/2019.11.13_EU-Unauthorized_FINAL.pdf

Europe’s Unauthorized Immigrant Population Peaks in 2016, Then Levels Off

New estimates find half live in Germany and the United Kingdom.

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Europe has experienced a high level of immigration in recent years, driving debate about how countries should deal with immigrants when it comes to social services, security issues, deportation policies and integration efforts. Among these recently arrived immigrants are many who live in Europe without authorization. Coupled with unauthorized immigrants who were already in Europe, their numbers reach into the millions, though together they make up a small share of Europe’s total population.

A new Pew Research Center analysis based on European data sources estimates that at least 3.9 million unauthorized immigrants – and possibly as many as 4.8 million – lived in Europe in 2017. The total is up from 2014, when 3.0 million to 3.7 million unauthorized migrants lived in Europe, but is little changed from a recent peak of 4.1 million to 5.3 million in 2016.1

Overall, unauthorized immigrants accounted for less than 1% of Europe’s total population of more than 500 million people living in the 28 European Union member states, including the United Kingdom, and four European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland). And among the roughly 24 million noncitizens of EU-EFTA countries living in Europe, fewer than one-fifth were unauthorized immigrants in 2017.

The recent rise in Europe’s long-standing unauthorized immigrant population from nations outside of EU-EFTA countries is largely due to a surge of asylum seekers who mostly arrived in 2015, when more than 1.3 million people applied for asylum in EU-EFTA countries. Many from that wave have been approved to remain in Europe. Many others, however, have had their applications rejected. Some have appealed those denials. Still others whose applications were rejected or withdrawn continue to live in Europe.

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Meanwhile, many asylum seekers in Europe are still awaiting a decision on their pending application, a group that is part of our estimates, and accounted for nearly a quarter (20% to 24%) of Europe’s unauthorized immigrant population in 2017. Although asylum seekers waiting for a decision have a temporary legal standing, their future in Europe is uncertain. Most entered their country of residence without permission, and the majority of applicants are now seeing their applications rejected. Consequently, many have been or could be subject to deportation orders in the future.

Since asylum seekers waiting for a decision have a temporary lawful status, the Center also produced estimates of the unauthorized immigrant population without this group. These estimates are lower – 2.9 million to 3.8 million in 2017 – yet still show an apparent increase from 2014 before the asylum seeker surge, when the unauthorized immigrant population without asylum seekers waiting for a decision was an estimated 2.4 million to 3.2 million. (For estimates of the unauthorized immigrant population in Europe and by country without waiting asylum seekers, see Appendix C.)

Unauthorized immigrants made up roughly one-fifth (16% to 20%) of Europe’s total non-EU-EFTA population in 2017, according to estimates, with 4% being unauthorized immigrants with a pending asylum claim that year. This means authorized non-EU-EFTA citizens living in Europe outnumbered unauthorized immigrants by about four to one.
Who’s counted as an unauthorized immigrant?

Unauthorized immigrants in this report are people living without a residency permit in their country of residence who are not citizens of any European Union or European Free Trade Association (EFTA) country. Most unauthorized immigrants entered an EU-EFTA country without authorization, overstayed a visa, failed to leave after being ordered to do so or have had their deportation temporarily stayed. The unauthorized population also includes those born in EU-EFTA countries to unauthorized immigrant parents, since most European countries do not have birthright citizenship. Finally, the European unauthorized immigrant population estimate includes asylum seekers with a pending decision. This last group makes up nearly a quarter (20% to 24%) of Europe’s estimated total unauthorized immigrant population.

Many different immigrant groups can be counted as unauthorized immigrants, as there is no universal definition and the inclusion of some groups over others is a point of debate. A broad definition could include anyone who entered the country without authorization and has yet to procure permanent residency. This definition could include those with subsidiary protection status, a group that does not qualify for refugee status but receives humanitarian protection that can be renewed for one or two years at a time. Those with this status can sometimes sponsor family members and after several years apply for permanent residency.

