Report: Significant decline in French immigration to Israel
CBS data indicate that in 2016 there was a 7% drop in the number of immigrants to Israel compared to 2015; the largest drop was among immigrants from France (36%); the country that provided the most immigrants—Russia.
Since the establishment of the State of Israel, 3.2 million immigrants have immigrated to Israel, about 43 percent of them since 1990.
This emerges from data published Tuesday by the Central Bureau of Statistics. In the past year, there has been a decline in the number of immigrants compared to the previous year: in 2016, 25,977 immigrants arrived in Israel compared to 27,908 in 2015—a seven percent decrease. The most significant decline was among immigrants from France—a 36 percent drop.
In 2016, the largest number of immigrants arriving in Israel came from the European continent (77 percent of all immigrants). The remaining immigrants arrived from the Americas and Oceania (17 percent of all immigrants), Asia (4 percent) and Africa (1 percent).
That same year, the largest number of immigrants came from Russia (27 percent of all immigrants in 2016), followed by Ukraine (23 percent), France (17 percent) and the United States (11 percent). The number of immigrants from France recorded a relatively large decline (-36 percent), and the Ukraine saw a smaller decrease (12 percent) than in the previous year.
In 2016, immigration continued to be composed of a majority of women (51 percent). The ratio of men to women was 945 men to 1,000 women. The median age of women was slightly higher than that of men (33.0 years and 32.4 years, respectively).
A survey of the choice of residence by the immigrants shows that most of the immigrants preferred to settle in large cities, where they probably have relatives or more veteran communities from their country of origin. Of the total number of immigrants who arrived in 2016, Jerusalem absorbed the largest number of immigrants (12 percent of all immigrants), followed by Tel Aviv-Jaffa(11 percent), Netanya (9 percent), Haifa (8 percent), Ashdod and Bat Yam (5 percemt each) and Ra'anana (3 percent).
Immigration in 2016, as in previous years, was characterized by a relatively high percentage of academic professionals prior to immigration to Israel.
The level of education of immigrants who arrived in 2015 is relatively high—72 percent of them had 13 or more years of education, half of them (about 52 percent) had 16 years of schooling or more.
