country they are free to move to any of the others:

Spain approved new guidelines on immigration on Thursday, including a partial amnesty aimed at giving papers to some of the 800,000 illegal immigrants estimated to be living in the country.

"(The new regulations) will allow us to manage our immigration more rationally in line with a new vision regarding this phenomenon, no longer considered a problem but an opportunity and a challenge," Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, deputy prime minister, told reporters after the weekly cabinet meeting.

The regulations have been drawn up on the basis of a broad consensus following consultations with professional associations, unions and immigrant organizations as well as political parties.

Well, Reuters has been drinking Zapatero's Kool-Aid; it's simply not true that all these associations and organizations agree with the measuren (for example, the Popular Party, representing 10 million votes, that is, almost half the electorate). It doesn't have anything to do with xenophobia or being anti-immigrant, far from it. It's just that some people think that it's not wise to set up a system that will become a real magnet for immigration that will spread all over Europe (Spain is the aready the main gateway for EU's immigration), while rewarding people who have been breaking immigration laws.