Immigrants get grant to go home

            The Spanish immigration department has announced that it hasn’t got any money left to help immigrants go home. In a scheme set up by Jose Luis Zapatero’s socialist government the ministry for immigration offers grants of up to 400 euros per person plus up to 1,400 euros per family to help pay for the travel costs to return to their countries of origin. The department that deals with applications for this grant received more than 2,000 requests up to the end of July, more than twice as many as in all of last year, and has now used up the budget allocated to the scheme. The money is for non European Union residents and the majority of those taking up the offer are South Americans and Eastern Europeans. Unemployment among the immigrant population has risen by almost seventy percent in the last year, about three times that of the rest of the population.