By contrast, a narrower definition for unauthorized immigrants would not include those with legal protection from deportation, even if such protection is temporary. From this perspective, unauthorized immigrant populations would not include asylum seekers waiting on a decision, those whose deportation has been deferred or stayed, or children of unauthorized immigrants.

Pew Research Center has selected an approach that considers a combination of authorized entry, legal certainty and likely permanency. In the U.S., the Center considers those with deportation relief (for example, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or Temporary Protected Status) as well as asylum seekers waiting on their cases as unauthorized immigrants. Although these groups are authorized to work, many entered without permission and their legal future in the U.S. is uncertain, as evidenced by recent policy changes implemented by the U.S. government and subsequent court cases.

In the same way in EU-EFTA countries, deportees with a stayed or deferred deportation who have a legal right of residence and may even be allowed to work are included as unauthorized immigrants. Children born in Europe to unauthorized immigrant parents are considered part of the unauthorized immigrant population. Similarly, asylum seekers with a pending decision, of whom many entered without permission and whose acceptance rates continue to fall, are also included as unauthorized immigrants. Since the definition of an unauthorized immigrant is a point of debate, the Center has published estimates without asylum seekers awaiting a decision on their application (see Appendix C). Waiting asylum seekers, at nearly 1 million people in Europe in 2017, are likely the largest of unauthorized immigrant groups with an uncertain legal status.

The Center’s new estimates come at a time when publics across Europe express mixed opinions on the place of immigrants in their societies. A 2018 multi-nation survey from the Center found that majorities in several European countries support the deportation of immigrants living in their countries illegally. On the other hand, when asked about refugees fleeing war and violence, the 2018 survey also found that majorities across Europe support taking them in, a group that has often entered Europe without permission and claims asylum.

This is the first time Pew Research Center has estimated the size of Europe’s unauthorized migrant population. The methodology used for these new estimates builds on the Center’s more than 15 years of experience in estimating the size of the unauthorized immigrant population in the United States. The unauthorized immigrant population in the U.S. is more than double the size (10.3 million to 10.7 million in 2017) of that in Europe (3.9 million to 4.8 million); has been decreasing in number since 2007; and makes up a larger share of the total population (roughly 3% in the U.S. compared with less than 1% in Europe). (See our related blog post for more details on how unauthorized immigrant populations and their characteristics differ between Europe and the U.S.)

The Center’s estimates are also the first comprehensive estimate for Europe in a decade. Europe’s unauthorized migrant population was last estimated for 2008 by an EU-funded team of European researchers called the Clandestino project. At that time, the number living in the EU was estimated to be 1.9 million to 3.8 million, not including asylum seekers with pending decisions. By comparison, our estimate for 2017 for EU countries only, excluding asylum seekers with a pending application, is 2.8 million to 3.7 million – the upper end of Clandestino’s 2008 estimate.2
The Center’s estimates compared with others

Pew Research Center’s unauthorized immigrant estimates in Europe are in line with other reputable data, including estimates from previous studies, statistics on the number of unauthorized immigrants regularized by governments and analysis of recent migration flows.

In Germany, for example, a separate 2014 estimate using a different method than the one used by the Center and that did not include waiting asylum seekers, estimated the number of unauthorized immigrants to have been 180,000 to 520,000. For the same year, the Center estimated the number of unauthorized immigrants in Germany to be between 300,000 and 400,000 without waiting asylum seekers, within the 2014 study’s range. Moving forward, our 2017 estimate for Germany of 600,000 to 700,000 unauthorized immigrants, excluding asylum seekers waiting for a resolution in their case, is in line with expected trends. For more, see our Germany estimate methodology.

Meanwhile, in the UK, a London School of Economics study placed the number of unauthorized immigrants residing in the country between 417,000 and 863,000 in 2007. Ten years later, after hundreds of thousands of additional migrants from non-EU-EFTA countries entered and stayed in the UK, our 2017 estimate of 800,000 to 1.2 million unauthorized immigrants with waiting asylum seekers would be consistent with recent migration trends. For more methodological background, see our UK estimate methodology.

