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Fifth of Germany’s Population Is Immigrants | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Syrian refugees arrive at the camp for refugees and migrants in Friedland, Germany April 4, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach


Berlin – For the fifth time in a row, foreign nationals with a German nationality set a record by reaching 18.5 million living in Germany by the end of 2016, which is about a fifth of the German population. It is the highest number of foreigners in the country’s history amid a period of economic growth.

German Federal Statistics Office (Destatis) reported the highest-ever number of people with foreign passports living in Germany, marking an increase of 1.9 million foreigners in the country over the past two years. The latest number of more than 10 million foreigners in Germany marked a 23-percent increase compared to numbers reported in 2014.

Despite changes to migration patterns, the largest portion of foreigners living in Germany remained the Turkish population, followed by Syrians and Poles.

That number included 520,000 Syrians, 138,500 Iraqis and 178,100 Afghanis who moved to Germany since the start of 2015, the office said.

Germany took in more than a million migrants, many fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa in 2015 and 2016.

Meanwhile, the ratio of male versus female immigrants has also shifted. While in 2014, only 51.5 percent of the foreign population was male, the percentage had risen to slightly over 54 percent by 2016.

While there’s no final count of foreign nationals’ ratio to Germans, the overall population of Germany would likely be around 83 million.