Belgian population increasingly diverse
Just over 1 million people, living legally in Belgium, are foreign nationals. Figures compiled by the Immigration Office, which were published in Thursday’s edition of the daily ‘De Standaard’, reveal that some 1,004,071 people resident in Belgium have a foreign passport.
However, this doesn’t paint the full picture as regards the number of people with roots abroad.
An estimated 60,000 people of Moroccan descent and around 40,000 Turkish people resident in Belgium have taken advantage of simplified procedures to obtain Belgian citizenship in recent years.
The largest group of foreign nationals in Belgium is the Italian community, which numbers some 175,692.
The French come in second with 123,236 of them resident in Belgium and there are some 113,570 Dutch people living here.
Moroccans are 4th, Spaniards 5th and the Turks come in 6th.
There are 26,247 Britons in Belgium with large concentrations of Brits in Brussels, Antwerp and the Flemish Brabant municipality of Tervuren.
The West Flemish seaside town of Ostend also has a thriving colony of Britons with some 316 of them resident in the “Queen of the coastal resorts”.
In every corner of the land
Every municipality has some foreigners living on its patch.
The East Flemish municipality of Horebeke has the smallest number with only 19 non-Belgians, while the city of Antwerp has the most foreigners with some 71,813 living in the port city.
However, Greater Brussels, which is made up of 19 separate municipalities, has a total of 307,430 foreigners, from all corners of the globe.
In recent years, the number of foreign residents living legally in Belgium has gone up by between 20,000 and 25,000 per annum.
Many of these are women who come to Belgium to marry. Finding a bride abroad is not exclusively the preserve of members of the various immigrant communities.
An increasing number of Belgian nationals are importing brides from countries in Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.
Source: VRT Nieuws, 27 April 2006
