The dream of most immigrants - at least when arriving to Spain - isn't to stay here. Rather its to strike it rich and then move back home. Striking it rich is relative, given that in many of the countries these people come from the monthly salary can be around 200 dollars. But with a small nest egg, perhaps a home that was built in the country of origin while living in Spain, and hopes of a small retirement pension, many immigrants are willing to take their chances living in a foreign country.
One such case is Cesar Augusto, who came with his cousin to visit Spain in 2002.
The two Venezuelans caught a flight from Caracas and arrived on three-month tourist visas. Like thousands before them, they didn't bother returning when the visas expired. "My cousin decided to stay, so I thought I'd stay to accompany him," said Augusto. "Besides, things are very bad in Venezuela."
And in Ecuador. And in Colombia. And in Argentina. And in Peru.
The economic and political upheaval in South America, along with a common language, have sent the numbers coming to Spain from that continent soaring into the hundreds of thousands, up from just tens of thousands at the turn of the century. That wave of late has been supplanted by workers from Eastern Europe as the borders drop and the European Union enlarges.
The face of Plaza Olavide has changed in the last 10 years. Nestled in the center of Madrid, the Chamberi neighborhood is one of the capital's most expensive areas to rent an apartment. But high prices haven't stopped poor immigrants from making this neighborhood their home to take advantage of its central location.
Apartments are often rented, and then subsequently sublet to dozens of people - the going price can reach 300 euros for the right to a slot in a bunkbed and to use a communal toilet down the hall. The purchase price for a 130 square meter apartment in Chamberi can easily touch 750,000 dollars. One industrious Ecuadorean woman sublet to 30 people to finance the spacious apartment - when no immigrants were living there - where she and her family were living. The living room was divided into three rooms by curtains. With the rent money she was able to purchase a second apartment - and then move her family to London.
In the central plaza nearby the playground is filled with a rainbow of children from Africa, China, Eastern Europe and Latin America. In general, their parents have more children than the average Spanish family, sometimes even more than in their home countries - one of the local Chinese merchants has three children.
A walk around the circular plaza shows Romanian bartenders, a Cuban carpenter, a Peruvian sweets vendor, a French florist, an Egyptian ice cream vendor, and an Ecuadorean family in competition with their Peruvian colleagues across the square - and both selling Spanish tapas and drinks on popular terraces.
Make no mistake - there is work in Spain for immigrants. But immigrants - and I include myself in that number, not only as a US citizen, but also via my Peruvian wife - have to be willing to do just that: work.
These waves of immigration have helped prop Spain's economy, both by contributing to its welfare system and by supplying unpopular work to crucial sectors, such as construction and services. Included in the services sector is tourism, which contributes 12% to Spain's gross domestic product, or construction. But there are concerns as the construction sector is now seen on the decline, with a recent report from the large Spanish bank BBVA even suggesting there could be losses of upwards of a quarter of million jobs.
The concern is where those people will turn - the vast majority of them being immigrants. Many are already taking courses sponsored by the govenment to learn new job skills. But the fear is not all will have taken such an opportunity.
Often the needs of the Spanish economy don't mesh perfectly with the needs of the arrivals.
Many immigrants run the risk of being trapped in marginalized jobs, experts warn, preventing them from fully integrating into Spain's economy and society even while their numbers grow. Where just five years ago it was impossible to speak of immigrant ghettos, today there are neighborhoods where a Spanish face is foreign.
With roughly 11% of the European Union's population and about 10% its GDP, Spain accounts for around 25% of Europe's immigration.
Ecuador alone sent more than 200,000 citizens to Spain from 1998 to 2001. Now, in 2007 there are over 420,000 legal Ecuadorians in Spain, with estimates that number could swell to over 750,000 if illegals were included.
Colombia added almost 150,000 during the same years. Argentine net migration to Spain rose nearly threefold for the same period, although the absolute numbers were lower.
By comparison, Morocco, a mere eight miles away and a country whose migration problems with Spain are widely publicized, sent just more than 100,000 to Spain during the same three years.
According to the latest figures, the largest single immigrant population remains Morocco with 575,000, followed by Rumania (525,000) Ecuador, United Kingdom (315,000), Colombia (260,000), Bolivia (200,000), Germany (165,000), Argentina (140,000), Italy (135,000), Bulgaria (120,000), China (105,000) and Peru (100,000).
A closer look at those numbers shows that Latin American immigrants as a whole are the largest group in Spain.
With such numbers it should be no suprise that there is also talk that political parties are actively seeking the immigrant vote - most South Americans can claim Spanish nationality after living and working legally two years in the country. On top of those numbers are immigrants from other European Union countries. As Spain heads into General Elections in March there will most likely be initiatives that seek to woo this potentially crucial swing-vote.
