ImmigrationNumber of Illegal Immigrants in Europe Declines

Published 17 January 2020

The number of illegal immigrants in Europe (EU states plus Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland), including asylum seekers, increased substantially between 2014 and 2016, reaching about 5 million, but has been declining since, and now stands at about 4.8 million. Pew Research Center notes that the number of illegal immigrants corresponds to less than 1 percent of the European population — compared to the United States, where illegal immigrants account for about 3.4 percent of the U.S. population.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, recently re-elected, said that illegal immigration was the main threat to Europe, right next to climate change. “If we do not fight illegal immigration, Europe will not be the same in five, ten, or twenty years,” he said earlier this week in an interview with the international press.

Following the great migration crisis of 2015-2016, however, the illegal immigration trend points downward, according to figures compiled by the American Pew Research Center, presented Wednesday at the Center for Prospective Studies and International Information (CEPII), in Paris.

CEPII says that this is the first time that a study has quantified illegal immigration across the continent since the Clandestino project carried out by the European Union in 2007-2008. The number of illegal immigrants in Europe (EU states plus Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland), including asylum seekers, increased substantially between 2014 and 2016. The number of illegal immigrants in 2017 to between 3 and 3.7 million at the lower end, and 4.1 to 5.3 million at the higher end. The numbers declined again in 2017, to between 3.9 and 4.8 million, according to various sources cited by Pew.

Figures for 2018 or 2019 are not yet available.

Le Figaro notes that four countries have attracted more than two-thirds of these migrants: Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, and France. After Angela Merkel’s decision to open Germany’s borders, the number of illegal immigrants doubled in Germany, from 600,000 in 2014 to 1.2 million in 2017, after peaking at 1.4 million in 2016. The United Kingdom was not affected by the influx of 2015-2016, maintaining a stable level of 1.2 million illegal immigrants. In France, the number of illegal immigrants has increased from 300,000 to 400,000 in the 2014-2017 period, while in Italy the number has increased from 500,000 in 2014 to 700,000 in 2017. In other European countries, the number of illegal immigrants declined in 2017 relative to previous years.

The decrease in the number of illegal immigrants in Europe in 2017 is explained by a combination of regularizations of their status, especially in Spain and France, voluntary departures, or expulsions,” Mark Lopez, director of the program on migrations to the Pew Research Center, said. Some migrants have moved from one country to another country without either country’s knowledge, and thus may have been double counted.

Pew notes that the total figure of 4.8 million illegal immigrants corresponds to less than 1 percent of the European population — compared to the more than ten million in the United States, or 3.4 percent of the U.S. population. Illegal immigrants in Europe account for slightly less than 20 percent of the total immigrant population in Europe (about 17 million). In the United States, illegal immigrants account for about 24 percent of total migration (there are about 44.5 million migrants in the United States).

Pew notes that the number of illegal immigrants, and, hence, the total number of immigrants, has dropped sharply in the United States, with the return of more than one million Mexicans, who represent the majority of illegal immigrants, to their country.

The origins of illegal immigrants to Europe are more diverse, with the majority coming from Asia, other European countries, the Middle East, and North Africa, with a much smaller number coming from sub-Saharan Africa. More than half of the illegal immigrants in Europe arrived within the last five years.