German immigrant population at 10.9M, highest since 2005

German authorities say the number of immigrants living in the country reached 10.9 million last year - a million more than three years earlier, and the highest figure since they started compiling numbers a decade ago.
The Federal Statistical Office said today that 620,000 of the immigrants arriving since 2011 were from the European Union, with Poles, Romanians, Italians, Bulgarians and Hungarians leading. It also reported large increases in the number of Chinese, Syrians and Indians arriving.
The number of people with foreign roots, which includes also the German-born children of immigrants who have arrived since 1950, came in at 16.4 million - about one-fifth of the entire population of 80 million.