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Spain. Spain's economy expanded at an average annual rate of 3.8 percent between 1997 and 2007, attracting over four million migrants. The number of migrants continued to rise despite the recession--Spain had 5.2 million migrants in 2008 and 5.6 million in 2009.

As the unemployment rate topped 18 percent in June 2009, and approached 30 percent among foreigners, the end of the "Spanish miracle" made the fate of migrants uncertain. Most of the foreigners who arrived in the past decade appear to be staying in Spain and hoping for a rebound rather than returning to their countries of origin.

The Spanish government offered one-way return tickets and 40 percent of accumulated unemployment insurance benefits to jobless migrants who agreed to leave and not return for three years; the other 60 percent of UI benefits are paid by the Spanish consulate in the migrant's home country. To be eligible for the 40-60 return bonus, jobless migrants must be from countries that require visas to enter Spain and must have contributed to the Spanish social security program at least 360 days in the previous six years. Migrants from EU member states such as Romania are not eligible.

The return bonus program drew only 6,000 applicants between fall 2008 and summer 2009. A separate IOM-administered program that offered one-way tickets and E450 payments, mostly to unauthorized foreigners not entitled to UI benefits, drew fewer than 500 applicants by summer 2009.

Portugal. Portugal, a country of 10.6 million, attracts migrants from its former colonies and from new EU member states, especially Romania. Lisbon's Publico newspaper in August 2009 reported that 11 Romanian workers were enslaved by the Privo-Constantin-Daniel agency in Selmes in the southern region of Alentejo, where there is competition between agencies supplying Romanians and other Eastern Europeans and Israeli-based agencies such as DFRM-International Services (www.dfrm-international.com) that offer Thai and Vietnamese workers to farmers at lower costs.

Italy. The Catholic relief organization Caritas in August 2009 estimated there were a million unauthorized foreigners in Italy. The Parliament in July 2009 approved new laws that make illegal entry a criminal offense punishable by fines of up to E10,000; those who help unauthorized foreigners and landlords who rent to them can be imprisoned up to three years. Illegal foreigners who are apprehended can be detained up to six months, up from 60 days.

The government of Silvio Berlusconi was re-elected in April 2008 on a law and order platform that emphasized the need to deal harshly with so-called Roma (gypsy) criminals; there are at least 600,000 Romanians living in Italy, including many Roma. Foreigners are a third of those in Italian prisons. Berlusconi's government was criticized for forging an agreement with Libya to return migrants intercepted in international waters without considering their requests for asylum.

A Bank of Italy report in August 2009 concluded that the 1.8 million foreign-born workers in the country? eight percent of the work force? had few adverse effects on Italian workers. In September 2009, the Italian government allowed private households to legalize the foreigners they hire by paying E500 and beginning to pay taxes on the wages of their foreign workers. Some 295,000 applications were submitted.

About 1,200 mostly Moroccan workers were found employed under poor conditions on southern Italian farms and greenhouses in July 2009; they reported paying up to E8,000 to agents in Morocco to get their jobs. Instead of regular seasonal contracts, they received E15 to 25 a day while working illegally. Italian authorities reported similar informal camps housing Eastern Europeans who filled seasonal farm jobs.

Albania in 2006 banned speedboats in a bid to reduce trafficking across the Adriatic from Vlore to Italy. After protests, the ban was lifted in May 2009, prompting fears that trafficking women for prostitution from Albania to Italy will resume. In 2008, some of the Albanian police assigned to anti-trafficking duties were arrested and charged with trafficking.

Emigration from Albania to Italy via speedboats peaked in 1997, after the collapse of a financial pyramid scheme pushed the country to the brink of civil war. Italian police were posted in the port of Vlore to help to deter trafficking, and the Albanian government enacted new laws penalizing trafficking. However, the US government, among others, says that the Albanian government does not aggressively prosecute trafficking.

Balkans. The European Commission in July 2009 proposed that citizens of Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro join Croatia in having visa-free access to EU member nations. If the EU Parliament and national leaders approve as expected, about two-thirds of the residents of the Western Balkans will be able to travel to the 27 EU-member nations without visas beginning in January 2010.

Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo were not included; critics pointed out that the EU appeared to be requiring visas only for nationals of majority Muslim states. Since many Croats and Serbs living in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the largest of the Balkan nations excluded from visa-free travel, have passports from Croatia and Serbia, only Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) would need visas.

In polls, many young people from the Western Balkans have expressed an interest in traveling to western Europe. There may be a wave of migration from the Western Balkans in 2010 if visa-free travel is approved, which could add some workers to the informal labor market (visa-free travel does not grant the right to work). Gallup polls (www.balkan-monitor.eu) suggest that allowing free movement within the Balkans and from the Balkans to the EU is very important for 85 percent of respondents, ranking second to the 88 percent whose top priority is to reduce corruption.

Gallup polls in 2006 and 2008 found dissatisfaction with the standard of living increasing; a majority of residents in all Balkan countries except Croatia and Montenegro thought there were better opportunities outside than inside the country. However, less than a quarter of residents would migrate if they could, except for Albania, where a third would leave permanently or temporarily within a year if they could. Those with more education and family members abroad expressed the most interest in leaving.

Remittances are vital to many Balkan residents. For example, of the Kosovars who reported receiving remittances, half of their typical E600 a month spending was from remittances.

The six ex-Yugoslav states, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia, plus Albania, aim to join the EU. All have sent large numbers of especially professionals abroad in the past decade, have relatively rigid labor markets, high unemployment rates, and significant informal employment and irregular migration.

Economic logic would suggest that these Balkan states, which have fewer than 25 million residents, should integrate their economies by encouraging freer trade and investment as and labor migration among them. However, it is very hard to win acceptance of freer labor migration when unemployment rates top 30 percent, as in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, or 20 percent, as in Montenegro and Serbia.

Instead of trying to formalize currently irregular and informal migration, as when Kosovars migrate to Croatia and Montenegro to fill seasonal jobs in agriculture and tourism, most recommendations suggest that Balkan countries open their labor markets more widely to professionals, whose economic benefits to the host countries may be clearer. However, professionals with links to Diasporas in higher-income European countries and traditional immigration destinations such as the US may not be attracted to neighboring countries for wages higher than they can earn at home, but not as high as they can earn outside the Balkans.

Greece. Greece detained over 146,000 illegal migrants in 2008, up 30 percent from 2007.

Police in mid-July 2009 accompanied bulldozers sent to clear a camp near the port of Patras. Camp residents, mostly from Afghanistan, were trying to smuggle themselves onto ferries bound for Italy. The number of camp residents dwindled from almost 2,000 to only a few hundred by mid-July after earlier waves of arrests.

Turkey. Turkey on July 31, 2009 marked the 50th anniversary of its first bid to join what was in 1959 the European Economic Community. The EEC turned down Turkey's application, but in 1963 signed an association agreement with Turkey.

Formal negotiations for Turkey's entry into the EU began in 2005. Turkey has opened 11 of 35 chapters of the EU Acquis, to which candidate countries must agree or negotiate exceptions, but negotiations on eight chapters have been blocked because Turkey refuses to open its air and sea ports to ships and planes from Cyprus, which Turkey invaded in 1974 to help Turks on the northern half of the island.

A2. The European Commission in July 2009 issued a report criticizing Bulgaria and Romania for slow progress implementing plans to clean up elections and fight corruption and organized crime; some EU aid money for Bulgaria has been frozen. The hard-hitting report drew two kinds of responses. Some said that it demonstrated the wisdom of slowing EU expansion, while others pointed to the greater progress of Bulgaria and Romania in comparison to that of Moldova and Ukraine.