For the last five years, more people have been arriving in Germany annually than leaving
Germany is one of the most economically stable countries in the eurozone. The unemployment rate in November last year was 6.9%, while, for example, in Greece it reached 11.4% and in Spain 21.5%.
This, in particular, explains that the flow of immigrants to Germany from these countries in the first half of 2011 increased by 49% from Spain and by 84% from Greece. And although the absolute numbers do not look so impressive (+2400 and +4100 people respectively), this shows a trend: people are fleeing from eurozone countries most affected by the current financial crisis. The overall growth of immigrants from other eurozone countries to Germany was 29%!
At the end of December last year, the Federal Statistical Office (Statistisches Bundesamt Deutschland, abbreviated Destatis) published a review of the state of migration in Germany in the first half of 2011 compared to the same period in 2010. According to statisticians, in the first 6 months of 2011, a total of 435,000 people arrived in Germany, which is 68,000 more than in the same period of the previous year (an increase of 19%).
At the same time, in the reporting period about 300,000 people left Germany (236,000 foreign citizens and about 64,000 Germans). Overall, this is 6,000 people fewer than in the first half of 2010, which again seems like a small number. But the overall balance of the first half of 2011 shows that the excess of arrivals over departures is 135,000 people (an increase of 22% compared to the corresponding figures for the first half of 2010).
Of the total number of arrivals in the first half of 2011, 381,000 people came from other EU countries (an increase of almost 19% compared to the same period in 2010). Their main flow came from Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, and other countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007 (growth of 30% and 34% respectively for the specified years). This was facilitated by the abolition in May 2011 of the last restrictions on their citizens' access to the German labor market.
According to Destatis, since 2007, more people have been arriving in Germany annually than leaving. The opposite trend was recorded in 2008 and 2009, when more native Germans left the country.
Sergey DEBRER.