The Ministry of Migration has sent this Thursday an instruction to the immigration offices to protect battered immigrant women whose residence permit is subject to their husband legally residing in Spain. Article 31 bis of Organic Law 4/2000 on Immigration already guaranteed an authorization to maintain said permission for immigrant women who report their spouses for gender violence. However, although the precept affected all of them “whatever their administrative situation”, the instruction to which EL PAÍS has had access assures that, on occasions, it has only protected “those in an irregular situation”, leaving the women without protection. who have a residence permit and exposing them to lose their residence permit if they separate from their husbands. The Ministry assures that the interpretation of the law “has led to undesirable and unwanted situations” that “it is necessary to correct.”

The Immigration Law was modified in 2011 precisely to encourage complaints from foreign women in an irregular situation who had been mistreated by their spouses. According to the text distributed to the immigration offices, it was understood that “the possible opening of an administrative procedure that could end in expulsion” was “an obstacle” for the victims to report their aggressors. For this reason, the law states that “if when a situation of gender violence against a foreign woman is reported, her irregular situation is revealed, the administrative file will not be initiated” that would lead to her expulsion.

However, the Ministry of Migration affirms in its letter that “interpretative divergences have been found” to grant authorization to women with proper papers. Specifically, it is a particularly vulnerable situation for those who have obtained the regularity of the fact that their husbands have a residence permit – for example, because they are European or because they have a job – because, when they separate from their aggressor, they can become irregular and that an expulsion case be opened.

The spokesman secretary for Extranjeristas en Red, Franscisco Solans, considers the instruction given this Thursday by the Ministry of Migration “good”. She reports that she has had cases of women abused by their husbands who requested exceptional authorization as victims of sexist violence and “it was denied because they were told that at the time they reported they were no longer irregular.” In addition, the Ombudsman last April, already transferred the existence of this problem of interpretation of the law to the Secretariat of Migrations. The instruction sent to the immigration offices states, precisely, that “at no time does Organic Law 4/2000, of January 11, nor the Immigration Regulations establish as an essential necessary requirement that foreign women be in an irregular situation.”

However, Solans points out that this text regulates something that “should already be being complied with” and is the product of having “30 years interpreting the norms against the migrant.” And criticizes that this reflects “a fundamental problem.” The lawyer points out that, as the Ombudsman also requested, this protection for women who have suffered sexist violence should be extended to all victims of a crime, such as robbery or assault. “That when he goes to ask the State for help, he does not come across his attack.”