Spain’s cabinet, alarmed by fast-rising unemployment, on Friday launched a plan under which it will pay jobless immigrants their social security benefits in a lump sum provided they go home and promise not to return to Spain for three years. Most of those entitled to take up the offer are from Ecuador and Morocco.

Millions of immigrants from North Africa and Latin America, as well as from other member states of the European Union, have poured into Spain in recent years to find work on building sites, in hotels and as domestic servants.