STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
DEBORAH AMOS, Host:
And I'm Deborah Amos. This morning we visit two locations - one where jobs are being lost, one where they're being created. First to Spain. In recent years, it's been one of the most popular destinations for migrants. The boom in Spain's housing sector heightened the demand for workers, and the government legalized hundreds of thousands of foreigners. Now the economy is slowing and the government is offering to pay jobless foreigners to leave the country. Jerome Socolovsky reported from a town near Madrid.
JEROME SOCOLOVSKY: A few years ago, there was little more than overgrown train tracks here on the northern edge of San Sebastian de los Reyes. Now a large bedroom community has been built in this outer suburb of Madrid. But the streets are almost empty, except for a handful of workers in blue overalls. They are having their morning coffee break and all of them are immigrants.
U: (Foreign language spoken)
SOCOLOVSKY: Feliz Arsuela(ph), an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, says the developer of the half-finished apartment block where he works has stopped paying the contractor who pays him.
AMOS: (Foreign language spoken)
SOCOLOVSKY: We're here today, but we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, he says.
AMOS: (Foreign language spoken)
SOCOLOVSKY: At a cafe in central Madrid, immigration expert Rickard Sandell says the amnesty actually bought the government time to deal with the economic downturn.
AMOS: It makes it easier to perhaps confront a crisis, or an abrupt crisis, as the case now, because you don't have everyone going into economic misery at once.
SOCOLOVSKY: Still, he says the increased competition for jobs in sectors where both immigrants and native Spaniards work could lead to increased racism.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY)
SOCOLOVSKY: Back at the construction site, Boris Balbosa of the Dominican Republic says he doesn't like what he hears on the streets these days.
AMOS: (Foreign language spoken)
SOCOLOVSKY: For NPR News, I'm Jerome Socolovsky in Madrid. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