In Italy, hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers have landed on the country’s shores during the past decade. Many have had their asylum cases rejected, and some have remained in Italy without authorization. Adjusting for regularizations of unauthorized immigrants to authorized status during the past decade, deaths, out-migration and additional arrivals, our estimate of 500,000 to 700,000 for 2017, including asylum seekers with a pending asylum case, is similar to the estimate published by the Iniziative e Studi sulla Multietnicità Foundation. For more information, see our Italy estimate methodology.

In France, our estimate shows between 300,000 and 400,000 unauthorized immigrants lived in the country in 2017, including some 38,000 asylum seekers waiting for a decision on their case. This estimate is similar to that cited by government leaders as well as several French demographers. Also, some 300,000 people in 2017 were enrolled in a government medical plan accessed by unauthorized immigrants. For more, see our methodology for our France estimate.

▻https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/11/13/europes-unauthorized-immigrant-population-peaks-in-2016-then-levels-off

Pour télécharger le #rapport :
▻https://www.pewresearch.org/global/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/11/2019.11.13_EU-Unauthorized_FINAL.pdf

Commentaire de Serge Slama sur twitter :

Le journal @lemondefr @JuliaPascualita pourrait prendre des précautions méthodologiques à l’égard de cette étude @pewresearch avec une appréhension très américaine de l’irrégularité qui inclut les demandeurs d’asile entrés illégalement.

▻https://twitter.com/combatsdh/status/1194660424177922050

En France on n’a pas de moyens de comptabiliser le nombre exact de sans-papiers. On connaît les bénéficiaires de l’aide médicale d’Etat (315 835 en 2017), le nombre de déboutés du droit d’asile (80 000 à 90 000 par an), le nombre d’OQTF non exécutées (environ 60 000 par an).
Enfin on sait qu’environ 30 000 jeunes nés en France de parents étrangers deviennent français à leur majorité (mais on ignore le statut de leurs parents).

▻https://twitter.com/combatsdh/status/1194895286491062273

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Et ce commentaire de Nando Sigona, toujours sur twitter :

I need to have a closer look at the report, but the estimate for the UK seems too high. The UK has only marginally being affected by the 2013-2015 #refugeecrisis, and does more forced/voluntary removals than other EU states...
Previous estimates, including LSE, Home Office, Clandestino project and our own on #undocumentedchildren, identified pre-accession EU nationals as one of the larger group of undocumented migrants in the UK. A group that was ’regularised’ through the EU enlargement.
refused but not removed asylum seekers also contributes to the estimate, but total asylum refusals minus returns may be in the thousands but nothing like what the estimate would require.
The report is also counting people with short term legal status like subsidiary protection which is again questionable. The report recognises that this approach may be controversial and in Appendix C provides an estimate without asylum seekers.
and yet they went for the splash number for the press release and from initial media reports it is clear that some of the nuances are lost.
and by the way, it would seem that there is no variation in the UK between the estimates with and without asylum seekers...

