spain’s Efforts
to nudge immigrants
home
By Tábata Peregrín
by 8:00 a.m., the queue of people waiting to
collect unemployment checks one recent
morning at the downtown Madrid office
of INEM (the National Employment Institute) was already long. That’s not a surprise:
Spain’s 16 percent unemployment rate in
(February) was the highest in Europe—a grim sign that
the once-buoyant Spanish economy is now history.
But Spaniards were not the only ones in line. Roberto
C., who arrived from his native Ecuador six years ago, is
one of the thousands of Latin American immigrant workers who have taken advantage of—and contributed to—
Spain’s boom over the past decade. But now, thanks to
a November 2008 law, as a legal immigrant he can cash
out with a one-time payment of 60 percent of his total
unemployment benefits if he agrees to return home. It’s
a deal that Roberto, who did not want to provide his last
name, could not resist.
With Spain’s Minister of Economy, Pedro Solbes,
illustration by ian phillips
predicting that the national economy
will continue to slump through 2010,
Roberto saw the writing on the wall.
As a construction worker earning 800
euros a month over the past six years,
he qualifies for a monthly subsidy of
645 euros over t wo years. He calculates
that would amount to a lump sum total
of 15,486 euros (approximately $21,680).
“Take off 1,000 euros for the plane ticket
and I have 14,000 euros to start fresh in
Ecuador,” he says. On paper the figure
may sound generous, but this government “gift” still bears a cost. Roberto
and the rest of the 2,213 immigrants
who applied for payments by February
2009 under the so-called “Voluntary Return Law” must give up their work permits and promise
not to return to Spain for at least three years.
For most of their counterparts, in fact, the price is too
high. The Spanish government only expects 10,000 immigrants per year to take advantage of the law. Miguel
Pajares of the Centro de Estudios de Comisiones Obre-ras (CECCOO) in Cataluña predicts that an estimated
700,000 unemployed immigrant workers will remain
behind. The program is “great for those already thinking about returning to their native countries,” says Pajares, “but, of course, it is no system for combating unemployment.” Raúl Jiméneza Zavala, spokesperson for
Rumiñahui, the principal association of Ecuadorian immigrants in Spain, explains that most immigrants have
mortgages to pay and children born and raised in a Spanish environment. “This plan is not feasible for the great
majority of immigrants who are already rooted here,” he
says. “What we really need to work on is jump-starting
the return to employment in Spain.”
