PP promotes reform of the Immigration Law to allow immediate returns in Ceuta and Melilla

It was the President of the Government himself, Pedro Sánchez, who, hours after the massive entry into Ceuta began last July, pointed out a recent Supreme Court ruling as a possible trigger. That ruling said that the Immigration Law does not authorize the immediate return of immigrants who swim to Ceuta or Melilla, considering that they do not meet the condition established by the rule of having to overcome "containment elements" to reach Spain. The High Court did not close the door, however, to modifying the law to eliminate this requirement, a path that the PP is betting on.

In mid-July, after hearing the Supreme Court's ruling and days before the massive entry into Ceuta, the Popular Party registered in Congress a reform of the Immigration Law in this sense - the Government is still studying whether this modification has a budgetary effect. Weeks later, the PP registered the same text in the Senate and, this one, it now has the green light to begin its parliamentary processing. For this reason, the popular people are going to put this initiative to a vote in next week's plenary session, specifically on Wednesday, the day that will mark two months since the massive entry into Ceuta. The interest of the vote will not be so much in whether the text goes ahead or not - the PP has an absolute majority - but in what the PSOE votes in the face of a legal reform to which even Sánchez opened the door in some way.

"We have to see how we manage it," he said on July 31 about the Supreme Court ruling and its effects, then proposing two ways of response. One, more practical: the placement of buoys that act as a "containment element" - this was done at the beginning of August, and will now be installed permanently for two million euros. And another: "From a legislative point of view, [posing] whether we have to modify some aspects of the laws to be able to guarantee these repatriations at the border in the most efficient way possible."

The Government approved a reform of the Immigration Law in August, but did not specify that it contemplates modifying what refers to immediate returns, and the PP is now pressuring it to make a firm statement on this. And it does so with an initiative that, at this time, finds in the Senate the fastest way to be processed and cover the legal loophole that, according to Sánchez, could have encouraged access to Ceuta.