▻https://twitter.com/nandosigona/status/1194665603388321798

@Pewresearch a publié une étude sur la population immigrée « non-autorisée » en #Europe, dont les résultats ont été largement médiatisés depuis hier ▻https://pewrsr.ch/2OalGIV un certain nombre d’éléments ont retenu l’attention de @DesinfoxMig :
L’étude adopte un parti pris méthodologique basé sur le contexte américain pour définir le groupe étudié, à savoir la population immigrée « non-autorisée » en E. Cela inclut entre autre les #demandeursasile et les enfants nés en E. de parents en situation irrégulière.
@Pewresearch
reconnait que l’acception très large de la notion #immigré « non-autorisé » qui considère une combinaison de facteurs (entrée autorisée, séjour régulier et la probabilité de séjour permanent) fait débat.
Dans le contexte FR il y a débat car la traduction du terme « unauthorized » en #sanspapier, #clandestin ou en situation irrégulière renvoi à un contexte juridique et administratif différent du contexte US.
Par ex, en France l’immigré ayant introduit une #demandeasile se voit délivrer par la #préfecture une autorisation provisoire de séjour, il ne peut pas être expulsé, et n’est donc pas considéré comme « sans-papiers » aux yeux du droit français.
Si on peut ne pas être d’accord avec certains choix méthodologiques – et on apprécierait certaines précautions et nuances de la part des médias qui diffusent cette étude - elle propose une approche comparative d’un phénomène par sa nature même très difficile à quantifier.
Pour la France, on peut retenir que la part des « non-autorisés » dans #immigration est particulièrement basse (10%), comparé à Allemagne ou aux Etats-Unis (environ 20%) et au Royaume-Uni (45%). Ils représentent au total moins de 1% de la population totale.

▻https://twitter.com/DesinfoxMig/status/1195073984099946496

Pew Research Centre Estimates on the Irregular Migrant Population the UK and the rest of Europe

The Pew Research Centre has produced new estimates of the number of irregular (‘illegal’ or ‘unauthorised’) migrants in the EU, including the UK. Here we explain briefly what they find and how they reach their conclusions.

What are the key findings for the UK?

The report estimates that in 2017 there were between 800,000 and 1.2m people living in the UK without a valid residence permit. The authors also estimate that, in 2017:

Around one third of irregular migrants had been living in the UK for 10 years or more;
They included similar shares of men and women, and around 14% were children;
There was no evidence of any increase in the number of irregular migrants living in the UK since 2014;
Half came from the ‘Asia Pacific’ region, but there no breakdown by individual countries within that region;
The UK had one of the largest irregular migrant populations in Europe, alongside Germany.

How are the figures calculated and are they accurate?

The study uses the ‘residual method’. It compares the estimated the number of non-EU citizens living in the UK to an estimate of the number holding a valid residence permit in the same year.

The results come with a high degree of uncertainty, because both of these figures are just estimates—as the Pew report recognises.

In 2017, ONS estimated that there were around 2.4m non-EU citizens living in the UK (this is lower than the 5.7m non-EU born migrants living in the UK that year, because most people born in non-EU countries now hold UK citizenship). The precise figure is uncertain for various reasons, including because it is drawn from a statistical survey to which not everyone agrees to respond.

Separately, the Home Office is required to report to Eurostat an estimate of the number of the non-EU citizens holding a valid residence permit each year – ranging from temporary work permit holders to long-term residents with Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR). In 2017, this estimate was roughly 1.5m. The UK government does not actually know the precise number of legally resident non-EU citizens, so the estimate requires various assumptions, for example about how many people with ILR have left the country or died.

Pew’s ‘lower-bound’ estimate of 800,000 compares the estimated non-EU citizen population with the number of valid residence permits of at least 3 months duration. The ‘upper bound’ estimate of 1.2m instead looks only at those with permits lasting at least a year, and also adjusts the figure upwards to account for the possibility that ONS has underestimated the number of non-EU citizens living here.

The comparison between the UK and other EU countries is particularly uncertain because the estimates of the number of legal residents are produced in very different ways and are not thought to be comparable.

In summary, without more accurate data on both the number non-EU citizens in the UK and the number holding valid residence authorisation, it is difficult to know how accurate the figures are likely to be.

Earlier this year, ONS and the Home Office produced a joint statement suggesting they did not plan to produce a new estimate using this method, because of limitations in the data and methodologies.

What are the remaining evidence gaps?

Even if we cannot be certain about the number, it is reasonable to assume based on this and previous estimates that the UK has a substantial irregular migrant population. There are still many things that are not known about the unauthorised population, notably:

It is not known how many entered illegally vs. came legally but later overstayed or were not able to renew their residence authorisation.
The figures do not tell us what the impacts of policy have been on the decisions irregular migrants make, and/or whether the figure would have been higher or lower if different policies had been in place.

