Hundreds of thousands of German citizens have left the country in the three years since the height of the 2015 migrant crisis, according to statistics from the German federal government’s newly-released 2018 migration report.
From 2005 to 2015, the year of the migrant crisis, Germany saw an average negative emigrant balance — the total number of German nationals leaving against those returning to the country — of around 39,000 but that number has ballooned in recent years to nearly 100,000 per year from 2016 to 2018, Die Welt reports.
2018 also saw a high level of net immigration with 460,000 more immigrants than emigrants. The largest group, 195,000 people, came from other European Union member-states, while Syrians topped the list for countries in Asia.
According to the Central Register of Foreigners (AZR), a total of 526,000 non-EU foreigners moved to Germany in 2018, 97,000 coming via “family reunification” — chain migration.