As recorded by the source, Moroccans ranked as the foreign nationality with more residents in Spain in 2023, closely followed by Romanians. After years of losing its foreign population, Spain’s immigration figures started to pick up in 2015, with the number of people that moved to the Mediterranean country surpassing the number of foreigners that decided to leave.

A matter of balance The net migration rate of Spain changed its course mainly due to the great inflow of foreigners that move to reside in the Mediterranean country. Spain’s immigration flow slowed down after the 2008 financial crisis, albeit the number of foreigners that opted to change their residence saw a significant growth in the last years. In 2022, Colombians ranked first as the foreign nationality that most relocated to Spain, distantly followed by Moroccans and Ukranians.

Spain does not have the highest number of immigrants in Europe In recent years, the European Union confronted a rising number of refugees arriving from the Middle East. Migration figures show that Germany accommodated approximately 15 million foreign-born citizens, ranking it as the country that most hosted immigrants in Europe in 2022. By comparison, Spain’s foreign population stood slightly over seven million, positioning the Western Mediterranean country third on the European list of foreign-born population. Unfortunately, thousands of persons have died ore gone missing trying to reach Spanish territory, as more and more irregular migrants opt to use dangerous maritime routes to arrive at Southern Europe from Africa's coasts.

In 2022, the largest foreign group of immigrants to the Netherlands came from Ukraine, with 99,700 immigrants. Polish, Dutch, Syrian and Turkish rounded out the top five foreign nationalities for immigrants to the Netherlands in that year.

As of 2022, the European country with the most citizens of the People's Republic of China was Italy, with around 300,000 people. Spain also hosted a substantial number of Chinese nationals at roughly 193,000 people. These figures are likely to underestimate the number of people who were born in China or are of Chinese ancestry, as many of these immigrants receive the citizenship of the European country which they migrated to after living there for a period of time, and the People's Republic of China does not allow its citizens to hold dual citizenship.

Over 1.2 million refugees from Ukraine due to the Russian invasion fled to Germany as of April 2025. Furthermore, the second-highest number was recorded in Poland. In total, around 5.1 million Ukrainian refugees were registered across Europe and 5.6 million worldwide as of May 2025. Most of them fled the country by crossing the border with Poland. Ukrainian refugees in Germany The first increases in the number of Ukrainian refugees in Germany were registered in March and April 2022. The figure exceeded one million refugees in September of that year. Germany had the highest monthly financial allowance for Ukrainians who fled the war compared to other European countries as of June 2022. Temporary protection for Ukrainian refugees in the EU European Union (EU) members implemented the Temporary Protection Directive (TPD), which guaranteed access to accommodation, welfare, and healthcare to refugees from Ukraine. People fleeing the war had a right to a residence permit in the EU, enter the labor market, and enroll children in educational institutions. The protection is granted until March 4, 2026, but it can be extended in the future depending on the situation in the country.

In 2020/21 there were approximately 696,000 Polish nationals living in the United Kingdom, the highest non-British population at this time. Indian and Irish were the joint second-largest nationalities at approximately 370,000 people.

Out of a total of nearly 11.2 million Mexican emigrants around the world in 2020, almost 10.9 million relocated to the United States. The second most popular country of destination for emigrants of this Latin American nation was Canada followed by Spain. In 2019, nearly 47 percent of Mexican emigrants living abroad were women.

The most frequently chosen country for emigration by Romanians in 2022 was Germany, with a share of about 22 percent of the total number of emigrants. Italy ranked second, being chosen by roughly 14 percent of Romanian emigrants.

In 2024, Turkey was the country that hosted the highest amount of Syrian refugees, amounting up to 3.1 million refugees. Lebanon was second, hosting 775,000 Syrian refugees. The data refers to the total number of Syrian refugees in a given country, not considering the date of their application for asylum or the date of their flight.

The number of people with Russian citizenship living in European countries as of January 1, 2023, was by far the highest in Germany. The country's population includes around 260,000 Russian citizens. That was more than double the number of Russian citizens living in Spain. To compare, over 35,400 Russian nationals resided in Czechia.