Just weeks after one European nation offered mass regularization for half a million illegal migrants, another country on the continent announced a tightening of its citizenship standards. The contrast is instructive for Americans debating President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement actions.
In January, Spain’s Socialist government announced plans to offer citizenship to 500,000 illegal migrants. Applicants need only prove they lived in Spain for at least five months prior to Dec. 31, 2025, and that they do not have a criminal record. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez explained why he thinks his country and the West need an influx of migrants, writing in the New York Times, “They care for aging parents, work at small and large companies, harvest the food that's on the table. They are also part of your community."
It is not surprising that Alex Soros, son of George Soros and chair of the Board of Directors of the open-borders-supporting Open Society Foundations, endorsed Sánchez's words, posting: “We need more elected leaders like him!” As Steve Watson wrote at Modernity.news, “Soros’s intervention underscores the globalist playbook: push mass migration to reshape demographics, then silence opposition through free speech restrictions.”
Although Sánchez has proposed measures to "hold tech companies responsible for hateful and harmful content," fortunately, his critics are still able to speak freely about his destructive policies. After news broke about a horrific crime in Spain's Basque region, where a Moroccan migrant raped and strangled a 54-year-old woman to death, Santiago Abascal of Spain’s populist Vox party weighed in and tied it to the government's immigration policies. He linked to a news report on the crime on X, commenting: “Regularize... crime against Spaniards.”
Regularizar... el crimen contra los españoles. https://t.co/zyEtmQSM1k
— Santiago Abascal 🇪🇸 (@Santi_ABASCAL) February 9, 2026
Alas, recent reports do indeed indicate a rise in crimes committed by migrants against Spaniards. El Español cited an internal report from the Information Division of the Navarre Regional Police, which showed that foreigners were responsible for almost two-thirds of sexual offense arrests and more than 70% of homicide and robbery arrests over the past year. Another report found that foreigners commit 500% more rapes than Spaniards and 400% more murders.
For those who dismiss these figures as cherry‑picked data, let’s examine the real‑world consequences of lax immigration policies in Sweden, the country that announced tightened citizenship rules on Monday. Sweden's overly generous asylum and immigration rules over the decades caused it to become one of the most violent countries in Europe. The Swedish academic Stefan Hedlund explained what happened to his country in a 2024 essay :
The main cause of the crisis is a combination of an open-door migration policy with no accompanying policy to help the newcomers integrate. The consequence has been the emergence of neighborhoods where almost all residents are immigrants, where unemployment rates are very high and where the children of immigrants go to schools where no other children, often not even teachers, are proficient in Swedish. This has served as an incubator for crime, as gangs take over where society fails.
A year earlier, in 2023, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson also blamed the disturbing level of violence on "irresponsible immigration policy and failed integration." On Monday, Kristersson's government announced a much more responsible proposal. DW.com reports on Sweden's new citizenship requirements:
The main requirements for obtaining status as a naturalized citizen are as follows:
- Typical applicants will need to have been residents in Sweden for at least 8 years, up from 5 previously
- A monthly income of at least 20,000 Swedish crowns (roughly €1,900 or $2,200)
- Passing a basic language and culture test
- People with a criminal record, in Sweden or abroad, will have to reside in Sweden longer before they can apply
- The rules are planned to come into force on June 6
"These requirements are much tougher than the situation as it is today because currently there are basically no requirements [to become a citizen]," Migration Minister Johan Forssell told reporters at a press conference on Monday.
"No requirements to become a citizen”? That sounds a lot like what anti-ICE protesters in the U.S. and their supporters advocate. After all, Billie Eilish said at the Grammys that “no one is illegal on stolen land.” One can’t help but wonder if she would agree with ISIS’s claim that Spain is stolen land.
