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As Trump Terrorizes Immigrants, Spain Offers Permanent Residency for 500,000 People
Responding to the deadly US crackdown, one Spanish leftist leader said, "If they kidnap children and murder, we give papers."
Jan 27, 2026
As President Donald Trump terrorizes immigrants and Americans alike with his deadly mass deportation blitz while warning European leaders to tighten their borders by raising the racist specter of "civilizational erasure," Spain's government is moving against the xenophobic tide by offering hundreds of thousands of migrants a chance at permanent legal residency.
The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and the leftist Podemos party reached an agreement Monday following the collection of more than 700,000 petition signatures in favor of a legislative initiative to legalize up to 500,000 undocumented migrants.
Those who can prove that they were in Spain for at least five months before December 31, 2025 and have no criminal record will be eligible for permanent legal residency with permission to work.
Spanish Migration Minister Elma Saiz (PSOE) said during a press conference that "today is a historic day" for starting the process of legalizing hundreds of thousands of immigrants in a country that has made great strides in overcoming its legacy of racism and xenophobia.
The far-right Vox party called the legalization plan "madness" that promotes "barbarity."
However, Saiz said that legalization will help Spain “recognize, dignify, and give guarantees” to people who already live and work in the country.
“We’re reinforcing a migratory model based on human rights, on integration, and on coexistence that’s compatible with both economic growth and social cohesion,” she added.
Responding to arguments that legalizing so many migrants would severely strain Spain's social safety net, Podemos Secretary General Ione Belarra said on social media, "What overwhelms public services are your cuts and privatizations."
Belarra also said that some opponents of legalization are angry that they will no longer be able to exploit migrants by paying them less than legal workers.
Podemos Political Secretary Irene Montero said Tuesday that "we have a legal obligation to guarantee [migrant] rights and that is what this regularization is, which we hope will reach all the people without papers in Spain who were here before December 31, 2025."
Spain's population is approximately 49.4 million. Legalizing half a million immigrants would be the equivalent of granting permanent residency to about 3.6 million migrants in the United States. There were believed to be about 7.1 million foreign nationals living in Spain at the beginning of last year, of whom an estimated 840,000 were in the country without authorization.
Sánchez's PSOE-led government has been supportive of immigrants since coming to power in 2018, offering safe harbor for migrants arriving in Europe by sea when other European Union nations have moved to restrict their entry. More than 10,000 migrants died trying to reach Spain in 2024, according to the Spanish advocacy group Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders).
Meanwhile, Trump's latest National Security Strategy, released last month, urges the US to "cultivate resistance" to immigration in Europe, espousing racist "great replacement" ideology while warning of “the real and stark prospect of civilizational erasure."
“Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less," the document states.
European nations including Denmark, Germany, Greece, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have recently tightened their migration and asylum policies, in some cases partially due to pressure from Washington.
Responding to Trump's deadly anti-immigrant crackdown—which has killed both immigrants and US citizens—Montero said Tuesday that “in the United States at the moment there are millions of people who are afraid in their own homes because Trump’s migration policy enters people’s homes and takes them away."
“We cannot accept that there are people who live in fear and without rights," she added. "We cannot accept racist violence. Racism is answered with rights. If they kidnap children and murder, we give papers."
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‘Tariff for Oligarchs’: Top Economist Urges Europe to Fight Trump by Punishing US Billionaires
"Europe should respond to Trump’s blackmail with targeted measures aimed not at American consumers, but at American billionaires," wrote Gabriel Zucman.
Jan 19, 2026
The leading French economist Gabriel Zucman is urging European governments to inflict financial pain on American billionaires in response to US President Donald Trump's effort to seize control of Greenland, a mineral-rich island that some of Trump's rich campaign donors see as a potentially massive profit opportunity.
"Europe should respond to Trump’s blackmail with targeted measures aimed not at American consumers, but at American billionaires," Zucman wrote in a post on his Substack. "Access to the European market—by billionaires and the companies they own—should be made conditional on paying a wealth tax: in effect, a tariff for oligarchs. If Elon Musk, for example, wants to keep selling Teslas in Europe, he should have to pay it. If he refuses, Tesla would lose access to the European market."
Zucman outlined his proposal after Trump threatened over the weekend to hit France, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland with tariffs up to 25% if they don't drop their opposition to the US president's demand for "the complete and total purchase of Greenland," an autonomous territory of Denmark.
The targeted countries are currently weighing retaliatory tariffs and other potential responses to Trump's threat.
Zucman, a renowned expert on global inequality, argued that while existing mechanisms such as the anti-coercion instrument known as Europe's trade "bazooka" can be useful, "anti-oligarchic protectionism has a decisive advantage: It opens a two-front struggle against Trump, at home and abroad."
"By targeting oligarchic wealth rather than national pride," Zucman wrote, "Europe can blunt Trump’s ability to mobilize nationalist resentment and rally part of the American public behind his imperial agenda."
Trump's proposed Greenland takeover is widely opposed by the island's population and US voters. But as journalist Casey Michel wrote for The New Republic last week, there is one key constituency that stands to benefit massively from a US takeover of the mineral-rich territory: American oligarchs, including some of Trump's top campaign donors.
"Ranging from tech moguls to fossil fuel company heads, all of these figures and forces have invested in mining and extraction companies across the island—and all stand to profit if only they can cut out any pesky Danish or Greenlandic authorities from regulating or restraining their operations," wrote Michel. "The figures behind the curtain are by no means obscure. KoBold Metals, a mining outfit helping lead Greenland’s 'modern gold rush,' has seen investments from figures like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and hedge funds like Andreessen Horowitz."
