MADRID (AFP) - Spain's government predicted Friday that about 100,000 unemployed immigrants will take take advantage of a new programme providing them with financial incentives to return home.

Most of those who will qualify are from Colombia, Ecuador and Morocco, Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa de la Vega told a news conference after the "programme of voluntary return" was approved at a weekly cabinet meeting.

Spain if facing an economic slowdown as a decade-long property boom -- which created jobs for thousands of immigrants --- comes to an abrupt end due to rising interest rates and the international credit crunch sparked by the US sub-prime crisis.

The unemployment rate rose 8.6 percent last year, its first annual increase since 2003, and the government predicts it will hit 11 percent this year.

Under the plan, which will come into effect in September, foreign workers from outside the European Union who agree to return home will be entitled to receive their accumulated unemployment benefits in two lump sums.

Forty percent of their benefits will be paid in Spain and the remaining 60 percent will be paid one month after they are back in their homelands.

Those who accept the financial package will have to wait three years before they can once again request authorization to live and work in Spain. If they apply after five years they will be given priority, De la Vega said.

Last month Immigration Minister Celestino Corbacho predicted that at least 20,000 immigrants could take advantage of the "programme of voluntary return".

De la Vega did not give a reason for Friday's higher estimate.

Traditionally a nation that sent workers abroad, Spain saw the flow reversed over the past decade as its economy boomed.

The number of foreigners living legally in Spain soared to over five million from around half a million in 1996.

The unemployment rate is currently just under 10 percent, although among immigrants it sits at around 15 percent.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government issued an amnesty for nearly 700,000 illegal immigrants in 2005 but has adopted a harder line on immigration since its re-election in March in a general election in which the opposition made immigration a key issue.

The government wants to limit family reunion visas to spouses and young children, a move Corbacho has said would cut immigration by 40 per cent.

It also plans to extend the period under which illegal immigrants can be held in custody to 60 days from the current 40 days.

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