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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: abuelita who wrote (81557)	10/17/2011 3:46:03 PM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 217773

Spain sees exodus as crisis deepens, hundreds of thousands of LATAM migrants leaving the country because they are unable to find work. Spain’s population is now declining and fell by nearly 28,000 in the first half of this year to 46.12m, according to the National Statistics Institute (INE). “If current demographic trends are maintained, Spain would lose more than half a million inhabitants in the next 10 years, after a period of intense population growth,” INE said in a report on its projections published this month. Spain sees exodus as crisis deepens Europe’s deepening economic and financial crisis has thrown Spanish population growth into reverse, with hundreds of thousands of Latin American migrants leaving the country because they are unable to find work. After a decade of high immigration and rapid population growth, Spain’s population is now declining and fell by nearly 28,000 in the first half of this year to 46.12m, according to the National Statistics Institute (INE). “If current demographic trends are maintained, Spain would lose more than half a million inhabitants in the next 10 years, after a period of intense population growth,” INE said in a report on its projections published this month. The reversal is remarkable because Spain and its fast-growing economy had been the most popular destination in the European Union for new immigrants, legal and illegal. Many of them found jobs in construction during a long housing boom that came to end four years ago. INE’s findings are in line with anecdotal evidence on the streets of Spanish towns such as Parla, one of Madrid’s relatively poor southern suburbs. Jeremiah Ekenobaye, a Nigerian immigrant who worked as a van driver and bought a flat in Parla with a mortgage but then lost his job, told the FT recently: “I am even planning to get out of Spain. Maybe Holland or the UK. But it’s difficult to make a move.” Between 2002 and 2008, Spain’s population grew by about 700,000 a year as a result of natural population growth and immigration. This year, natural growth – the excess of births over deaths – will add nearly 100,000, but net emigration is even higher, leaving the overall number of inhabitants lower. Spanish commentators say the departure of unskilled migrants is to be expected in an economy with 21 per cent unemployment and will help to relieve pressure on the jobs market, even if the exodus is made up mainly of Ecuadoreans, Argentinians and other South Americans with prospects at home rather than jobless migrants from the Maghreb or sub-Saharan Africa who prefer to stay in Spain. “In the short term this return migration is a relief for Spain,” says Carmen González Enríquez, a senior researcher at the Elcano Royal Institute, a think-tank. “Unemployment among so many immigrants – many of whom don’t have rights to unemployment benefit or are no longer entitled to payments – is a potential source of conflicts. “Even in the long term, the effects are not so negative,” she says. “You have to remember that those who are going are the unemployed. Their presence in Spain is positive neither for the property market, nor for the pension system. And nowadays, not for GDP [gross domestic product] either.” Others, however, are concerned that some of those leaving are highly skilled young Spaniards, including naturalised immigrants, who cannot find work in Spain. They may end up living abroad and will not therefore contribute directly to the Spanish economy. “It’s about the frustration of expectations,” says Antonio Izquierdo, sociology professor at the University of A Coruña. “Many of them are from good families. So they are not hungry, but they can’t stay till the age of 35 without doing anything?.?.?.?Losing youth and educational accomplishments is bad. It’s bad for society and bad for the economy.” The numbers of skilled young people leaving Spain cannot be determined from the statistics, but again anecdotal evidence suggests that some have moved to the UK, Germany and Latin America as the youth unemployment crisis has deepened “Generally the demand in American and European markets is more for people who have scientific, medical and technical qualifications,” says Prof Izquierdo. Emigration has even affected his own work. He says a doctorate student from his research team in her mid-20s has been offered a post in Oxford and has decided to stay in the UK.