Immigration

Switzerland and Austria Step Up Fight Against Illegal Migration

Swiss Justice and Police Minister Karin Maria Keller-Sutter met Interior Minister Karl Nehammer to discuss the current developments in Afghanistan as well as Switzerland's accession to the migration platform.

August 23, 2021

MA 35 Department: Immigration and Citizenship Calls Are Not Answered

Austria’s municipal department 35 (MA 35), responsible for immigration and citizenship, is facing criticism yet again. In an interview, an employee of the MA 35 has recently divulged that nobody in the office answers the phone. The City Councilor responsible for the MA 35 has assured the public that reforms are being made to resolve the issues that the department is facing.

August 18, 2021

City of Vienna and Vienna Business Agency Create New Business Immigration Office

The Vienna Business Agency and Vienna City Government have partnered to create the Business Immigration Office (BIO). The BIO will help streamline residence permit and immigration issues and offer help with integration for key personnel and highly skilled workers.

July 15, 2021

From Which Countries Do Most of the Foreigners in Vienna and Austria Come?

Vienna currently has 1.92 million inhabitants of whom 31.5% percent are foreign nationals. Austria-wide, there are 8,933,346 people of whom 17.1% are foreign nationals. Below you can see, among other data, the largest foreign nationalities.

February 14, 2021

City of Vienna Supports Aid for Moria

The City of Vienna has agreed on supporting the refugees in Moria and Lesvos with financial aid. EUR 300,000 will be distributed among three non-governmental organizations, which will then provide immediate assistance for those, who currently live under extreme conditions in the refugee camps.

December 16, 2020

Hatice Gruber-Tschida Appointed New Managing Director of Österreich Institut

Hatice Gruber-Tschida, former Head of the Integration Centers Division of the Austrian Integration Fund (ÖIF), will be the new Managing Director of the Österreich Institut, which is responsible for language teaching in the area of international culture at 10 locations in Belgrade, Brno, Bratislava, Budapest, Krakow, Rome, Sarajevo, Moscow, Warsaw, and Wroclaw.

August 28, 2020

Illegal Migration: Austria Calls for More Coordination and Cooperation on Eastern Mediterranean Routes

Agreement reached at the Ministerial Conference to Combat Illegal Migration on the Eastern Mediterranean Routes in Vienna. It was decided to establish a platform for the fight against illegal migration.

July 24, 2020

Information Campaign on Coronavirus in 11 Foreign Languages

As part of an information campaign for people with a migration background on how to contain the coronavirus (COVID-19), extensive information is now available in 11 foreign languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Dari/Farsi, English, French, Pashto, Polish, Russian, Somali, Turkish and Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian.

March 16, 2020

Austria: 1.5 Mio Foreigners out of 8.9 Mio Population

1,487,020 people or 16.7% of the population in Austria are foreign nationals. Read which are the 15 largest foreign nationalities in Austria?

February 20, 2020

Portrait: Who is Alma Zadić, Austria's New Federal Minister of Justice?

Former refugee from the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Alma Zadić commits herself to work with passion and all her strength for a policy of unconditional human rights and social justice.

February 20, 2020

Vienna Migration Agency Develops Recommendations for EU

Entitled "Breaking the gridlock and moving forward: Recommendations for the next five years of EU migration policy", participants of the Vienna Migration Conference 2019 will explore migration policy options and the formulation of future strategies.

October 11, 2019

Integration Report 2019: Asylum Applications Decline, Immigration Persists

The Expert Council on Integration chaired by Prof. Dr. Katharina Pabel presented Austria's ninth Integration Report. The report deals with integration monitoring and the perspectives of integration. It covers topics such as immigration, asylum, residence, school, apprenticeship, adult education, labour market, social issues, dealing with different gender roles, integration of young people, family reunification, marriage migration and dealing with religious diversity. Read the key findings here.

September 5, 2019

Austrian Minister of the Interior: Observing Developments along the Western Balkans Route Closely

The Macedonian Ambassador Nenad Kolev and Interior Minister Wolfgang Peschorn met for a working discussion in Vienna. In addition to bilateral cooperation, the topic of migration, in particular the Western Balkans route, formed the agenda.

August 13, 2019

Southeastern Europe Remains Focus of Austrian Foreign and Security Policy

The Ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kemal Kozaric, and Interior Minister Wolfgang Peschorn met for a working meeting in Vienna. Bilateral cooperation and migration were on the agenda.

August 1, 2019

46% Fewer Asylum Applications in Austria

13,375 asylum applications were received in Austria last year - 46% less than in 2017 (24,715). A total of 664,480 applications for international protection were filed in the EU (including Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein) in 2018. The number of asylum applications in Austria and the EU has thus declined for the third year in a row and has returned to pre-crisis levels.

June 27, 2019

Global Compact for Migration: Top UN Refugee Agency Diplomat Volker Türk at the Kreisky Forum

Austria's top diplomat in the UNHCR, a United Nations Programme, the international law expert Dr. Volker Türk has made an appeal to governments, NGOs and individuals to rethink refugee protection and to implement the UN Global Compact for Refugees adopted in 2018.

June 6, 2019

Migration Agency Demands New EU Migration Policy

Vienna based think tank International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) is teaming up with its 17 member states to draw up migration policy recommendations for the next EU Commission.

May 10, 2019

Silvana Meixner Receives Ari Rath Prize for Critical Journalism 2019

ORF journalist and presenter Silvana Meixner will be awarded the second Ari-Rath Prize for Critical Journalism on May 6th, 2019, the Day of Freedom of the Press. This prize was established to honour journalists who have rendered outstanding services to critical reporting on immigration, expulsion and asylum, committed to respect for human rights, in the spirit of the former editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, Ari Rath (pictured) who died in January 2017.

April 4, 2019

Austrian Citizenship Awarded to Nearly 10,000 Foreigners

The number of naturalisations in Austria in 2018 was 1.9% higher than in the previous year. A total of 9,450 persons were granted Austrian citizenship, including 95 resident abroad. Following an interesting analysis of the different legal grounds for naturalisation.

February 28, 2019

Austria's Population Growth - Lowest Rise in Years

At the beginning of 2019, 8,859,992 people were living in Austria, +0.43% more than one year earlier. Thus, in 2018 Austria recorded the lowest population increase in the last seven years.

February 21, 2019

Foreign Citizens Make up More Than 30% of the Viennese Population

At the beginning of 2019, 30.2% of people living in Vienna had foreign citizenship. Nationwide this figure is 1,439,401 or 16.2% of the total population.

February 19, 2019

Population Development - City of Vienna at 1.9 Million Inhabitants

Last year Vienna grew by 11,000 inhabitants. The birth surplus was 4,000, the migration gain 7,000. Immigration from Great Britain was disproportionately high due to Brexit fears. Serbia is the strongest group of immigrants. The influx of refugees has fallen back to the level before the wave of refugees. In 2027 about 2 million people will live in Vienna.

January 22, 2019

Reform of the Red-White-Red Card - Important Step Against Lack of Skilled Personnel

The Austrian National Council passes a resolution on the reform of the Red-White-Red-Card including the regionalisation of the list of lacking occupations with the aim to strengthen Austria as a business location.

December 19, 2018

Austria's State Leaders Receive Authoritarian Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (Abd al-Fattah as-Sisi) also visited the Federal President, the Federal Chancellor and the Federal Parliament on the fringes of the EU-Africa Forum (High-Level Forum Africa-Europe), at which he received a EUR 350m commitment from the EIB to finance the expansion of the Cairo Metro. Every meeting emphasised that bilateral relations between Austria and Egypt were very good and that cooperation was to be extended. The former General, who is controversial because of his authoritarian style of government, had already made a clear rejection of the so-called "disembarkation platforms" in Egypt to the EU Council President Sebastian Kurz in Cairo during the summer.

December 19, 2018

Refugees and Skilled Migration - How to Solve the Political Crisis?

Around 500 participants ranging from politicians and policy makers to opinion leaders and experts from governments, international organizations, the private sector, and civil society organizations gathered recently at the Aula of Sciences in Vienna. The third Vienna Migration Conference 2018 aimed at solving the political crisis related to refugee protection and addressing European needs for skilled migration.

December 19, 2018

Afghanistan - Reopening of Austrian Embassy in Kabul in Discussion

At about the same time as the drama about the 16-year-old girl killed by a 17-year-old Afghan in her childrens' room in Steyr took its course in Austria, H.E. Idrees Zaman Deputy Foreign Minister of Afghanistan and Austria's Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl met to discuss the reopening of the Austrian Embassy in Kabul, visa issues and other issues of mutual interest.

December 14, 2018

Labour Supply in Austria to Grow by 5% by 2050

The supply of labour in Austria will continue to increase in the future if the trends in immigration and labour market participation continue. In 2017 there were an annual average of 4.55 million labour force in Austria, in 2020 according to the trend variant of the forecast there will be 4.63 million (+2%) and in 2050 4.79 million (+5%). No further growth is expected in the second half of this century.

