Human rights court finds complex regularisation procedure incompatible with right to private lifeIn the case Sudita Keita v. Hungary, the European Court of Human Rights examined whether the repercussions on private life due to the difficulties in regularising one’s status amount to a violation of art. 8. The applicant, who was trying to get stateless status recognised, complained about the general impossibility of regularising his status in Hungary for a fifteen-year-long period. The Court considered that the difficulty of regularising his status impacted his private life in Hungary. The decision sets important principles on the accessibility of the statelessness determination procedure and underlines that art. 8 ECHR imposes a positive obligation on states to provide for effective and accessible procedures to have their status determined. Portuguese regularisation leaves out tens of thousands of undocumented people The Portuguese organisation SOS Racismo has estimated that 80,000 -100,000 undocumented migrants are excluded from the measure which provides regular status to people living in Portugal with an ongoing residence application until 1 July 2020. Those who do not benefit from the program do not have an ongoing residence permit request and were not able to initially apply due to their work in the undeclared sector and inability to demonstrate an accumulation of payslips and contracts needed for the application. Italy adopts regularisation measure amid critiquesThe Italian government passed a law on 13 May paving the way for around 200,000 undocumented agricultural, domestic and care workers to be regularised. The measure has two tracks: employers may submit an application to conclude an employment contract with a foreign national on the territory or declare an existing irregular employment relationship, and people whose residence permit expired since 31 October 2019 can apply for a temporary permit of 6 months to look for work. While an important step, the measure has been criticised, for example, for criteria being too strict and excluding many workers, providing only 6 weeks for applications, making workers very dependent on their employers and not addressing structural reasons for irregularity and exploitation. Workers across Europe strike for broader regularisationOn 30 May, several migrant organisations in Italy, France, Germany, Turkey, Morocco, Spain, Lebanon, Belgium and Slovenia called a transnational strike denouncing residence and work permit measures that tie people to employers, income or family and perpetuate exploitation, and to demand an unconditional and unlimited European residence permit. In France, 210 organisations and 300 public figures called for national manifestations, also on 30 May, in support of regularisation measures for undocumented people to access social support and health care. UN agencies urge states to regularise essential migrant workersIn a recent UNHCR/IOM discussion paper on Covid-19 and mixed movements, the two UN agencies say that “forced returns cannot be the only solution” and also acknowledge the vital role played by migrant workers in some economic sectors. They call on the EU to “fundamentally change its approach to migration and labor mobility and should make a serious effort to regularize those whose contribution to the economic recovery will be essential. Spain: regularisation campaign gathers over 200 organisationsIn Spain, a powerful campaign for regularisation #RegularizacionYA was launched in May and now counts more than 200 organisations taking part. 41,000 people have asked the Spanish government for an urgent and extraordinary regularisation of migrants |