Jorge Sainz, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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MADRID, Spain - A novel Spanish plan that pays jobless immigrants to go back home is shaping up as a flop, with the vast majority opting to stay put and weather hard times.

Spain's once-buoyant economy is on the verge of recession, and its 11.3 per cent unemployment rate is the European Union's highest. The figure is a staggering 17.5 per cent among immigrants, a key source of cheap labour in the boom years for the construction industry, the main engine behind more than a decade of solid economic growth.

The initiative offers jobless non-EU foreigners - mostly Latin Americans - the option of receiving their unemployment benefits in two lump-sum payments, on average totalling about C$16,500. In exchange, they must return to their native countries for at least three years, but can apply to come back to Spain at some point.

The idea is to trim Spain's growing ranks of unemployed until the economy recovers.

But the money on offer is hardly enough to start a new life back home. Wages in the home countries of many immigrants are much lower than in Spain, and the idea of giving up hard-fought Spanish work and residency permits is scary, immigrant advocacy groups say.

When it unveiled the plan in July, the government predicted that up to 20,000 jobless immigrants - out of 100,000 who are eligible - would opt to take the money and return home. But since the program took effect in November, fewer than 800 have signed up, according to Labour Ministry figures.

"At first a lot of people came forward to ask about the details of the plan. But after thinking it over, they backed off," said Raul Jimenez, a spokesman for Ruminahui, an association of Ecuadorean immigrants, one of Spain's largest foreign communities.

One problem is that immigrants who accept the offer have to relinquish their work and residency permits, he said. If they eventually decide they want to come back, the return is not automatic - they must first secure a formal job offer from a Spanish employer, which is not easy.

"It is expulsion in disguise," Jimenez said.

Spain's entry into the EU in 1986 set it on the path to wealth. A country once poor enough to send people to Latin America in search of work has become a magnet for workers from those same nations and others, with immigrants making up 11 per cent of its population of 45 million.

The return plan is open to non-EU immigrants who have jobless benefits and come from one of 20 countries with which Spain has a reciprocal social security accord, under which benefits accrued in one country can be paid out in the other.

Those who sign up get 40 per cent of their money in a lump sum here, and the rest after they return home, also all at once.

But in Spain, immigrants earn on average 1,150 euros (C$1,860) a month, compared to C$235 in Colombia, for example.

Pablo Yasuma, a 45-year-old Ecuadorean who worked in the construction industry nearly a decade until it collapsed over the past two years, said that for now he would not go home even if he could. He is not eligible for the plan because he is not entitled to jobless benefits.

"I want to exhaust every last possibility. My family depends on my working in Spain," he said. "Whatever I find (in Ecuador) will be much worse than here."

Many immigrants also have mortgages or other debts that stop them from just picking up and leaving. Those who do leave are more likely to be those in Spain for a relatively short time, such as Jairo Enrique Velazquez.

Velazquez, a 37-year-old Nicaraguan, came to Spain just a few years ago with the hope of being able to send money home to his wife and children. But he is now unemployed and willing to go home if the government accepts his application.

"I have found little work and lots of suffering," he said.

When the plan was approved in September, Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega noted that immigrants had played an important role in Spain's recent economic growth, building the houses and office buildings that sprouted like mushrooms when times were good.

Now the government wants to facilitate the return of those who want to go home, she said.

But Jimenez, of Ruminahui, said the paid-return program sends a very different message: "It enhances the image that immigrants are responsible for the economic crisis."