Omar was 17 when he stole aboard a freight truck in Tangier, Morocco. Determined to find a different life, he burrowed into the truck's cargo - piles of women's underwear - to hide.

Soon, he discovered another boy, also seeking passage out of Morocco, hiding there. As the truck boarded the ferry to cross the straits of Gibraltar, border police caught that young man. Omar went undetected. Within hours he was in Murcia, where he joined the hundreds of thousands of Moroccans who have immigrated illegally to Spain.

Just eight watery miles from Tangier, Spain is the primary entryway to Europe for the approximately 30,000 Moroccans who emigrate each year. Around 4 million Moroccans live abroad - roughly 12 percent of the country's population. Spain is home to Europe's second largest Moroccan community.

The reasons for this exodus, says Mehdi Lahlou, a professor of economics at Rabat's National Institute of Statistics and Economics, are readily apparent: poverty and unemployment. "Thirty years ago, when the economic levels of Spain and Morocco were the same, Moroccans didn't emigrate there," says Mr. Lahlou. "But now the economic difference between Spain and Morocco is 20 to 1."

Morocco's gross national product per inhabitant is just $3,600 - barely a sixth of Spain's. Its unemployment rate, nearly 20 percent in urban areas, is more than twice that of its northern neighbor. And differences in healthcare and social opportunities echo the countries' economic gap: Moroccans, on average, live 10 years less than Spaniards, and barely half can read, while 97 percent of Spaniards are literate.

For Spain, Morocco's emigrant tide is both boon and threat. It bolsters the economy by bringing countless workers who will take jobs Spaniards no longer want, but it also raises concerns within local Spanish communities about security, unemployment, and social stability.

Despite the perception in Spain that Moroccan immigrants tend to be impoverished illiterates prone to crime, Moroccans who emigrate are not that country's most destitute citizens. "It costs 5,000 or 6,000 euros to emigrate," says Lahlou, "so they tend to come from the mid-skilled classes, not from the poorest."

More than anything else, it is a perceived lack of opportunity that encourages citizens to leave their country. In his recent film, "Tarfaya," Moroccan director Daoud Aoulad Syad chronicled one girl's perilous attempts to gain illegal passage to the Canary Islands. "Most of the people in Tarfaya dream of being somewhere else. That's why they all have satellite dishes. They're not watching Moroccan TV, they're watching French and Spanish, aspiring to be somewhere else," says Mr. Syad.

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