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Migrants head for Spain

Madrid: Spain took in an extra 650,000 foreign immigrants last year, mostly from Latin America. Booming Spain has been Europe's largest absorber of migrants for the past six years, with its immigrant population increasing fourfold as 2.8 million people have arrived. Spain was a country with net emigration until the late 1980s. Now, after 10 years of economic growth, it has 3.7 million immigrants of its own — or 8.7 per cent of the population. The new arrivals have mostly been absorbed into Spain's growing economy, although many have joined the plentiful supply of illegal, underpaid labour. Spectacular growth in Spain's immigrant population comes as the country's economy has created more than half of all the new jobs in the European Union over the past five years. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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