MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

More Latins immigrating to Europe.

Poverty in their home countries and higher obstacles to entering the United States are pushing ever-greater numbers of Latin Americans to immigrate to Europe, from where they send home increasing sums of money now vital to national economies, the International Organization for Migration said in a study published Tuesday

Spain is the main European destination for Latin Americans, whose numbers in the Iberian nation more than quintupled since 1995 - from 92,642 to 514,485 last year - and that figure covers only those who are there legally.

The IOM study showed that 390,000 Ecuadorians were listed in Spanish municipal registries in 2003, while the Interior Ministry noted that only 174,000 Ecuadorians had legal residence in Spain. Immigrants in Spain are encouraged to register with local authorities, even if they are not legal, to gain access to services like free health care.

Italy and Portugal have also received a larger number of Latin American immigrants in recent years, while Britain has seen an increase in the number of Caribbean newcomers. According to information from the Italian Interior Ministry, Peruvians constitute the largest South American contingent in that European country, followed by Brazil. Latin Americans represent only 8 percent of all of Italy's foreign-born residents.

The IOM notes that more than half of Latin American emigrants are women, eagerly sought after in Europe to work as domestics, nannies, caretakers for the elderly and in the hotel industry. Latin Americans represent 31 percent of Spain's total immigrant population. The country's largest expatriate community is from Morocco, followed by Ecuadorians and Colombians. Citizens from those two Andean nations have surpassed the number of Britons, who for a long time made up the second-largest group of foreign residents. Between 1996 and 2003, Ecuadorians and Colombians were the fastest-growing immigrant groups, while the number of Argentines has doubled in the last three years as a result of that country's devastating economic slump.

Each year, Latin American expats in Spain send more than a billion dollars back to their homelands, equalling the amount wired home by South Americans in the rest of Europe, the study revealed. According to the IOM, the average size of individual remittances from the European Union to Latin America surpasses that of those coming from the United States, although the cumulative total from that country is much greater because its South American immigrant community is so much larger than Europe's.

The United States is the source of $30 billion of the estimated $38 billion in remittances sent home to Latin America and the Caribbean each year. Latin and Caribbean nations also receive $2.5 billion in remittances from Japan and $1 billion from Canada, while another $1.5 billion is wired between countries within the region.

A study showed that the three largest Latin American immigrant communities in Spain - Colombians, Ecuadorians and Dominicans - send home big chunks of their take-home pay and that more than 90 percent send money to their families.

On average, each immigrant sends between seven and 10 remittances a year of about 370 euros ($449) each. Dominicans tend to send about 595 euros ($722) at a time, compared with 322 euros ($391) for Colombians. The same study pointed out that Latin Americans in the United States generally send home between $100 and $300 a month.

Research suggests that an emigrant who expects to return home in the short term will usually send more money to his homeland.

On the other hand, if he or she plans to remain abroad permanently, economic ties with a now-distant family tend to decrease as savings go toward investments that facilitate integration into the migrant's new country.