Vice-President Joe Biden has insulted Germany, the EU’s biggest economy and America’s most important ally in Europe, with a gratuitous and ignorant accusation that the German people are hostile towards immigrants and “xenophobic.”

Offering no evidence, Biden told an audience in Washington to “Look at Germany. Look at the rest of the world.” He put Germany among the countries that were not “as welcoming” to outsiders. America is “the only non-xenophobic nation in the world that’s a major economy.”

Yet figures from the OECD, the club of rich countries, shows that there has been “a boom–without any exaggeration” in immigration to Germany, according to Thomas Liebig, the organisation’s expert on migration. “No other OECD organisation has experienced such a rise.”

Germany is now the second most popular destination for immigrants after the United States. It is a country whose economy offers an unemployment rate at 5.2 per cent, low in comparison with other eurozone countries, and whose state offers generous welfare and other supports to maintain the “European social model.”

Even with 15.3m people in Germany having an immigration background out of a total population of 81m, elections to the European Parliament last month showed overwhelming support for mainstream parties that do not oppose migration.

Biden is no stranger to a political ‘gaffe’, with some of his most famous including being caught calling Barack Obama’s healthcare enactment a “big f**king deal”, and telling a wheelchair-bound politician to stand up for a round of applause.