THE Spanish Government plans to offer unemployed immigrants advance payment of their benefits if they return to their countries of origin and agree to stay there for at least three years.

The Spanish labour ministry said 100,000 immigrants from 19 countries would be eligible to receive the payout, but it expects only between 10 per cent and 20 per cent to agree to the trade-off. The Government is expected to approve the plan in September.

Spain's immigrant population has risen to roughly 10 per cent of the total in the past decade as builders and developers offered seemingly endless work opportunities. With the international economy flagging and Spain's construction boom going bust, immigrants are expected to be among the hardest hit.

Immigrants' rights groups have reacted coolly to the scheme. "We are talking not just about workers but about human beings," the president of the Colombian group Aculco, Alvaro Zuleta, said. "We need to make sure that the immigrant who agrees to return finds the right conditions to restart his life."

He expects some Colombian immigrants, who earn between €750 ($1218) and €1500 a month, to agree to the deal if the economic crisis worsened.

As many as 165,000 immigrants from outside the European Union are unemployed, but not all would be eligible for the deal because their home countries do not have reciprocal agreements with Spain.

Unemployed workers receive about 70 per cent of their salary for the first six months without a job, then up to 60 per cent for up to two years. Under the proposed deal, workers would receive 40 per cent of that money while in Spain and 60 per cent on arrival in their home countries.

Guardian News & Media