Most foreign nationals in Greece are Albanians, according to latest data
The most characteristic aspect of Greece’s wave of immigration is that 60 percent of migrants come from Albania. The latest count from the Immigration Policy Institute gives the following information on immigrants to Greece: – Some 83 percent of immigrants hail from Albania and other former Eastern bloc countries. Most of the immigrants from these lands come to Greece to seek employment (70 percent), while the rest come to be reunited with members of their family already living in Greece or to work in independent jobs. – Many immigrants – about 132,000, or 17 percent of the total population – live in Athens. Another 7 percent of migrants live in Thessaloniki. – Some 80 percent of immigrants are of working age, compared to 68 percent of Greeks. – More than 50 percent of the immigrants living in Greece want to stay here. – Some 300,000 immigrants are insured. Of those, 230,000 use the Social Security Foundation (IKA), more than 50,000 use the Farmers’ Pension Fund (OGA) and 10,000 use the fund for the self-employed (TEBE). – Albanians comprise 6.9 percent of all those insured. – Even though the total school-age population (in junior high, senior high and technical high schools) has dropped by about 8.9 percent, there has been a 20.8 percent increase in foreign-born students. – More than 85 percent of foreign students in junior high schools were born outside of Greece. Most of these students have already lived in Greece between six and eight years. – In the junior high schools of outlying Attica, the immigrant population is made up of 75 ethnicities. About 80.02 percent are Albanians, followed by Russians (2.8 percent), Bulgarians (2.3 percent), Hungarians (2.2 percent), Romanians (1.5 percent), Armenians (1.3 percent), Moldovans (1.2 percent), Kazakhs (1.2 percent) and Georgians (1.15 percent). – In senior high and technical high schools in outlying Attica, foreign graduates hail from 70 different countries. Some 83.5 percent are Albanian. – In the municipality of Thessaloniki, foreign students comprise 8.5 percent of the total student population in junior high schools. (In senior high schools they make up 3.4 percent and in technical high schools they make up 9.1 percent.) Some 56.3 percent of foreign students are Albanians, followed by Georgians (17.5 percent), Russians (7 percent) and Armenians (6.4 percent).
