Last year more than 2.3 million first residence permits were issued altogether by countries in the European Union to people who were not EU citizens
The statistics cover permits issued to a person for the first time and include both short-term and long-term permits.
The four major reasons for granting the permits were for family (680,000 – 30%), education (477,000 – 20%), employment (572,000 – 25%), and ‘other’ (577,000 – 25%).
The other category includes pensioners with sufficient funds, diplomats, and victims of trafficking as well as refugees and asylum seekers.
The number of permits granted has actually been decreasing over the past several years. In 2008, there were nearly 2.8 million.
The UK issued the greatest percentage, 25%, of any country. A third of these were for education and the UK was the primary destination in the EU for education.
It was followed at a distance by Poland (15%), Germany (10%), France (9.5%), Italy (9%) and Spain (8%).
Together these six countries granted 75% of all the residence permits.
Portugal issued 29,764 permits in 2014, of which 13,846 were for family unification (46.5%), 3,407 for education (11%), 6,409 for employment (21.5%), and 6,102 for other reasons (20.5%).
Those granted permission to stay in Portugal were 1.3% of the EU total of 2.3 million.
Most of the Portuguese permits were given to people from Brazil (28%), from China (16%) and Cape Verde (9%).
In 2014 it was the citizens of the Ukraine who continued to receive the highest number of permits. The overwhelming majority of them (68%) were for employment. And they flocked primarily to Poland (80%),
People from the US were granted the second highest number, followed by citizens of China, and India. To people from these four countries were issued about a third of all the permits. The majority of them were given British permits.
But they also went to such countries as Belgium, Ireland, Hungary, Denmark and Italy.
The Americans came mostly for other reasons, the Chinese predominately to the UK and for education, and the Indians for family and work.
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