Migration Observatory comment

Madeleine Sumption, Director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, said: “This report relies on a standard methodology to estimate the irregular migrant population, and gives us the most up-to-date estimate that is available. The big challenge when using this method in the UK in particular is that the data required for the calculation are not very good. In particular, the UK government simply doesn’t have an accurate record of exactly how many people are living in the UK legally. Without more precise data, there will continue to be a high degree of uncertainty around the number of people living here without authorisation.”

▻https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/commentaries/pew-research-centre-estimates-on-the-irregular-migrant-po

The Trouble with Pew’s estimates of the “unauthorized” migrant population in Europe

The Pew Research Center, where I once held a leadership position, published a report on November 13, 2019 entitled, “Europe’s Unauthorized Population Peaks in 2016, Then Levels Off.” The document is at best misleading, the product of an inappropriate statistical exercise. Given the reality of immigration politics in Europe, it is a made-to-order talking point for right-wing nationalists, echoing their attacks on asylum policies and on the migrants themselves. .

This is Pew’s first effort to estimate the “unauthorized” population in Europe by applying a terminology I authored in 2002 for use in the United States. The current report has led me to conclude that the terminology and aspects of the statistical method that underlie its application are anachronisms that fail to take into account fundamental changes in the nature of migration flow to both Europe and the United States. As such, and no doubt unintentionally, the very knowledgeable people at Pew, including several I value highly as friends and colleagues, have fallen into a perceptual trap with significant political consequences.

Pew’s critical error is to count as “unauthorized” people who have presented themselves to immigration authorities as required on arrival, have been identified, screened and registered in the lawful exercise of their right to seek asylum and have been granted permission to reside in their country of destination after an initial processing of that asylum claim. Nearly a quarter of the total “unauthorized” population in Europe, and closer to half in Germany, are asylum seekers, according to Pew’s account of its methodology. The estimate claims to be a statistical snapshot of this population on December 31, 2017, but as of that date these individuals, with few exceptions, had been granted documents attesting to their right to reside in these countries legally without fear of deportation and in many cases to work and receive social benefits.

Pew counts these individuals as “unauthorized” because they had not yet been granted permission to remain as residents on a permanent basis. Germany and other European countries have several different degrees of asylum, including categories that grant protection for a period of years pending developments in their countries of origin and other matters. Moreover, in Europe as in the US, final disposition of asylum cases can take years due to backlogs and appeals, but those with pending cases are fully authorized to remain in the meantime. And, there is another category of persons whose claims have been denied, a small number in the 2017 Pew European estimates but more by now, who are not subject to deportation either by virtue of explicit administrative decisions or the prioritization of enforcement resources, a situation that occurs in the United States as well.

In an exercise of highly subjective — and, to my mind, ill-informed — speculation, Pew concludes the individuals it observed in 2017 will never be granted permanent status in the future and that they will be subject to removal some day and so they should be counted as “unauthorized” in the present. This prognostication is as highly freighted politically as it is unjustified on any empirical basis. But, it is even more biased and inflammatory as a historical narrative.

Almost the entire increase in the “unauthorized” population in Europe that peaked as of 2016, according to Pew, is the result of the extraordinary surge of Syrians, more than a million, who came across the Aegean from Turkey from the summer of 2015 to the spring of 2016 to seek refuge. By retroactively categorizing about half of those migrants as “unauthorized,” Pew is offering its statistical support to narratives that characterize that event as illegitimate, an abuse of Europe’s humanitarian values, a criminal effort to exploit social services and rich labor markets, a cynical abuse of the asylum system, a willing dilution of European identity by globalists, a pollution of Europe’s racial purity, etc.

The methodology is explained in the fine print, and Pew even offers estimates minus the asylum seekers in an appendix. But, that does nothing to change the report’s deliberately attention-grabbing conclusion, its analytical perspective and the way it will be used for political purposes.