One important area will be how immigrants view their as of late loss of purchasing power - many of them, while still sending money home, have bought into the dream of buying an apartment. But mortgages are rising, with many immigrants finding that the price of paying the bank is now surpassing what they make. To make ends meet many immigrants fall back on the tried-and-true method of subleting any available space in their apartments. In one more than one case a bed placed on a cold hastily glassed-in terrace can fetch an extra hundred euros a month.
South American, and other, foreign workers are helping to pay unemployment benefits Spain can ill afford. But despite their contribution, the arrivals are bringing tensions often hidden by the common language and which bode ill for the future.
It is often conjectured that for every one legal immigrant there are between three and five others who are illegal. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development routinely warns that immigrants face precarious conditions because they aren't legal, work on temporary contracts and tend to work long hours, sometimes paid below the contractual rate.
And there is another problem in Spain - many of the jobs are offered on temporary contracts, or through employment agencies so that companies pay a lower salary to avoid paying many of the benefits that they would have to make for longer-term employees.
As immigrants are channeled into temporary jobs, experts fear they will become a permanent underclass.
Latin American immigrants complain that speaking Spanish hasn't given them a lift up the economic ladder nor helped them integrate into society.
"[They] are really only competing with Spain's other, traditional, marginalized group: the gypsies," said Inaki Santacruz, a researcher at the University of Barcelona's CREA research center. He said the immigrants primarily take jobs in restaurants, as farm workers, on construction sites and as cleaners.
"They are types of work that are despised, that have no social status," he said. The workers have few narrow work options and little upward mobility.
For this reason, the business group, Circulo de Empresarios, has criticized laws requiring proof that no Spaniard is willing to take a job before it is given to a foreigner, ensuring that foreigners are offered only unpalatable work.
In a study a few years ago CREA found that about 27% of legal immigrants are employed in cleaning compared to only 6% of Spain's employable population; 20% in agriculture and fishing compared to 9% of all workers, and 11% in restaurant work compared 1% of Spain's eligible.
"We aren't allowed to work in any other sectors," said Enrique Pulupa, past president of an Ecuadorean advocacy group, Coordinadora Nacional Ecuatorianos en Espana. "This could be a time bomb if things aren't solved."
But Pulupa and others say that businesses, trying to cut costs, add to the problem by turning to agencies to fill vacancies. Because agencies tend to fill short-term needs, the immigrants they employ don't qualify for loans and mortgages.
For Spanish businessmen like Genaro Lema Mouzo, the country cannot afford to block the immigrants. Lema managed the bar where Augusto worked, before - ironically - eventually moving to Latin America to set up a business.
"We have to hire foreigners," he said. "You put out an advertisement, and 40 foreigners arrive at the door, and only two Spaniards will appear...Spaniards don't want to work weekends. They want to have Fridays and the weekends off. When a foreigner comes here, they accept the conditions."
Simultaneously, the foreigners are propping up Spain's welfare system.
Spain has been unwilling to cut benefits that some economists say would force Spaniards into jobs and instead has come to rely on foreign workers to pay for the cost of unemployment, according to past OECD report.
But to be honest, the immigrants don't just take unwanted jobs - they also pay social-welfare contributions. Although data is scarce, economists say immigrants are net contributors. At ?100 per month -- the amount a low-paid cleaner might contribute -- those immigrants pay well over 1 billion euros into the social-welfare system.
While some other EU countries have higher percentages of foreign workers to total population, none has a growth rate like Spain's. And the pace is likely to continue, despite the recent numbers that show legal immigrants in 2006 only rose by 400,000 to 4.5 million - sharply up from the half a million in 1996.
And despite continued talk that there will be no further amnesties for illegal immigrants already working in Spain the reality may be quite different given there are likely one million non-contributors living in the country. With such numbers there is the possibility that even veiled promises ahead of General Elections could be used as an attempt to sway legal immigrant voters, given that many of them have friends - if not family - who could benefit from an amnesty.
The demand is unmistakable, but the story isn't always a happy one.
Rosero, a 29-year old Ecuadorean who worked as a street vendor, hawking whatever is the latest fashion, from T-shirts to bootleg CDs, fights back tears as he describes his disappointment. "It's not easy here in Spain," he said as he distributes pamphlets from a company offering services for Latin American immigrants. "It's not a paradise. Here you suffer, searching to make ends meet, doing whatever you can." Like many immigrants, he asked that only his surname be used.
"If you don't have your papers in order, they will take advantage of you. I was working in construction and they paid me half of what they paid those who had papers," he explained.
"I was a small businessman in Ecuador and thought that things would be better here," Rosero said, adding that he sold everything and came to Spain as a tourist along with his wife and young daughter a year ago.
Robert is also an ombudsman for foreign press. He is an Executive Board Member and Vice-President for the Organizacion de Periodismo y Comunicacion Ibero-Americana, and Vice-President of the energy and telecommunications association, APSCE. He is News Editor for Spero News , and Editor-In-Chief of EnerPub. 
