Spain loses title as Moroccans' land of opportunity
| Tangier, Morocco
Anas Benhima spent over a decade building a new life in Spain: an education, friends, and a career. Then he left it all and returned home to Morocco.听
鈥淚 saw my friends losing their jobs,鈥� he says. 鈥淎nd I knew that eventually the same thing could happen to me.鈥澛�
Mr. Benhima, like an increasing number of Moroccan migrants, is giving up on his northern neighbor. For years Spain beckoned as a land of opportunity, but that image is now shattered by an economic crisis that has pushed unemployment there to nearly 25 percent.
For Morocco, Spain鈥檚 woes are part of larger troubles among European trading partners that have dented the Moroccan economy, too,聽as remittances and tourism revenue have sagged.听For Spain, fading luster as a source of jobs underlines how deep its malaise has become.
Unemployment among Spain鈥檚 estimated 783,000 Moroccan workers is just over 50 percent 鈥� roughly twice the national rate, according to聽a report released in May on the effect of Spain鈥檚 crisis on Moroccan workers by Colectivo Io茅, a Spanish social affairs research institute.听Data from Spain鈥檚 central bank indicates that remittances to Morocco fell by a third between 2007 and 2010.
Increasingly, Moroccans are giving Spain a pass. While illegal migration makes exact numbers murky, a net loss of Moroccan immigrants was registered in 2010. Last year that loss was nearly 22,000, according to Spain鈥檚 national statistics institute.
Coming full circle
Change is felt acutely in Moroccan cities like Tangier, where Spanish headlands are visible across the Strait of Gibraltar. For years Morocco鈥檚 north,聽a region formerly colonized by Spain,聽has relied on sending migrants there to help feed families at home.
Benhima grew up in Tetouan, once Spain鈥檚 colonial capital, where his father worked as a customs official. He went to Barcelona to study textile engineering in 1998, but聽financial concerns led him to dive into the job market instead.
鈥淎t first you work to pay for studies, but then you forget studies and just work,鈥� he says.
He drove a golf cart by day and tossed pizzas at night, supporting himself while also helping cover medical bills for his father. He stayed in Spain for two uninterrupted years, until he got legal residency. Then, in 2000, he surprised his parents with a visit. His father died four days later.
Benhima鈥檚 mother and three siblings moved to Tangier, while he settled in Madrid. Using his ability to speak Spanish, French, English, and Arabic, he found work in 2001 handling overseas clients for an insurance company.听The job put him in the top tier of Moroccans drawn by an economic boom in Spain.听Moroccan arrivals聽peaked in 2005 at about 75,000, according to the Colectivo Io茅 report.
Meanwhile in Tangier, Benhima鈥檚 mother, Badia Amrani, founded BAYSIM, a goods transit company, in 2006.
鈥淚鈥檇 only ever been a housewife,鈥� Ms. Amrani says.听聽鈥淏ut with effort you can accomplish anything.鈥�
She is a bright, chipper woman who commands BAYSIM鈥檚 office from a desk in the main room. On the wall are large maps of France and Spain, where the company has many聽of its聽clients.
Back in Spain, things went downhill in 2008, when the housing bubble burst and the jobless rate started to climb. Immigrants have been among the hardest hit.听Skilled and experienced, Benhima was relatively secure in his job, but聽in 2011 he quit.
At first he stayed in Spain, living on unemployment benefits that he eventually took as a lump sum to help launch a business in Madrid exporting building materials to North Africa. 鈥淜eeping a door open in Spain,鈥� he explains. Then he looked toward Morocco.
鈥淎s you get older, and without a family, it鈥檚 harder to live outside your country,鈥� he says. 鈥淎nd with the crisis, I saw that life in Spain was going to get worse.鈥�
Early this year he resettled in Tangier, got married, and started working with Mrs. Amrani at BAYSIM.
Can Morocco handle returnees?
Morocco, however, has problems of its own. Its growth is expected to slow from 5 percent to about 3 percent this year. Last month it borrowed $300 million聽from the World Bank, the latest of several recent international loans,聽to fight unemployment.
For some in Tangier, those issues raise questions over Morocco鈥檚 ability to cope with more returnees should Spain鈥檚 crisis deepen.
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鈥淢ost of these people lack professional qualifications,鈥� says Najib Sakkaki, a Tangier accountant and local representative of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights. 鈥淭hey don鈥檛 have capital 鈥� just basic experience in things like agriculture and construction.鈥�
At Tangier鈥檚 Ramon y Cajal primary school, founded in colonial times by the Spanish government initially to serve expatriate families,聽director Francisco Ramirez is struggling with another complication: as Moroccan families have returned from Spain, waiting lists for the school have ballooned.
鈥淭hese applications for the preschool level may be local,鈥� he says, sweeping a hand over a waiting list displayed on his computer. 鈥淏ut all these others are from people who鈥檝e come from abroad.鈥�
One day Benhima鈥檚 4-year-old niece, Nour, may face that predicament. For now, her parents have jobs at Madrid hotels.
Last month they sent Nour to visit her family at their apartment. One morning she was watching Spanish cartoons while around her the others began their day. Amrani left early for the office, Benhima鈥檚 sister Imane 鈥� visiting from studies in Britain - made breakfast, and Benhima got dressed for work.
He and his wife, Sana, are expecting their first child, and he dreams of opening a restaurant. He regards Spain with a mix of nostalgia and realism.
鈥淚 saw the problems in Spain,鈥� he says. 鈥淣ow I鈥檓 trying to start a new life in my mother country.鈥�
