(SPAIN) — Pakistan simplified document verification for its citizens living in Spain to help them apply for one-year residency cards under Spain’s new regularization program for undocumented migrants, replacing multiple certificates with a single national character certificate issued by the National Police Bureau.
Federal Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi ordered the change during a high-level meeting on Sunday that he co-chaired with Federal Minister for Overseas Pakistanis Salik Hussain, with the aim of speeding up paperwork for Pakistanis seeking Spanish resident cards.
Under the new facilitation, applicants will no longer need separate character certificates from different places, because a single national character certificate from the National Police Bureau will serve as the required document.
The Pakistani move follows Spain’s adoption of a broad regularization framework for undocumented migrants that sets eligibility rules, a limited application window, and an initial permit that grants access to work.
Spain approved the policy through a Royal Decree on January 31, 2026, after a decision by the Council of Ministers. The decree targets approximately 500,000 undocumented migrants who have been present for at least five consecutive months before December 31, 2025, and who have no criminal record.
Successful applicants receive an initial one-year residency card with full labor market access. The card renews into standard categories, and dependents can apply simultaneously.
Pakistan’s facilitation does not apply to political asylum seekers. Officials framed the step as a focused effort to reduce the documentation burden for those who qualify for Spain’s regularization channel and need Pakistani paperwork to complete an application.
The Sunday meeting brought together senior officials spanning Pakistan’s interior and overseas portfolios, identity documentation, border and immigration enforcement, passport administration, and diplomatic posts in Spain.
Participants included Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry, the secretaries of interior and overseas Pakistanis, Chairman NADRA, DG FIA, DG Passports, Pakistan’s Ambassador to Spain Dr Zahoor Ahmed, Consul General in Barcelona Murad Ali Wazir, and a Community Welfare Attaché who joined via Zoom.
Alongside the single character certificate, the facilitation package includes accelerated document verification and “full legal support and facilitation” through the Ministries of Interior and Foreign Affairs, as described in the Pakistani briefing about the meeting.
Naqvi directed “full support at every level,” according to the briefing. Hussain called it a “positive step” for granting legal status to thousands of Pakistanis.
Spain’s government presented the regularization as an attempt to align the legal system with the reality of undocumented work and residence, while also channeling people into documented employment.
Elma Saiz, Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, described the policy as “a pragmatic response to a social reality that benefits both people and the economy.”
The regularization window opens early April 2026 and closes June 30, 2026, setting a tight timeframe for applicants who must assemble identity, residence, and background documentation.
That compressed timeline has increased pressure on consular services and document-issuing agencies, particularly where there are large concentrations of undocumented migrants seeking to file early and avoid processing backlogs.
Pakistani officials pointed to bottlenecks at consular services in Spain, where applicants have sought criminal record certificates needed for immigration processes. In Catalonia alone, about 15,000 undocumented Pakistanis live in the region, according to the figures cited in the briefing.
Demand has concentrated on Pakistan’s consulate in Barcelona, where long queues formed as applicants sought criminal record certificates and other documents.
To handle the surge, weekend operations were added at the Barcelona consulate, the briefing said, an operational step meant to increase throughput during the run-up to Spain’s application window.
The crush of demand has produced long waits for applicants. The briefing cited the case of Hussain Dar, who waited 8 hours at the consulate.
Pakistan’s switch to a single, national character certificate aims to reduce the number of separate documents applicants must obtain and verify, which officials described as a way to speed up submissions in a system facing unusually high demand.
By centralizing the character certificate through the National Police Bureau, Pakistan also signaled a preference for uniformity in how eligibility-related documents are produced and checked, rather than relying on multiple certificates that could require separate processing and coordination.
Spain’s regularization sets conditions that reach beyond identity paperwork, including a threshold for how long someone must have been present in the country before the cutoff date and a requirement that applicants have no criminal record.
For those who qualify and receive the one-year residency card, the permit provides full access to Spain’s labor market and can later transition into standard immigration categories through renewal.
The framework also covers family situations by allowing dependents to apply at the same time, which can reduce the risk that one family member’s status changes while another remains undocumented.
Pakistan’s briefing also addressed longer-term residence outcomes in Spain after an applicant’s status becomes regularized.
It said that after 7-8 years, applicants become eligible for permanent residency and citizenship, while also citing “5 years continuous residence” as the standard Spanish rule tied to eligibility for permanent residency and citizenship.
The dual reference reflects how governments and applicants often view long-term status through different lenses, including pathways described in national briefings and the standard rules embedded in host-country practice.
In practical terms, the immediate issue for many applicants is meeting Spain’s narrow filing window and ensuring documentation arrives on time, given that many migrants seeking regularization have limited flexibility in work schedules and may face travel and appointment constraints.
Officials in Pakistan framed their changes as an attempt to keep paperwork from becoming the limiting factor, particularly for applicants who already meet Spain’s presence and criminal-record conditions.
The facilitation package also ties multiple arms of Pakistan’s government into a single process, bringing together interior officials, overseas Pakistanis officials, NADRA, the FIA, passport authorities, and diplomatic representatives in Spain.
By placing consular officials from Spain on the participant list, Pakistan’s meeting also connected administrative changes at home with the immediate front-line pressure experienced at posts like Barcelona.
The exclusion of political asylum seekers narrows the group that Pakistan’s facilitation targets, aligning it with the population expected to pursue Spain’s regularization route rather than the asylum system.
Spain’s regularization policy, by design, reaches far beyond any single nationality, but Pakistan’s focus on speeding up its own verification steps highlights how much the process depends on documents issued outside Spain.
For undocumented migrants, the ability to produce identity records, background checks, and other official confirmations often determines whether a person can apply during short windows created by regularization programs.
Pakistan’s officials described the effort as a way to ensure that thousands of their citizens can take advantage of Spain’s new framework without being stalled by paperwork.
For applicants like Dar, the changes come after long waits and crowded consular lines, with demand set to remain high as early April 2026 approaches and the June 30, 2026 deadline closes in.
