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Austria Immigration
Austria's position in Central Europe after World War II--by
1948 about 1,225 kilometers, or 46 percent, of its frontiers were
with communist states--and the proclamation of Austrian
neutrality in October 1955 made Austria Europe's most important
country of east-west transit, transmigration, and the claiming of
refugee status. Between 1945 and 1990, approximately 2.6 million
people came to Austria as immigrants, transmigrants or refugees.
The great majority of them stayed in Austria only for short
periods, and some 550,000 used Austria exclusively as a land of
transit. Approximately 1.4 million people were transmigrants who
lived in Austria before emigrating to other countries or
returning to their countries of origin. About 650,000 people,
over half of whom were not ethnic Germans or native German
speakers, settled permanently in Austria, the great majority of
whom became citizens.
Although Austrians traditionally viewed their country as a
neutral land of transit and political asylum, they did not see
Austria as a land of immigration like the United States, Canada,
or Australia. This perception, however, does not correspond to
the fact that more than 10 percent of the country's citizens in
1990 had not been born in Austria and that in the early 1990s
more than 500,000 legal foreigners, predominantly guest workers,
lived in the country.
Waves of immigration were caused by political events in
neighboring countries. After the Hungarian Revolution of 1956,
for example, over 250,000 Hungarians fled to Austria, 180,000 of
whom eventually applied for asylum. In August 1968, after the
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia ended the "Prague Spring,"
162,000 Czechs and Slovaks fled to Austria. Although the majority
of them eventually returned to Czechoslovakia, 12,000 applied for
asylum. In Poland the banning of the Solidarity Movement in
December 1981 caused between 120,000 and 150,000 Poles to go to
Austria, and 33,000 of them applied for asylum. The opening of
Hungary's borders during the summer of 1989 breached the Iron
Curtain, and 40,000 East Germans used Austria as a land of
transit to emigrate to West Germany.
In addition to European immigrants, since 1972 Austria has
accepted contingents of asylum seekers from a number of
countries--Chile, Argentina, Uganda, Iran, and Afghanistan--under
the auspices of international agreements. Austria was also the
main land of transit for 250,000 Jewish emigrants from the Soviet
Union beginning in 1976 until the advent of direct Soviet
immigration to Israel in 1990.
The number of individuals seeking political asylum in Austria
rose from fewer than 5,000 in 1982 to more than 27,000 in 1991.
Before the Iron Curtain fell at the end of 1989, the granting of
political asylum in Austria to refugees was relatively liberal.
Once democratic governments were established in the former
communist states of Eastern Europe and borders were opened,
however, Austria began to pursue a more restrictive asylum
policy. A distinction came to be made between political refugees
and so-called economic refugees, who sought more lucrative
employment or better living conditions. As a result, the number
of those seeking asylum fell to 16,200 in 1992.
The number of people seeking to immigrate to Austria had
increased so greatly by the early 1990s that the nation's army,
the Bundesheer (Federal Army), was called in to assist customs
and border authorities in patrolling the country's borders. After
the fall of communism, these borders were virtually open for a
time. By 1992 as many as 100,000 illegal immigrants were in
Austria. In addition, for humanitarian reasons, Austria had
accepted well over 50,000 refugees from the former Yugoslavia,
who had either fled or were expelled from their homes in the
course of hostilities that began in 1991. Most of these refugees
were Bosnians.
The presence of a large number of foreign workers in Austria
also affected population trends. The size of this group
fluctuated according to the state of the country's economy. From
the mid-1960s through the early 1970s, a period of rapid domestic
economic growth, Austria's domestic labor force was not large
enough to satisfy the demands of its growing economy, and foreign
workers were brought in to meet the labor shortage. Most were
unskilled Yugoslavs and Turks who assumed menial jobs with low
salaries. As a result of this influx, the number of foreign
workers in Austria increased from fewer than 50,000 in 1965 to
some 220,000 in 1974. The recession of the second half of the
1970s and early 1980s had reduced their number to 140,000 by
1984. Periods of growth later in the decade raised it to 264,000
by 1991.
Despite these fluctuations, guest workers and their
dependents had become a permanent feature of Austria's population
and accounted for 80 percent of the 550,000 legally registered
foreign inhabitants in Austria in 1991. The remaining 20 percent
consisted of asylum seekers and refugees who had fled from the
conflict in the former Yugoslavia.
A shrinking population caused by lower birth rates was
Austria's greatest demographic concern in the 1970s and early
1980s. Although the low birth rate among Austria's indigenous
German-speaking population continues to be an issue, many
Austrians are also concerned about the growing number of
foreigners in Austria. To offset the low birth rate, Austria
needs a projected net annual growth of approximately 25,000
people per year in order to maintain population at a stable
level. Most of this growth will come from foreigners living in
Austria or from immigrants.
Data as of December 1993
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