Migrant Crisis: EU Countries Receive One Million Asylum Applications, Four Million Ukrainian Refugees Last Year

Last year, nearly a million people applied for asylum status within the European Union along with around four million Ukrainians who sought refuge from the Russian invasion of their country.

The European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) announced this week that a total of 966,000 asylum applications were registered across the European Union, Switzerland and Norway in 2022, a number not seen since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015 and 2016, and a full 50 per cent higher than 2021.

According to the EUAA, part of the reason for the large increase in applications was due to many countries lessening travel restrictions that had been imposed to stop the spread of the Chinese coronavirus, including air travel restrictions, Ekathimerini reports.

Syrians were listed as the largest single nationality among asylum seekers in 2022, with over 130,000 applying for asylum last year, followed by 129,000 Afghan nationals fleeing the Taliban takeover of their country that took place in August of 2021.

The agency also claimed that a large portion of asylum seekers came to the European Union legally before applying for asylum and that along with military conflicts, issues such as food supply problems also played a factor in those seeking asylum in the EU.

However, several parts of Europe also saw large numbers of illegal entries, including Italy, which saw over 100,000 illegal immigrants arrive last year, the highest number since 2017.

Frontex, the European Union border agency, noted that the Balkan Migrant Route, in particular, saw a surge of activity last year, increasing by 152 per cent in the first eleven months of 2022, with countries like the Czech Republic reporting illegal migrant arrival increases of as much as 1,200 per cent last year.

The surge of asylum seekers came alongside the four million or so Ukrainians who fled their country last year following the February 2022 Russian invasion. While many have since returned to their home country, the number of Ukrainians in Europe has pushed refugee accommodation capacity limits for countries to their limits.

An estimated 300,000 or so non-Ukrainian migrants are also said to be among those claiming to have fled the conflict in Ukraine, as some have previously speculated that migrants may be falsely claiming to be from Ukraine in order to exploit the EU policy that grants Ukrainians automatic asylum.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.