Asylum requests sharply down in developed countries, OECD says
- Applications for asylum in the 36-country organisation dropped 34 per cent to 1.09 million last year from 1.65 million in 2016
“Because of the drop in asylum applications, the number of registered refugees also declined” from about 900,000 permits issued in 2016 to 700,000 in 2017, said the OECD.
The report said OECD members received 5.3 million new permanent migrants in 2018, a 2 per cent rise over 2017, mainly due to families joining a growing number of expatriate workers.
There was also a rise of 11 per cent in the number of temporary workers to about 4.9 million in 2017, the latest year for which data was available.
“In a number of countries, a common public perception is that migration is uncontrolled and costly,” the OECD said.
While there was “little evidence to support these views”, it would be a mistake to ignore people’s migration fears, the report warned.
The report expressed concern that people tend to confuse illegal and lawful movements, and to view all migration as driven by poverty, it said.
It said communication needs to be improved, noting a recent European study found that 60 per cent of respondents did not feel they were well informed about immigration and integration.
“And EU respondents, on average, overestimate the number of migrants from outside Europe by a factor of two,” it said, adding that half thought, wrongly, that there were more illegal migrants than legal ones.
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Last year, the US was the main destination for asylum seekers in the OECD, with 254,000 applications, a drop of 23.3 per cent. Germany was second with 162,000 applications, and Turkey in third place with 83,000.
Most temporary workers were employed either as low-skilled workers in farming, construction, manufacturing and freight transport, or in very high-skilled fields such as IT or health.
The US saw a drop of 5 per cent with 1.1 million new permanent residents in 2017, the report noted, and refused a higher number of temporary labour permits.
Most were from Honduras, Venezuela and El Salvador.