MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Spain needs more immigrants to sustain economic growth

Immigrants who live and work in Spain generated over half of the country's economic growth in the last five years, according to the report “España 2007” from the Encuentro Foundation which estimates that foreigners living in Spain represent 10% of total population, almost 4.5 million people.

However the report also indicates that if the Spanish economy is to sustain the current growth it will need another four to seven million immigrants by 2020. The report which assesses the impact of immigrants in the Spanish economy revealed that according to the Statistics Institute last May almost two million immigrants regularly paid their social security taxes. Immigrants contributed with 31 billion US dollars to the Spanish treasury and received 25 billion in different benefits which represents 5.4% of budget disbursements. The group was also responsible in 2005 for 25% of home sales and subscribed between 15 and 20% of mortgages registered that year. But immigrants are not only hard workers and benefit the host country. They also send remittances to their home countries: the figure was 1.9 billion US dollars in 2000 and jumped to 8.5 billion in 2006. Most remittances went to Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Romania and Morocco which represent the countries of origin of 60% of immigrants living in Spain.