November 22, 2018

Immigration in Austria - Migration Compensates for Expected Birth Deficit

Austria will have just under 10 million inhabitants in 2080. This follows from the assumptions of sustained immigration, stagnating birth rates and a further increase in life expectancy. The number of people born abroad will already rise by one third by 2040.

November 22, 2018

Naturalizations in Austria in 2018 on the Rise

Austrian citizenship was granted to a total of 6,971 persons in the first three quarters of 2018. The Bosnians are ahead, followed by Turks, Serbs and Kosovars. In total, there were 115 more naturalisations than in the same period of the previous year (+1.7%).

November 15, 2018

Setback for the UN - Austria Won't Sign Global Migration Pact

Austria will follow the US and Hungary in backing out of a United Nations pact on migration (Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration) over concerns that it will blur the line between illegal and legal migration.

October 31, 2018

Karin Kneissl at the Foreign Affairs Council - Khashoggi, Libya, Venezuela and the Eastern Partnership

Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl met with Federica Mogherini and the other EU Foreign Ministers at the Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg to discuss the situation in Libya, migration issues, the EU's Eastern Partnership, and the case of the missing Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

October 16, 2018

Criticism of the Treatment of Refugees - UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Sends Team to Vienna

Next week, experts from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights will visit Vienna to gather an impression of the human rights situation. The new High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Michelle Bachelet, had criticised Austria for not prioritising the return of migrants from Europe without ensuring that key international human rights obligations are met as a protective measure.

October 11, 2018

Made in Vienna: Immigration to Europe - Safe, Orderly and Regular

Against the background of socio-economic developments and persisting economic imbalances the demand for migration will increase. Europe’s demand for skilled labour will grow and skills shortages will be felt more strongly in EU Member States. Non-European countries will need even greater support in creating economic opportunities for their young and growing populations. Both the EU and its partner countries have an interest in functioning policies that create regular channels for labour mobility, steer migration away from its irregular forms, and help put an end to the human tragedies that migration is currently associated with..

October 3, 2018

Integration Report 2018: Focus on Women with a Migration Background

The members of the Expert Council on Integration presented the results of the Integration Report 2018. The Integration Report provides a comprehensive overview of integration in Austria. Austria's number of asylum applications in 2017 remained high compared to other EU countries. With 2.8 asylum applications per 1,000 inhabitants, Austria ranks 5th among all EU member states in proportion to its population.

September 14, 2018

Migration Policy Agency Celebrates 25th Anniversary and Welcomes New Members Malta and Turkey

With Malta and Turkey both joining Vienna based ICMPD in May, the International Centre for Migration Policy Development welcomes two new Member States. ICMPD has now 17 Member States all across Europe. In 2018 ICMPD is also celebrating the 25th anniversary of its founding and is looking into the future to try to see what it may hold in terms of migration and mobility of people.

May 29, 2018

What does the Vienna-based ICMPD and its Director General Michael Spindelegger do?

The International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) was founded in 1993 in Vienna on the initiative of Austria and Switzerland with the aim of making migration and mobility of people orderly, safe and regular, including through the implementation of planned and well managed migration policies. The aim is to counteract the often short-term thinking of governments so that sustainable solutions can be found and implemented in the medium and long term to combat and overcome the migration crisis. From this point of view, the tasks of the ICMPD have become extremely topical and important due to the refugee crisis.

April 26, 2018

Austria's Role in Brussels' Syria Conference Rather Modest

Austria's recent efforts regarding Syria to make only 4 million additional euros available on the one hand, and Lawrow's clear rejection of Austria's possible mediation role in the Syrian conflict on the other, cannot be classified as a success. Rather than Vienna, the Brussels Conference will seek to resume the UN peace talks in Geneva.

April 24, 2018

Presentation of the First Ari Rath Prize for Critical Journalism

Journalist Alexandra Föderl-Schmid will be awarded the First Ari-Rath Prize for Critical Journalism on 3 May 2018, the Day of Freedom of the Press. This prize was established to honour journalists who have rendered outstanding services to critical reporting on immigration, expulsion and asylum, committed to respect for human rights, in the spirit of the former editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, who died in January 2017.

April 23, 2018

David Goodhart at the IWM: Dilemmas of Post-Liberalism

David Goodhart, a British journalist, commentator, author and the director of the Demos thinktank discusses immigration and liberalism with Ivan Krastev at the IWM Institute of Human Sciences.

