“I decide to grant Camila Herrera the authorization for temporary residence due to exceptional circumstances…”. Finally, one of the first favorable resolutions for a migrant woman in the ongoing foreigner regularization process in Spain these days. It is signed by Santiago Yerga, Director General of Migration Management of the Government. Camila, a Venezuelan nurse living in Catalonia, appeared on the front page of this newspaper on April 30 because she was the first person publicly known to have received an admission for processing of her application. It was the beginning of good news. This Friday her process closes successfully: Camila can now live and work in Spain with all rights and freedoms.
“Super happy!”, says the 23-year-old girl from her workplace. “I was the very first, the very first in everything,” her smile is heard over the phone. She refers to that admission for processing that made her famous for a few hours. “At work they are also happy for me,” she assures from the Clínica Sagrada Familia in the Catalan capital, where she works as a nurse, because she had provisional asylum. “I was already worried about this asylum thing and kept checking if the admission of my regularization process had arrived. Just last night I checked on the computer and nothing. Right now they just informed me from the law firm,” she explains.
Her application was received on April 17 and a month and 12 days later the process has concluded. Camila ended up in Spain in the particular diaspora that many of her compatriots have recently undertaken due to the terrible situation of shortages and violence in that American country. She lives in Barcelona with her mother and sister, who are also waiting for papers with good news, but they have not even received their admission for processing yet, Camila explains. They submitted their application a week later. Once Camila received her admission for processing, the Government had up to three months to complete the process, which could have been either favorable or unfavorable. It was faster and has fallen like a gift in her life. “Today I had already planned to go out with my sister and a friend, but after this, well, the celebration will be bigger,” she states. “Of course I will invite them,” she smiles again.
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This newspaper has followed with the law firm Legalteam, located in Barcelona, the course followed by the applicants for regularization, the process undertaken by the Government to legalize the work and lives of around half a million migrants who were in irregular situations or with humanitarian international protection. In this way, it is expected to end clandestine work, without rights and without Social Security contributions of hundreds of thousands of people, some of whom have their social life greatly diminished by the fear of being found by the police and being returned to their countries when they have already been in Spain for several years, in many cases. The director general of Legalteam, Guillermo Morales Catá, received with joy that first admission for processing that bore Camila’s name. His efforts to process each case as quickly as possible were beginning to bear fruit. After several administrative hurdles, Morales Catá, who was also once a migrant in Spain, is happy with his first definitive resolution, which has been favorable. Before Friday afternoon ends, the firm has received another favorable resolution. They will celebrate too.
And what does Camila plan now? “Well, I want to enroll in a surgical master’s program,” she says. “I have already looked into it and I could combine it with work, master’s in the morning and clinic in the afternoon.” Her idea is to continue advancing in the healthcare field, training with a master’s or as many as needed and progressing in her career. “That’s what I want, to work one day in a good position here in Spain.” If Camila keeps giving news, who knows if in time it will be told that the head of Nursing of a major hospital in Catalonia is a Venezuelan woman who once arrived as a migrant and was lucky to come across a regularization that set her life on track.
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