Migration has shaped European history. Merchants, craftsmen and intellectuals have crossed the continent for centuries to practice their business or start a new life. Millions emigrated from Europe to the colonies and then to America and the antipodes.
Wider immigration in Western Europe is more recent. From 1960 to 1973, the number of foreign workers in Western Europe doubled from 3 to 6% of the workforce. It was highest in places like the United Kingdom and France, with relatively free access to citizens of their former colonies; In Germany, too, the number of foreigners (almost half Turkish) increased by 4 million in the 25 years after 1960, although they rarely became citizens. However, primary immigration to Europe - driven by labour needs - all ended with the 1973 oil crisis. The foreign-born population continues to grow, also because tens of thousands of residence permits are still issued every year in most countries. EU countries also issue thousands of work permits every year. In the United Kingdom in 1997, almost half of the 54,000 permits were issued to Americans and Japanese, mainly in highly qualified employment; Elsewhere in Europe, permits are often given to seasonal farmworkers. But the share of the foreign-born population in the EU remains low, ranging from 9% in Austria, Belgium and Germany to below 2% in Spain.
The number of people applying for asylum has increased rapidly since the late 1980s. In 1984, there were only 104,000 applications in Western Europe. This number increased to 692,000 in 1992 but declined during the 1990s. The figures rose again to 350,000 in 1998 and around 400,000 in 1999, although they have begun to decline this year. As a result, asylum has become one of the main means of immigration into the EU.
Even nowadays many people want to claim asylum in the EU, which means legally moving to a new country for safety reasons and it is still possible.
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