WITH an economy that is still in a sluggish state, the Spanish government is putting a temporary stop in the hiring of foreign workers.
Spanish Ambassador Luis Antonio Calvo said their country will not be accepting any migrant workers in the immediate future, including those from the Philippines, because of a slowed down economy that placed 20 percent of its population in the unemployment line.
“We try to prioritize fellow Spaniards so that they could improve our standards of living, but in the future, we will still have the need to bring people from the outside. But right now, we are growing very slow,” Calvo said.
He added: “We are not growing. We also have more deaths than new born. We will need, as we did in the past, people coming from abroad to work in Spain because the Spaniards do not have enough workers. Filipinos have good adaptability and know many things.”
However, Calvo also noted that Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) working as house helpers in Spain, although being some of the best in the world in their jobs, are becoming very expensive to hire that fewer Spanish families are now willing to take them into their homes.
According to Calvo, there is now an estimated 45,000 documented OFWs working in their country.
Calvo said the Filipinos in Spain are also active in shipping as crewmen for shipping lines, cruises and fishing companies. He added that Filipinos have also found employment in their country as health workers.
The Spanish envoy noted that majority of the OFWs are in Madrid and Barcelona and that they are very competent in their jobs.
Calvo said that, at the moment, Spain is still trying to recover from the economic crisis that hit the country in 2009.
“We lost a lot of jobs,” Calvo quipped, while adding that if their population only grows at a very slow pace, there is a strong chance that they will again hire foreign workers.
“If we continue growing at the rate of 3 percent year in and year out, we will probably have to import the work force,” he said.
If that happens, Calvo said Filipino workers are the preferred option because they know Spain, there is an easy flow of communication, they feel at home in Spain, and Spaniards feel at home with the Filipinos.
Calvo blamed the economic upheavals and the low population of his country to lack of planning on the part of the government.
“This is also occurring in other countries, like Japan and northern Europe. We are very slow in implementing incentives for people to have larger families. But now is not the time to have more children because we do not have money,” Calvo said.
Spain, with a total land area of 195 square miles currently only has a population of 45 million.
Calvo said Filipinos working in Spain can acquire Spanish citizenship after two years of legal residency.
Image credits: Recto Mercene