Latin Americans leave crisis-laden Spain (1)

Hernán Bocchio, a 43-year-old Argentine architect with three children who has been unemployed for four years and is considering a job offer from Brazil, asked about the current crisis in Spain: "What on earth is happening to Spain?"

Bocchio has lived in Spain since he was 17. He talks about fellow Argentines who have already left, and others who are packing their bags to go back to their native country because they can barely meet their monthly rent payments.

For the first time in a decade, more migrants are leaving Spain than entering it, because of the serious economic crisis that has this country and the rest of the European Union in its grip.

According to the National Institute of Statistics (INE), a total of 507,740 people, mostly foreigners, left Spain last year, compared to 457,650 arrivals. The INE report says that of those who left, 445,160 were foreigners with legal residence in Spain, mostly from Latin America.

Between 2004 and 2007, some 600,000 people a year came to Spain, but now there is a net outflow of the country's population as it struggles to survive one of the worst crises in its history.

In recent years, the number of Ecuadorean and Bolivian people living in the southern city of Málaga, for example, has dropped by 30 percent, the Federation of Latin American Associations (FEDESUR) spokesman, Gerardo Valentín said.

The unemployment rate in Spain currently stands at 21 percent, and immigrants from Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia, many of whom were working in construction or the hotel trade, have been hit particularly hard by joblessness.

Valentín, a Bolivian who has lived in Spain for 24 years, said that migrants are going home because of a combination of "social, political and psychological circumstances," including "the fear of immigration measures" that might be taken by the new center-right People's Party (PP) government.

Many Latin American workers do not want to stay on in Spain, "earning less money and putting up with more hardship," and they choose to return to their place of origin, taking advantage of the aid program that the Spanish government has implemented since late 2008.

The Voluntary Return Plan covers nationals of a score of non-EU countries with which Spain has bilateral pension agreements, including 11 Latin American nations.

According to the plan, legally resident unemployed immigrants who want to go back home have the option of receiving in advance all the unemployment benefits to which they would be entitled in Spain, and their social security contributions made in Spain can be transferred to the system in their country of origin for the purposes of calculating their future pensions.

One-third of migrants living in Spain are from Latin America, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reports. Most Latin Americans registered as resident in Spain are from Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and Brazil, according to INE figures for 2011.

Víctor Saez, a representative of the Chilean migrants' association in Spain (ACHES), described the difficulties facing those who go back to their country of origin.

"Chile has no policies for the reintegration of returnees; it's a case of every one for themselves, there is nothing to make things easier at all," and in addition there is the frustration felt by every migrant who has to go back, he said.