Politics, / By Sta

Ljubljana - Out of a total of 54,000 immigrants who moved to Slovenia for the first time in 2008-2009, 62% still live here, show data the national Statistics Office (SURS) released upon the International Migrants Day, which is marked on 18 December.

Slightly less than 20,000 later moved out of Slovenia, of whom 60% in the first two years after immigrating.

The longer immigrants stay here, the less likely they are to move out, SURS data also show.

The largest ever number of people moved to Slovenia in the period from 2007 to 2009, when the country's population increased by 30,000 immigrants a year.

The immigrants are on average younger and less educated than the general population, but the employment rate among them was higher than for the general population.

According to SURS, an average immigrant who moved to Slovenia for the first time in 2008-2009 is a man aged 30 to 39 who has completed vocational school, has a job and lives on his own in one of the eleven city municipalities. He has citizenship of one of the countries emerging from the former Yugoslavia other than Slovenia.

A majority of immigrants who came to Slovenia after the country gained independence in 1991 were citizens of the above-mentioned countries.