Ukrainian immigrants cause huge population rise in Germany

Germany's population has grown 1.3% (more than 1.1 million people) from last year due to immigrants from war-torn Ukraine.

The Federal Statistical Office in Berlin reported on Tuesday that the increase resulted from a rise in net immigration of 1.455 million people.

The most significant rise of 915,00 people was in the number of Ukrainians arriving in Germany. The rise indicates that the Ukrainian immigrant population rose six fold throughout the year, especially since February 2022, when the war began.

Germany's population was 84.4 million people at the end of 2022, showing the most significant population bump in Germany in the past 30 years, meaning since the 1990 reunification of East and West Germany. The previous year showed only a slight increase in population of 0.1% or 82,000 people.

Seventy-two million Germans and 12.3 million people with foreign citizenship lived in Germany by the end of 2022. Among them, most held Turkish (1.34 million), Ukrainian (1.05 million), or Syrian (883,000) citizenship.

The proportion of foreigners in the total population rose from 13.1% to 14.6% year-on-year.

In 2015, the year of the refugee crisis, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel decided not to close the borders and ensured that more than one million refugees, migrants, and others seeking protection arrived in Germany.

In the same year, 890,000 protection seekers registered with the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees.

However, the hurdles for asylum seekers are set to be raised, with Germany's participation. After years of wrangling, on June 8, EU interior ministers agreed on more strict asylum laws in Luxembourg.

The focus is on introducing asylum procedures at Europe's external borders so that people with little chance of being accepted do not enter the EU in the first place.

To this end, there are to be asylum centers near the borders, from where migrants will be deported directly if their asylum status is not applicable.