Israeli immigration hits 15-year low amid violence, stalled economy
05:56 AM EST Jan 01
JERUSALEM (AP) - Immigration to Israel hit a 15-year low in 2003 and population growth was the lowest in a decade, the Central Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday.
The figures, apparently the result of an ailing economy and more than three years of Palestinian-Israeli violence, were bad news for Israel, built on the concept of large-scale Jewish immigration to the ancient homeland.
Immigration dropped by 32 per cent to 23,000 this year from 34,000 in 2002, the bureau said in an annual year-end statement. The last time immigration was so low was in 1988, when only 13,000 people moved to the country, a bureau official said.
In addition, Israel's population grew in 2003 by only 1.7 per cent to 6,750,000, the lowest natural growth rate since 1990, the bureau said. Arabs make up 19 per cent of the population, or 1.3 million people. Jews and others make up 81 per cent of the population, or 5,160,000 people.
The greatest contributor to the country's shrinking population numbers was the drop in immigration, the bureau said.
Immigration to Israel boomed in the 1990s when Jews from the former Soviet Union flooded Israel. Since 2000, the number of immigrants from the former Soviet republics has dropped off, causing a decline in the overall immigration figures.
© The Canadian Press, 2003
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