By Pascal Fletcher

DAKAR, June 22 (Reuters) - Spain and Senegal said on Friday they were winning the fight against illegal migration as the European nation promised to invest in the West African state and create more legal job opportunities for Senegalese workers.

The Spanish interior and labour ministers, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba and Jesus Caldera, announced during a visit to Dakar that several hundred legal jobs in Spain would be opened up this year for workers from Senegal, to encourage lawful migration.

The ministers were accompanied by a delegation of 30 business executives -- the biggest from Spain ever to visit the former French colony -- who intended to seek investments to provide work that would also keep would-be migrants at home.

Last year, Spain was the target of an influx of tens of thousands of illegal migrants, including 35,000 sub-Saharan Africans who came ashore in the Spanish Canary Islands in rickety boats. Hundreds are thought to have died in the voyages.

In response, Spain has deployed air and sea patrols along the West African coast and is offering aid and investment to countries in the region, especially Senegal, in exchange for their cooperation to help stem the migrant tide.

"To fight against illegal migration, deploying police is not enough, you need development and legal immigration," Rubalcaba told reporters after he and Caldera held talks with Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade.

Spanish and Senegalese officials said the anti-migrant patrols and cooperation strategy were bearing fruit.

The number of illegal African migrants who had arrived in the Canaries in the first half of this year was just over 4,000, much less than in the same period last year, although Europe-bound migrant boats are still leaving West Africa.

"DEVELOPMENT WITH SOLIDARITY"

"This war is already won," Wade said, as he hailed what he called Spain's offer of "development with solidarity".

Caldera said that as part of efforts to encourage lawful, orderly migration, 540 Senegalese workers had already been selected this year to work in Spain and this would increase.

"There will be several hundred more job selections made," he added.

Rubalcaba said: "We must say to young Senegalese that they should not risk their lives in the hands of (migrant-smuggling) mafias, but should go to Spain with the businessmen to work."

Despite the optimistic statements, migration experts believe it will be impossible to completely shut off illegal migrant flows while a development gap exists between the rich nations of Europe and the poor countries of Africa.

Young Senegalese and other Africans are under intense social pressure to migrate and seek jobs in Europe to be able to send money home to extended families in the world's poorest continent.

Migrant departures from West Africa appear to have picked up in recent days as winds ease and sea conditions become calmer.

Emergency services in the Canaries said on Tuesday boats carrying 194 Africans had arrived since late Monday and police in Senegal and neighbouring Guinea-Bissau detained more than 150 illegal migrants this week who were trying to depart.

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