US visa woes? Pah. Try getting into Spain

I spent a little over a year living in Spain, and the article is correct: There is essentially no way as a non-EU citizen to get a visa to live in Spain.

The good news, though, is that they simply don't care if you go live there anyway.

Spain's immigration consciousness is focused entirely to the South. Specifically, they're very interested in stopping the flow of Africans crossing over from Morocco, so woe be to you if you've got dark skin and a lost passport in Algeciras.

But if you're a white guy stepping off the ferry in Bilbao? Good luck finding anybody to even look at your passport. I flew in and out a dozen times, crossed back to England by boat a couple times, and even did a trip down to Morocco along the way. The best I could get from Immigrations was a quick flip-open-and-stamp of the passport, with an occasional pained expression from having to find an empty page to stamp.

My girlfriend is English and I'm American. For the first 3 years we were together neither one of us could stay in the others' country. Without Spain and their lax standards, it would have been hard to find a place where we could live together.

+1 on the difficulty of getting in to Spain.

Prior to a year of living and working abroad, my wife and I hired a Spanish immigration lawyer to provide us with visa options (as Americans we can typically only remain in the European Schengen Zone for 90 out of every 180 days). I've got a web development company and all U.S.-based clients, so in theory would have been bringing money into the Spanish economy. The lawyer came back with 3 options for me:

  1. Be a student
  2. Retire (with proof of savings/income)
  3. Be independently wealthy (again with bank account proof)

So we lived in Madrid for our allotted 3 months and then moved on to Buenos Aires, where the visa restrictions are a lot more lax and they have a year-long visa option for foreign business owners had we decided we wanted to stay there.

Anecdotally, the number of American expats in Madrid was minuscule to the number we met in Buenos Aires, and the ones in Spain were there almost always after having been sponsored by large companies.

I finished the StartupNation book by Dan Senor recently which cites the economic miracle of Israel as the ultimate StartUp Nation, and in it, they discuss the idea of immigration one of the major contributing factors to Israel's success.

Its a very interesting read if anyone is interested and goes further along on the theory that immigration is and can be very good for most countries contrary to public opinion.

I've never heard of this publication before, but I've had a flick through and I'm really impressed with it, and particularly impressed to see something of this quality out of Britain. It makes a change to read content like this from a European perspective that isn't from the same old few names that pop up everywhere. Good luck to them.

I don't think the story is that different for the UK, the main points: The UK now has monthly quotas, which makes it impossible for business to sponsor visas some months. Companies have to become licensed sponsors first, which makes it hard for a small, new company to start sponsoring. They're limiting the number of certificates a licensed company can sponsor at the moment. This is not mentioned as part of the official caps, it's something they could silently do to limit immigration severely. In fact these are so effective that the quota limits are rarely reached, allowing the government to claim that the quota is not too low.

With all the challenges above, it's still possible to get visas sponsored in the UK, but you have to be clever about it. I suspect the same is true in Spain. I have been told the same is true for the USA.

You have to use the right immigration lawyer, one that large companies use and that have optimised their process with getting visas, and adapt that process weekly to deal with changing attitudes from the authorities and has a good ongoing working relationship with the authorities. You have to start talking to them early on, to get an idea how to time these things to increase the chances of it working out. Also be willing to fork out the extra $1000-$2000 or so instead of trying it on your own.

age old bureaucracy, coupled with a very hierarchical mindset (the spanish monarchy protocol was famous for its complexity) - what do you expect?

as david landes notes in his quite brilliant book, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, exactly this mindset ruined Spain, Latin and South America. While the USA took off like a rocket.

if you think that modern times have no relation to the past come visit spain and try to get internet installed in your flat. colleagues in barcelona fought for 12 months...

Spain has horrible bureaucracy, really not of this time and they have it for practically anything. I love the country but this stuff ruins it on many levels (visa is a big thing if you want one, but this goes everywhere; from getting land in your name to making Endesa (electricity) fix something broken in your house to changing or canceling contracts; you have to put everything in writing, with your social security number, nothing is easy, nothing...).

How does the process compare in Germany?

The article doesn't at all compare the process of immigration between the US and Spain like its title implies. The US has many advantages over Spain in attracting talent, but immigration is not one of them.

My background: I immigrated to Barcelona from the US to work for the Spanish office of the same company for which I worked in the US after graduating from college in the east coast. I am from South America. I cannot comment on the challenges of hiring in either location, but I am familiar with the immigration process as an employee. I had a poor experience with US immigration, and a positive one with the Spanish process.

The process for applying for a work visa is similar in each country (this is oversimplified): submit your documents and await the decision. For my Spanish work visa, this took about three months. In the US the time between H1B visa application and when you actually begin working depends on the demand for the visa and when you apply; workers who apply before October will start working in October. If demand is high, you may have to apply as early as April. Painting applying for a work visa in Spain as a protracted game of trial and error is disingenuous: hire competent legal help who is familiar with the immigration process for the country or you're going to be running around in circles.

Once you have a resident permit in Spain, you are allowed to live here for the validity of that permit, even if you lose your job. Resident permits are valid for 1 year, 2 years (1st renewal), or 5 years (2nd renewal). If you are in the US under a H1B visa you must leave the country within 10 days unless you find another job. This US requirement makes life as an immigrant more stressful and leads you to stick with an employer for longer than you might wish.

Eligibility to stay in Spain permanently via acquiring Spanish citizenship is dependent upon the time you've resided here: 2 years for citizens of certain South American countries and 10 years for others (there are two other more specific categories). In the US you need 5 years as a permanent resident, plus the time necessary to get to that point (e.g. +6 months applying for work visa, +1 year working as an H1B until your company is willing to sponsor you, +1 year applying for the greencard). In my personal case, costs for the Spanish citizenship process have been under 500 EUR, while in the US it can easily cost more than $1000.

On the topic of Spain not caring if you go to live there: be careful about violating the immigration rules of a Schengen area country, and weigh the benefits of doing so vs the potential punishment (banned for some time? I'm not sure).

The header image of this article is much closer to the treatment of highly skilled immigrants in the US than it is in Spain. While bureaucratic, the government in Spain treated me with humanity. In the US, it's par for the course to be faced with gruff agents who seem to not want you there.

YMMV depending on the part of Spain or the US to which you're immigrating, the competence of your immigration attorney, and your background.

Overall, despite its misleading premise, the article is right in that Spain needs to improve the environment for highly skilled immigrants and startups. However, Spain is hardly alone in that position.