The EU will now formally reduce immigration. This is in line with Canada and Australia. And by immigration reduction, it means cutting back on asylum seekers. The politics of immigration into the EU is very influenced by waves of asylum seekers, as it is in the U.S.
Actual annual awards of asylum applications to EU countries has been as high as one million and is now about 300,000.
This needs to be put into a broader context. In 2022 there were. about 4.2 million non-asylum immigrants and about one million non-asylum emigrants, for a net incease of 3.2 million, or about 1/2 of one percent of total population. The total population of the EU, when all countries are taken into account, is about 750 million and has been flat for some years. the prevailing annual rate of net migration to the U.S. is closer to 1/4 of one percent; for Canada, about one percent.
These EU figures do not reflect the reality that most asylum seekers want to live in western and northern Europe, which has a population of about 300 million.
From Politico EU: BRUSSELS — Ursula von der Leyen will propose tougher laws and more plans to deport rejected asylum seekers, doubling down on the European Union’s new embrace of harsher migration policies as anti-immigrant parties gain popularity across the Continent.
More than half of EU member countries, including France and Germany, asked the EU to toughen up its deportations policy ahead of 27 EU leaders meeting Thursday — and now the head of the EU’s powerful chief executive is putting her rubber stamp on deportations.
Von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said in a press conference that leaders had discussed setting up deportation centers outside the EU’s borders, referring to them as “return hubs.”
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During the 2000s, the number of asylum applications to the EU wavered between 250,000 and 500,000. They surged in the early 2010s, in large part due to the Syrian domestic conflict, with applications peaking in 2015 at 1.3 million. In 2023, they were still elevated at 1.1 million but have recently declined.
The number of actual arrivals can be much less, though they did exceed one million in 2015. Arrivals have been trending about 300,000 a year.
Spain is the only EU country whose leader advocates for sustain immigration, saying that it meets demand for workers.