Spanish PM tells SpaceX’s Musk ‘Mars can wait, humanity can’t’ in defence of migrant move
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A plan approved on Jan 27 by Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez’s leftist government could regularise around 500,000 undocumented workers.
PHOTO: REUTERS
MADRID – Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has defended his government’s plan to grant legal status to undocumented residents in an exchange with billionaire Elon Musk on social media platform X, telling him, “Mars can wait”.
The plan approved on Jan 27 by Mr Sanchez’s leftist government could regularise around 500,000 undocumented workers
Mr Musk posted a link on X – which he owns – to a post by a man named Mr Ian Miles Cheong, who called the plan “electoral engineering”, along with the comment, “Wow”.
“The logic is simple: legalise half a million people, fast-track them to citizenship (which takes as little as two years for many), and you’ve effectively imported a massive, loyal voting bloc that’s indebted to the left,” Mr Cheong wrote in the post which has had nearly 12 million views.
Mr Sanchez hit back at Mr Musk, responding to the billionaire’s post on X late on Jan 29 with the message: “Mars can wait. Humanity can’t”.
Mr Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX is developing the mammoth Starship – the world’s largest and most powerful rocket – as part of his vision to take humans to Mars.
Mr Sanchez argues immigrants are key to Spain’s economy, which expanded 2.8 per cent in 2025 – more than twice the average expected in the entire euro zone.
With Spain facing an ageing population and low birth rate, Mr Sanchez says immigrants help sustain the workforce and maintain the pension system.
The main opposition conservative Popular Party and far-right Vox have lashed out at the government, saying the regularisation will encourage more illegal immigration. AFP
