The latest worrying migration statistics.
According to the Federal Migration and Refugee Service (BAMF) data, Germany is massively attracting immigrants from the eastern part of the European Union, whose number has tripled since 2010. Among them are many Croats, as well as immigrants from other countries, notably Poland, reports Index.hr on 15 August 2017.
Exercising the right to freedom of movement for workers in the European Union, 634,000 people from other EU member states came to Germany last year, and 77 percent of them came from eastern EU members. In 2016, 42,000 people from Poland came to work in Germany.
About half a million Romanians live and work in Germany, according to BAMF, while the figure for Croatians is around 331,000, with 34,000 of them coming in 2016. There was also a massive influx of people from Bulgaria, from which 262,000 people moved to Germany in order to work there.
At the end of 2012, 224,971 citizens of the Republic of Croatia were registered in Germany. A year later, at the end of 2013, 240,543 Croatians were reported to be living in Germany, which increased to 263,347 by the end of 2014. At the end of 2015, 297,895 Croatian citizens lived in Germany.
Most immigrants from Eastern Europe, including those from Croatia, are young, well-educated and able to integrate into the German labour market. Official figures also destroy the myth about Eastern Europeans as people who use social assistance more often than Germans: for example, only 4.9 percent of immigrants receive social assistance, compared to 7.3 percent of Germans.
Croatia’s Central Bureau of Statistics released official migration data for 2016 in mid-July. According to its data, 13,985 people moved from abroad to Croatia, while 36,436 people left the country. The largest number went to Germany – 56.1 percent, followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina (7.7 percent), Austria (6.1 percent), Ireland (5.5 percent), and Serbia (4.4 percent).
The largest share were emigrants aged between 20 and 39 – 46.7 percent. In 2016, 95.6 percent of people who left Croatia were Croatian citizens, while 4.4 were foreigners.
If we compare the results for 2016 with those for 2015, it is evident that the number of people leaving the country grew rapidly. In 2015, 29,651 people left Croatia, with 95.3 percent being Croatian citizens and 4.6 percent being foreigners.
It should be emphasized that these data from the Central Bureau of Statistics are not complete and that the real figures are much higher. The Central Bureau of Statistics collects data from the Interior Ministry, which registers only those who officially report that they are leaving Croatia. Thus, the real number of emigrants from Croatia is not known, but it is certain that this figure is far greater than the one presented by the official statistics.
Translated from Index.hr.
