DUBLIN, Ireland, April 25 (UPI) -- Migrant workers are leaving Western Europe and heading home as job prospects in the formerly fast-growing countries have deteriorated, analysts say.
In Dublin, for instance, where about 180,000 Poles, Czechs and other Eastern Europeans came in search of work after the European Union expanded in 2004, the unemployment rate has hit 11 percent and immigrants are returning home, The New York Times reported Saturday.
The Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin reported between April 2008 and the end of this month as many as 50,000 workers will have have returned home from Ireland.
"Since 2000, there has been a resurgence of intra-European migration," said Rainer Munz, head of research and development at Erste Bank in Vienna and a migration expert. "To a certain extent, that's clearly unwinding now."
Signs of reverse migration of Romanians who came to Madrid in recent years are also becoming evident, the newspaper said, while Romania itself is seeing Chinese migrants leave as construction jobs dry up in Bucharest.
The Czech government has reportedly said it will pay about $660 for one-way plane tickets to jobless migrant workers from developing nations who want to go home.
