Federal Statistical Office: Foreign population is growing - but far less than in previous years

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The number of foreigners in Germany grew by 1.8 percent (204,000) last year compared to the previous year.

That was the lowest growth rate in the past ten years, as the Federal Statistical Office reported on Monday.

A total of 11.4 million people without a German passport were registered in the Central Register of Foreigners.

The slight increase in the year the corona pandemic began is due to a decline in net immigration: the central register of foreigners registered 740,000 foreigners and 479,000 foreigners who had moved in last year.

This results in a net immigration of around 262,000 people for 2020.

In 2019, 923,000 newcomers and 547,000 departed were registered.

Immigration from EU countries remained stable over the past year.

Without taking British citizens into account, around 107,000 or 2.2 percent more foreigners from the EU countries lived in Germany than in 2019. That was a growth rate at the level of the previous year, it said.

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In contrast, the growth from so-called third countries outside the EU decreased significantly from 3.3 percent in 2019 to 1.5 percent in 2020. The net immigration here decreased from 264,000 in 2019 to 147,000 last year.

According to the information, this corresponds to a decrease of 44 percent.

With a decrease from 21,000 immigrants in 2019 to 8,000 last year, net immigration from India fell the most.

The second largest decrease was for Syrian nationals.

Here, net immigration fell from 31,000 to 21,000.

For Chinese and US nationals, the number of people who had moved away was higher than that of newcomers for the first time - in both cases, around 3,000 more people left Germany than newcomers.