"Another company eyeing Greenland," Michel added, "is Critical Metals Corp, which is backed by the same hedge fund that Howard Lutnick, now Trump’s commerce secretary, spent years running."
"The vast fortunes of the sleaze buckets who put Trump into the White House and back his attack on democracy in the United States and around the world will suddenly be thrown into question."
Tariffs targeting such firms and the billionaires behind them, Zucman argued, would be the most effective way to penalize Trump's reckless behavior and deter him in the future.
"If imperialism is driven by oligarchic power, then oligarchic power must be confronted," Zucman wrote. "What are the alternatives? Doing nothing invites endless blackmail."
US economist Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, made the case for a similarly aggressive European response to Trump's economic warfare.
"European countries can announce that they will no longer honor US-owned patents and copyrights," Baker wrote Monday. "Putting US patents and copyrights on the line is a guaranteed attention grabber. The vast fortunes of the sleaze buckets who put Trump into the White House and back his attack on democracy in the United States and around the world will suddenly be thrown into question."
"The key point is that European countries, by opting to not respect US patents and copyrights, have an incredibly powerful weapon to use against Donald Trump and his rich supporters," Baker added. "The time has come for them to go nuclear."
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Provoking War Over Greenland, Trump Warns Nobel Snub Ends Reason to ‘Think Purely of Peace’
"These are the ramblings of a man who has lost touch with reality," said one US senator. "And he’s about to get us into a war with our allies."
Jan 19, 2026
After receiving President Donald Trump's latest demand for Greenland via text message Sunday, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre was among the European leaders who signaled they aim to meet with Trump at this week's World Economic Forum in Switzerland to dial down European-US tensions that have been stoked by Trump's persistent threats.
In his message to Gahr Støre, Trump announced that his desire to control Greenland was partially motivated by his anger over being passed over last year for the Nobel Peace Prize, which is handed out in Norway annually—but not by the country's government.
"Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America," Trump wrote in his message, which was reportedly forwarded by the National Security Council staff to numerous European ambassadors in Washington, DC.
He repeated his claim that Denmark, which has counted Greenland as part of its kingdom for hundreds of years, "cannot protect" the Arctic island from Russia and China, and said that the "World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland." Security experts in Europe say Russia and China do not pose any immediate threat to Greenland.
Trump also asked why Denmark has a "right of ownership" to the semiautonomous territory. The US has recognized for decades in formal agreements with its European ally that Greenland is a part of Denmark's kingdom.
Trump's oft-repeated claim that he has "stopped 8 Wars PLUS" has been heavily disputed, considering hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by US-backed Israeli forces since the "ceasefire" agreement the president brokered was signed in October. He has claimed credit for truces between Cambodia and Thailand as well as India and Pakistan, but the former conflict has seen renewed fighting and India has denied the existence of a ceasefire. Other peace agreements Trump had a hand in mediating have not been finalized or fully implemented.
The president has also invaded Venezuela and killed over 100 people aboard boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific as he claimed they were involved in drug trafficking—killings that have been called extrajudicial murder by legal experts—all while harboring anger over the Nobel Committee's refusal to honor his supposed peacemaking efforts.
In the US, the news of Trump's message led Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) to write on social media that the president's mental acuity appears to have "degraded significantly in the last year."
"These are the ramblings of a man who has lost touch with reality. He isn’t okay," said Murphy. "And he’s about to get us into a war with our allies."
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) added that Trump's Cabinet must "invoke the 25th Amendment," which allows administration officials to declare a president unable to serve, while advocate Melanie D'Arrigo of the Campaign for New York Health called on reporters to print out Trump’s letter "on a giant poster, and ask Republicans in Congress why we shouldn’t impeach him when he wants to attack our allies because he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize?"
"I’m tired of Republicans saying, 'I didn’t see it,'" said D'Arrigo.
Gahr Støre confirmed Monday that he received Trump's letter via text message and said the missive had been in response to the Norwegian leader's request for a three-way phone call between himself, the White House, and Finnish President Alexander Stubb to deescalate tensions.
European leaders' concerns over Trump intensified over the weekend as the US president said on Saturday he plans to impose new tariffs on longtime allies and North American Treaty Organization (NATO) partners Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, the United Kingdom, and Norway, until the US is allowed to purchase Greenland and take control of its vast minerals as well as ostensibly benefiting from its strategic location in the Arctic.
On Monday, Trump did not rule out using military force to conquer Greenland, home to about 57,000 people, saying only, "No comment" when asked about it by NBC News.
Gahr Støre and other leaders signaled plans to continue trying to handle Trump's threats against his country's own allies diplomatically, with the Norwegian prime minister amending his schedule this week to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos during Trump's planned appearance there. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also said Monday he would try to meet with Trump at Davos on Wednesday, when the president is scheduled to deliver a keynote address.
Despite Trump's comments on the Nobel Prize, “I still believe it’s wise to talk,” Gahr Støre told TV2 Norway Monday.
But Merz emphasized that if European countries "are confronted with tariffs that we consider unreasonable, then we are capable of responding."
The European Union is considering imposing a never-before-used anti-coercion instrument to limit major US companies from doing business on the continent, or implementing its own package of tariffs on $108 billion in US imports starting February 6.
Gahr Støre said in a statement Monday that Norway's position on Greenland, as other European allies' views, "is clear."
"Greenland is a part of the kingdom of Denmark, and Norway fully supports the kingdom of Denmark on this matter. We also support that NATO in a responsible way is taking steps to strengthen security and stability in the Arctic," said the prime minister.
"As regards the Nobel Peace Prize," he added, "I have clearly explained, including to President Trump, what is well known, the prize is awarded by an independent Nobel Committee and not the Norwegian government."
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