By Guillermo Zenizo Lindsey

MADRID – If at one time the emigration of Spaniards to Latin American countries was commonplace, the reverse process during the last decade has made Spain into “one of the world’s chief recipients of foreigners,” according to sociologist Miguel Requena.

Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Argentina are the countries that have contributed most to boosting the number of immigrants in Spain’s population, from 3 percent to 13 percent between 1998-2008, Requena, professor of sociology at Spain’s National University for Online Education, said in an interview with Efe.

These “enormous volumes,” to which must be added those coming from Romania, Morocco and Britain, were slowed by the current recession, which halted the creation of the kind of low-skilled jobs typically filled by migrants, he said.

“It’s always difficult to make predictions, but what we can surmise is that the immigrant situation in Spain during these last 10 years will be very hard to repeat,” according to the co-editor of the book “Las Multiples Caras de la Inmigración en España” (The Many Faces of Immigration in Spain) published by Alianza Editorial in 2009.

The improving economic situation in several of these countries, as well as Spain’s visa requirement for their citizens, have been contributing factors to the declining number of arrivals of these South Americans, which to a certain extent will continue through the process of family reunification, he said.

Romanians, Moroccans, Ecuadorians, Britons, Colombians, Argentines, Peruvians and Bolivians are, in that order, the most numerous communities by country in Spain, which together make up half of the immigrants and are analyzed by 11 specialists in different chapters of the book.

For Requena, Ecuador had a massive emigration to Spain after the 1999 economic crisis, which began to stabilize beginning in 2005.

“Ecuador has had a very strong process of expelling its own citizens both towards the United States and to Spain, but the economic situation there has changed substantially in the sense that there is no longer so much pressure to emigrate,” he said.

Natives of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru have generally shared a profile of immigrant workers who have gone to Spain seeking a better quality of life.

The Argentines, whose country has exchanged migrants with Spain for 150 years, are different from other Latin American groups in that they have a higher educational level and greater variety.

As for gender, Ecuadorian and Colombian immigrants have proportionally more women, those from Argentina, Peru and Bolivia are more evenly balanced by sex, while Moroccans, Romanians and Britons are mainly males.

In general, Requena said, “migrants generally move through networks and so they go primarily to places where there are already others of their own nationality.” EFE