Hard Numbers on European Immigration

Germany has been named Europe’s principal country of destination for migrants, according to the World Migration Report (WMR) 2008 released on Tuesday.

As host to 10.1 million migrants in 2005, Germany was well ahead of the other top countries in the study by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) on how globalisation is effecting human movement. France came in second with 6.5 million migrants, the United Kingdom had 5.4 million, Spain had 4.8 million, and Italy 2.5 million.

The ten countries reviewed in Europe all showed positive rates of growth in number of migrants from 2000 to 2005, but Spain and Italy recorded a stunning increase of 194.2 percent and 54.1 per cent respectively. Western and Central Europe hosted a total of 44.1 million migrants in 2005, many of whom came from neighbouring countries. That accounted for some 85 percent of the region’s population growth. Migrants make up an average of 15 percent of the population in Western European countries.

The WMR study found that there were more than 200 million international migrants worldwide – 2.5 times more than in 1965.

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"The world is on the move, there is no turning away from that,” Gervais Appave, Co-Editor of the WMR 2008 commented.

The Local

That there's no turning away is what Gervais Appave wants you to believe -- how he wants to manipulate your mind -- not scientific reality.

With all these newcomers, Europeans are going to be an endangered species. We can play word games and cutely claim the newcomers are now Europeans -- what a sleight of hand worthy of a six-year-old -- but we all know what's happening: displacement of the indigenous for a generic population of "world people."