This article appeared in the Wall Street Journal. It constitutes a good argument against granting any type of "amnesty" to low skilled workers in "good times", as they quickly become a social problem in "bad Times" for the economy. In Canada, there were growing calls, particularly from the left and from unions, to grant "amnesty" to the thousands of illegal workers toiling in the construction industry. With the economy down and the construction sector in a precipitous fall, those calls for legalization are now muted. In my opinion, a robust temporary foreign worker program without the reward of permanent residency is best suited to ensure that the labour supply is adequate in good times, and that those workers return home in a slowdown. Otherwise, they became an unnecessary burden to the taxpayers and slow down economic recovery.
JANUARY 24, 2009
Spain's Jobs Crisis Leaves Immigrants Out of Work
With Prospects Worse Elsewhere, Few Takers for Government Campaign Offering to Pay Legal Foreigners Who Return Home
By THOMAS CATAN
MANCHA REAL, Spain -- Spain's unemployment rate rose to 13.9% in December -- an eight-year record and by far the highest rate in the European Union. In this southern village, that means olive grower José Morillo is hiring locals and turning away foreigners who worked for him during the country's economic boom.
Half of Mr. Morillo's pickers used to be immigrants, as Spaniards shunned the low-paying work. This year, all but one of his 11 workers is Spanish -- and the nearby town is teeming with unemployed immigrants who sleep outdoors or in church shelters.
"There's lots of carpenters and craftsmen from town who are picking olives this year," says Mr. Morillo, standing on a hillside near Mancha Real. "I called the [foreign] ones who had come before and said: 'Don't come this year, there isn't any work.' "
Government efforts to free up more jobs for Spaniards are having a limited effect. Billboard-size ads in subway stations and on city buses pitch payments for legal immigrants who go home: If they agree to leave Spain for at least three years, the government will pay the unemployment benefit they're entitled to in a lump sum -- 40% on leaving and 60% on arrival back home.
The average payment runs about $14,000. In the program's first two months last year, just 1,400 immigrants took up the offer.
The competition for jobs here among the olive groves and throughout the country illustrates Spain's dramatic fall from being Europe's star economy. The country's output grew at an average annual rate of nearly 4% a year for the decade until 2007 -- around twice the average rate for the euro-zone countries.
After adopting the euro in 1999 and submitting to the European Central Bank's national budget rules, Spain acquired the economic stability of a rich nation. Investors no longer worried about the national debt or possible currency risks.
A building frenzy helped Spain generate more jobs than any other country in the euro zone this decade. More than five million immigrants arrived, and the registered population, which had been stable till 2000, jumped 15% by 2008.
Last year, the cheap credit that fueled Spain's boom dried up. The economy likely entered recession in the second half of 2008, and the European Commission expects it to shrink 2% this year. Data out Friday show the number of Spanish out-of-work job seekers rose by 609,100 in the fourth quarter, bringing the total number to 3.2 million. The unemployment rate was nearly twice the euro zone's November average of 7.8%.
Beyond Spain, economic prospects for the euro zone remain dismal, additional Friday data confirm. A survey of purchasing managers by the Markit Economics research firm shows the entire region registered shrinking private-sector activity in January -- albeit at a slower pace than in December.
Among individual countries, Germany -- the euro zone's largest economy -- hit a record low in the January purchasing managers' index, while France reflected a slowing pace of contraction. Italy -- the developed world's least productive economy -- this week took steps to improve productivity, with an accord between the government and most of the nation's largest unions. Outside the euro zone, the United Kingdom on Friday posted two consecutive quarters of contracting gross domestic product in the second half of 2008.
During Spain's flush times, immigrants were welcome to come and work. In 2005, the government granted amnesty to more than half a million people living in Spain illegally. Today, they are seen as a growing social problem.
Other European countries, such as Ireland, also had influxes of foreigners who came largely from other EU nations, such as Poland, and are returning home for jobs. Many of Spain's immigrants come from Africa and Latin America, and view employment prospects at home as even dimmer.
Spain is entering "uncharted territory," says Fernando Eguidazu, an economist and vice president of the Círculo de Empresarios, a business association. "There's a group of five million immigrants in a situation of economic crisis and a shrinking economy. We don't know how that is going to work."
Many foreign workers have flocked to Jaén, an Andalusian province of rolling hills and whitewashed houses. The region produces most of the olive oil in Spain -- and accounts for nearly a fifth of world production. But as the country's economy flourished, young Spaniards abandoned the fields for jobs in construction, banks or offices. A year ago, local growers hired 40 workers in Romania and flew them to Jaén.
"We just couldn't find enough labor," says Rafael Civantos, provincial head of the farmers' association.
Now, Spaniards are lining up to pick olives for €53 ($68) a day, the rate agreed to with Spain's labor unions. Because many olive growers are small farmers, they tend to give the jobs to needy friends or relatives, says Pedro González of Jaén Acoje, a charity that helps immigrants.
One of Mr. Morillo's new workers is Jaime Jiménez Morales, the 18-year-old son of a Spanish friend who was laid off from his job as a carpenter. His brother, Daniel, 20, also works for Mr. Morillo after losing his job as a house painter.
At the same time, more foreigners than usual have been arriving, because construction work elsewhere has dwindled.
In December, 3,000 people arrived, according to Cáritas, a charity run by the Roman Catholic Church. "There's no work for us this year," says Mohammed, a young Mauritanian huddled with a group of unemployed friends outside a hostel in Jaén. "The farmers have given the jobs to their friends and relatives."
Hundreds of foreign workers have been sleeping outdoors in the cold. In the provincial capital, also called Jaén, the church turned a former convent into a temporary shelter. In the nearby town of Úbeda, hundreds of unemployed foreigners have been living in the municipal sports center. Charities have set up soup kitchens. "The situation is dramatic," says Juan Carlos Escobedo, provincial head of Cáritas. "We've seen a real avalanche of people arriving this year,"
Many of those who haven't found work in Jaén are waiting until February, when the strawberry-picking season begins in Huelva, about 220 miles away in southern Spain.
Mohammed Ennejim, a Moroccan who has lived for nearly 20 years in Spain, was trying to scrape together gas money to drive. He isn't sure he will find work there, either.
Mr. Morillo's only foreign picker this year is Najim, an Algerian who declined to give his family name and who has picked olives in Jaén for the past eight years. He had worked for Mr. Murillo the previous year, and called to say he was sleeping outdoors. "I told him not to come," Mr. Morillo says. "But then he called me from Jaén, saying he was sleeping in the street, and I said: 'All right then, come over.' "
—Paul Hannon, Laurence Norman and Alistair MacDonald contributed to this article.
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