Pew’s US estimates of the “unauthorized” are vulnerable to the same manipulation. They too include asylum seekers and produce the same statistical support for a demagogic portrayal of current migration.

In the US, more than a million asylum seekers are sitting in an immigration court backlog awaiting adjudication of their claims, a number that has doubled since President Trump took office. These people have identified themselves to immigration officials, registered an asylum claim and have passed a “credible fear” interview with a finding that their claim is worthy of full consideration. By counting them as “unauthorized,” Pew fully embraces the Trump administration’s portrayal of the underlying migration phenomena as illegitimate even criminal. In the US asylum seekers account for a much smaller share of the Pew estimates than in Europe, about 10%, but that does not lessen the weight of the statistical fallacy. They are “unauthorized” only in the eyes of the beholders, in this case Pew and Trump. The result is a highly biased data point.

In my view the problem with the Pew estimates is that they fail to account for new developments in migration flows to the United States and Europe.

It was my great fortune to have been asked by the Pew Charitable Trusts in 2001 to create the Pew Hispanic Center and to then be part of the management committee that merged that center and several other stand-alone projects into the Pew Research Center in 2004. When the Pew Hispanic Center began publishing estimates of the “unauthorized migrant” population in 2002, the target was made up overwhelmingly of Mexican labor migrants who had either entered the country illegally or who had overstayed a legal entry and who would be subject to removal if apprehended. I am proud to say those estimates served an important and constructive role in repeated policy initiatives to legalize this population from 2004 to 2014. (I left Pew in 2007 to take a position on the faculty of the University of Southern California.)

Both the migration phenomena and the focus of policy debate have shifted in the past few years, but Pew’s methodology has not.

The number of cases in the immigration court backlog did not exceed 200,000 until 2009 and only crossed the 400,000 mark in 2014, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, a source of pure data, just the numbers, on immigration. As such, asylum seekers were a small fraction of the total population which we were measuring in the 00’s which stood at about 11 million people, plus or minus, throughout that period.

But, in the past decade, as Pew has ably chronicled, migration flows to the United States have changed. Mexican labor migration outside legal channels has been negligible for a decade and meanwhile the number of Central American asylum seekers has increased dramatically in the past five years. In Europe, the 2015–16 events and subsequent arrivals of asylum seekers represent an even more singular event compared to the very small ongoing irregular labor migrations.

The Pew Research Center remains committed to its version of strict political neutrality, portraying itself as a “fact-tank” that produces data with no spin, no advocacy and only as much analysis as is necessary to make sense of the numbers. (The exercise is fraught and one of the reasons I left, but that is another story.) Taking the institution at its word about its intention, the distortions created by the current report on the “unauthorized” population in Europe should be occasion for a reconsideration of the methodology and terminology.

First there is a technical issue.

Both in the United States and in Europe, the population of migrants who are not citizens or legal permanent residents now comprises several categories of individuals with different kinds of status in national immigration systems. Some are indeed “unauthorized” in that they have no legal basis to reside in those countries and would be subject to removal with little recourse if apprehended and put in proceedings. But, there is also this large, and in the United States rapidly growing, population of persons who have presented asylum claims and have been awarded permission to remain in the country until those claims are fully adjudicated. So it is technically a mistake to apply “unauthorized” as a blanket term, and it retrospect it was a technical mistake when I first did it nearly 20 years ago.

But, now there is a much graver issue about how the data is communicated.

The nature of the migration phenomena that produce asylum seekers as well as the laws governing migration and the processes to administer it are all the subject of vociferous, brutally-polarized, high-stakes political debates in the United States and across Europe. Pew is taking sides in that debate when it counts asylum seekers as “unauthorized migrants.”

▻https://medium.com/@suro_26975/the-trouble-with-pews-estimates-of-the-unauthorized-migrant-population-in-eu