MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

With four million unemployed, no room for immigrants

In spite of all, Minister Corbacho feels the worst is over

“The Spanish economy can’t take any more migrant labour” said Spanish Labour Minister Celestino Corbacho in an interview with one of Madrid’s main Sunday newspapers.

“With the world recession, our own economic situation, four million unemployed, there’s no way Spain can take more immigrants”, added Corbacho. “With four million unemployed it’s hard to see how our labour demand can’t be supplied by the workers we have in Spain”.

Corbacho went on to say that “contracting in origin does not make sense except for very specific sectors of the economy”. According to the latest data from the Secretary of Immigration and Emigration Consuelo Rumi, during the first quarter of 2009, a total of 6.947 contracts in origin were approved.

Rumi said that these numbers compare with the 178.340 work and residence permits requested in 2007, which dropped 50.000 to 136.604 last year.

Nevertheless Corbacho said he believes the “worst of the crisis is over”, but we must remain “prudent and alert”.

The Spanish minister said that September and October can be expected to be “non positive” months for employment, but beginning October 2009, “things will improve, no comparison to October 2008”.

Spain’s National Employment Institute had 3.620.139 people without jobs in May while for the Spanish Statistics Institute the unemployed were above four million, a record for the last thirty years.

United States, followed by Spain are the main sources of remittances for Latinamerica given the millions who work (ed) documented or undocumented in both countries.