IRELAND has one of the lowest proportions of foreigners among Western countries, according to the OECD.
Most European countries have far greater noncitizen populations than Ireland. Only Finland, Japan, Spain and Italy come below us.
In 1992, just 2.7 per cent of the Irish population were not citizens. This compares with 3.5 per cent in the UK, 6.3 per cent in France and 8.5 per cent in Germany. The high est noncitizen populations were in Switzerland (18.1 per cent) and Luxembourg (31.1 per cent), which have strict laws on granting citizenship.
In Finland, Japan and Spain, 1.1 per cent of the population were noncitizens. In Italy, the figure was 1.7 per cent.
In the US, people are classified by their country of birth. Almost 8 per cent of the US population are foreign born. In Australia, the figure is 22.7 per cent and in Canada, 15.6 per cent.
Throughout Europe, an average of 10 per cent of asylum seekers are given refugee status, and a further 12 per cent are given humanitarian leave to remain in the country to which they fled.
While refugee numbers are increasingly sharply in Ireland, they are falling elsewhere in Europe. In Germany, for example, numbers peaked at 438,000 in 1992, but fell away to 116,000 last year.
About 73,000 asylumseekers came to Britain in 1991, but following a tightening up of immigration procedures this number dropped to just 28,000 last year.
In Ireland, about 1,200 asylum seekers have registered so far this year, about the same as in the whole of last year. Up to now, it has taken an average of three years to process each application; in more restrictive countries such as Austria, many applications for asylum are dealt with in a matter of hours.
