Record Level of Immigration in Belgium

Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated an article from the Vlaams Belang website about the latest official immigration statistics in Belgium:

Immigration reaching a new record

As the left-wing sociologist Jan Hertog points out, for the twelfth year in row 2007 showed a growth in the number of additional immigrants. That year a total of 75,350 foreigners were added. That is a growth of 18.6 percent compared with 2006 and an absolute record in post-war history, Hertog says.

The immigration statistics, of course, do not include the “Nouveaux Belges” [New Belgians]. The total number of foreigners therefore “only” increased by 39,387: from 932,161 (on Jan. 1, 2007) to 971,488 (on Jan. 1, 2008), because in that period no fewer than 36,063 immigrants became “Belgian” and vanished form the statistics.

The number of “Belgwordingen” [transitional Belgians] (dixit Hertog) however, keeps increasing unabated.

2007 showed an increase of 13.2%, a figure that will increase even further as the immigration increases.

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While between 1990 and 2008 a total of 585,549 foreigners became “Belgian,” the number of immigrants kept on growing. According to Hertog, since 1990 no fewer than 676,185 new immigrants entered the country. This increased the number of registered immigrants after 1990 by up to 76.8%! By 132% in Flanders, 86.6% in Brussels, and 6.4% in Wallonia to be exact.

For completeness we must of course add that no account is taken of immigrants who are illegally in this country, and — according to conservative estimates — in the meanwhile numbered at around 100,000. These are — even without taking into account the latter category — hallucinatory figures showing that the immigration halt which was officially proclaimed in 1974 is nonexistent in practice. Maybe even more hallucinatory is the intention of the parties like Open VLD, List Dedecker and CD & V [Flemish appeaser parties] to open the doors even more in the future.