Mohamed knows of dozens of cases of Bangladeshis – but not only Bangladeshis – who, in order to get an asylum appointment in Spain They had to pay mafias due to the “impossibility” of achieving it through official channels and, tired of seeing that the system does not change, accuses the institutions and parties of “doing nothing” to improve it.
Mohamed is one of the “many” migrants who They are forced to pay “up to 600 euros” -which “reached 1,000 during the pandemic”- for agreeing to an appointment, in his case to obtain Spanish nationality.
“For asylum and nationality you have to pay, If not, you won’t get an appointment, right now it’s impossible,” says this Bangladeshi about the appointment system, which is different in each province (some by phone, others by email and others in person), but in Madridwhere it resides, “does not work.”
“There is a telephone from 8:30 in the morning until 7 p.m., but it is impossible for them to answer you. I don’t know how the call centers (the stores where appointments are sold illegally) do it to get them, but calling it is a matter of luck that they answer you and people can’t be on the phone all day, they have to work to live,” he says.
For this reason, he demands that the system be in person, so that the mafias cannot manage appointments for third parties, but it is the interested party who goes directly to the service center. Along these lines, he complains that the institutions “receive complaints daily from migrant organizations” and “do nothing.”
Prices rise with demand
Eleazar Coronel arrived in Spain from Venezuela two years ago and, according to what he says, He didn’t hesitate to pay for the first date. in Seville for the asylum process.
“I had to pay it, depending on what you paid it was faster or less, I wanted to start the process as soon as possible, “I paid 120 euros and I had the appointment in four days”remembers this Venezuelan who paid again for the renewal of the temporary asylum, six months later.
In that case, it was “160 euros” to obtain “the red card”, as the administrative document given to applicants for international protection once the application is admitted for processing and it is the second that these people receive after the “white document”, the receipt for submitting an asylum application. “My case has been relatively fast compared to others, I won’t even tell you if you compare it with those who don’t pay,” she points out.
What happens if you can’t pay
There are also those who do not want or cannot pay and look for other alternatives, like Raquel who, when she arrived in Spain from Colombia, a robocalling app was installed but he didn’t have any luck either.
“You can only call on Wednesdays after three in the afternoon,” he explains to EFE, “and I I have called every Wednesday since I arrived, but they don’t pick up. I have installed a redial application on my mobile and I can call up to 2,000 times in an afternoon, but nothing.”
Also José, who worked as a baker in Guatemala but now he cannot practice because he cannot regularize his situation. “I have been calling every Wednesday for a year in the afternoon to that phone and I already think that they will never pick it up,” he comments hopelessly.
“They told me that there are people who get you an appointment in exchange for money,” he explains, “but I don’t dare go to them because they also told me that There are people who paid up to a thousand euros and finally they were scammed.”
Dating on second-hand websites
A situation that is refuted by Elena Muñoz, CEAR’s state legal coordinator, who points out that Appointment sales ads are even on web pages of second-hand objects “with a wide variety of prices.”
An irregularity that, according to the account, “he has transferred to the police” who “have carried out raids” But other mafias appear and continue with the sale. “The first obstacle is that they don’t answer the phone” because “it is almost always communicating.”
The time to get them “varies a lot, it depends on each province”: “in some you request it today and they give you it in ten days, others what it costs is for them to pick up the phone and you can spend five months, maybe others by email take a while two months to respond, on average it is between eight and nine months.”