April 13, 2018

Vienna Based UN Agencies Join Forces to Combat Migrant Smuggling

At the United Nations in Vienna, IOM, the United Nations Migration Agency, and UNODC organized an event centring on a Joint Platform on Countering Migrant Smuggling. The aim of the initiative is to deny criminal traffickers the means and opportunity and end the impunity of smugglers.

March 30, 2018

Meet Her Excellency Austria's New Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl

Karin Kneissl (53) was recently appointed Austrian Federal Minister for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs. At present, she is busy touring Europe and introducing herself to her counterparts, or inviting them to the Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs in Vienna.

February 20, 2018

Symposium in Vienna: "Current Security Challenges for Europe: NATO, its Partners and the Warsaw Summit"

The upcoming summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Warsaw from 8th to 9th July 2016 sees the organization facing numerous challenges. The withdrawal of combat troops from Afghanistan and rising tensions in the European area – from the conflict in Ukraine to the migration crisis, effected the question of the role of NATO’s Partnership for Peace under the new circumstances. A conference in Vienna with the working title "Current Security Challenges for Europe: NATO, its Partners and the Warsaw Summit" intends to discuss these and other pertinent issues.

June 16, 2016

Mogherini Visits Vienna to Discusses Migration and Nuclear Disarmament Issues with Kurz

EU High Representative Federica Mogherini met with Sebastian Kurz in the margins of the CTBT Ministerial in Vienna on 13 June. Mogherini und Kurz stressed their support for the entry into force of the CTBT and the importance of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.

June 13, 2016

Discuss with Jeffrey Sachs Migration and Global Inequalities

Professor of economics Jeffrey D. Sachs will visit Austria on March 10th to give a lecture on migration and global inequalities. The lecture will take place at Vienna's Institute for Human Sciences.

March 2, 2016

Vienna Congress comsult 2016: "The Future of Growth"

"The Future of Growth" was the topic of the Vienna Congress com•sult 2016 which took place at Vienna's House of Industry. The Vienna Congress once again brought together prominent figures from the worlds of politics, economics and science to discuss future development of different aspects, focusing on the issue of migrant crisis, which has been one of the greatest challenges faced by European states and institutions in every sense. Distinguished participants from industry, politics and the business community such as Milica Pejanovic, Mohamed El Baradei, Mario Monti, Markus Rogan, Dan Shechtman and Guenther Fehlinger discussed perspectives and strategies for new growth in Europe.

January 20, 2016

Burgenland to Be Pilot-Province for Courses on Values for Refugees

On the sidelines of a conference of experts on Integration of Austria's regional governments in Eisenstadt, Sebastian Kurz and Norbert Darabos announced a workshop cooperation between the Austrian Integration Fund (AIF) and the Federal Province of Burgenland: the AIF will offer workshops on integration for refugees and immigrants.

December 15, 2015

Journalism Award “Writing for CEE 2015” Goes to Martin Leidenfrost

The EUR 5,000 Writing for CEE journalist prize has been awarded for the twelfth time. Journalists from all round Europe – including Northern Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, South Eastern Europe and the CIS countries – have been invited to submit their works. The Austrian Journalist Martin Leidenfrost wins the “Writing for CEE 2015” award for his column "Expedition Europe". At the award ceremony writer and honorary guest Karl-Markus Gauß touched on the discovery of Europe and SEEMO Secretary General Oliver Vujovic said, that Europe faces new boundaries and divisions.

November 18, 2015 · Updated: November 20, 2015; 19:00

"Terrorism Cannot Be Justified by any Means and Stands in Clear Contradiction to Islam"

The President of the Islamic Religious Community in Austria (IGGiÖ), Fuat Sanac, and Minister for Integration, Sebastian Kurz in a joint reaction vehemently condemned the terrorist attacks in Paris.

November 19, 2015

In Pursuit of Peace and Security: How Gender Makes a Difference

Why is it important to include a gender perspective in peace processes and why does it matter if women are involved? These are issues that will be in focus at an OSCE Security Days event in Vienna on Friday, 13 November, which will explore the gender perspective of crisis prevention, conflict management and post-conflict rehabilitation.

November 11, 2015

Vienna to Have Two Million Inhabitants in 2029

Vienna is already the city with the second largest population in the German-speaking countries. But Vienna is growing faster than ever. This development entails a tremendous challenge for Vienna. Based on the figures now available, investments totalling seven billion euros will have to be made by the year 2020 in the areas of child care, public transport, other infrastructure facilities and health services alone.

February 20, 2015
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