In 2021, significantly more people immigrated to Germany than in the previous year.

The federal government's migration report for 2021, which was presented on Wednesday, shows more than 1.3 million arrivals in 2021.

Compared to 2020, this means an increase of 11.5 percent.

In contrast, there are 994,000 emigrations.

Most people (63.8 percent) came to Germany from other European countries.

According to the migration report, more than 27 percent of the people living in Germany had a migration background in 2021.

Eckhart Lohse

Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.

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The federal government also presented the current asylum numbers on Wednesday.

These rose by almost 28 percent in 2022 compared to 2021. In 2022, 244,132 asylum applications were submitted to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees.

In addition, according to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, more than a million refugees from Ukraine were recorded in the central register of foreigners by the end of last year, when Russia's war against Ukraine began.

The ministry said that more than 80 percent of those seeking protection who came to Germany fled Ukraine last year.

Most asylum seekers come from Syria

Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) said "Putin's criminal war of aggression against Ukraine has triggered the largest refugee movement in Europe since the Second World War".

However, Germany's humanitarian responsibility does not end with the admission of more than one million refugees from Ukraine.

In other parts of the world, too, people are fleeing war and terror, which is reflected in the increased number of asylum seekers.

After 722,000 asylum applications were made in 2016, when a particularly large number of refugees reached Germany, this number fell year by year.

In 2019, the last year before the pandemic, it was still 142,000.

In the 2020 pandemic year, it fell to just over 100,000 due to the severely restricted travel options.

In 2021, the pre-pandemic level was even exceeded again with 148,000 initial applications.

The number of first-time asylum applications last year was 217,000.

If you add the follow-up applications, the number is 244,000.

The main countries of origin last year were Syria (72,646 initial and follow-up applications), Afghanistan (41,471), Turkey (25,054) and Iraq (16,328).

Merz calls for more immigration of skilled workers

There was a political debate about the numbers on labor migration.

The 2020 Skilled Immigration Act was intended to make it easier for qualified workers to move in, but the pandemic initially stood in the way.

While more than 64,000 people immigrated to Germany for gainful employment in 2019, the number fell to less than half in the first year of the pandemic, 2020.

In 2021, there were just over 40,000 immigrations related to gainful employment.

The Federal Government's migration report states that more than 60 percent of the people who came to Germany as migrant workers in 2021 were "qualified or highly qualified" specialists.

The CDU chairman Friedrich Merz spoke out in Berlin on Wednesday for more immigration of skilled workers.

At a conference with works councils, Merz said: "We are in favor of further immigration, but we want to allow this immigration to be controlled and regulated in the labor market, and we do not want it to continue uncontrolled and unregulated in the social systems." The chairman of the FDP parliamentary group, Christian Dürr made a similar statement in the “Tagesspiegel”.

“Unlike other parties, we have a very clear line.

We do not want immigration into the social security systems, but immigration into the German labor market.”