Immigration to Israel Sets Records Despite Attacks

JERUSALEM, Israel - Despite all the trouble in the Middle East, immigration to Israel jumped 10 percent in 2015.

Preliminary figures released before the end of the year showed more than 30,000 new immigrants arrived to make Israel home this year.

"We are in a rare window of opportunity. While we are busy with the day-to-day problems of Israel, we did not pay attention to this year's great development: the number of immigrants exceeded 30,000 for the first time in more than a decade," Aliyah and Immigrant Absorption Minister Ze'ev Elkin said.

Elkin noted that immigration rose by 50 percent in the last two years. He said it's Israel's "duty" to take advantage of what he called a "rare opportunity" to invest in encouraging immigration as well as in absorption of new immigrants - looking toward 50,000 immigrants a year.

According to The Jewish Agency, the quasi-governmental organization responsible for aliyah (immigration to Israel under the Law of Return), the numbers from France hit an all-time high for the second year in a row, with the arrival of 7,900 French immigrants.

Officials credit the rising interest to "the economic, social, and security situation in that country."

Some 7,000 new immigrants arrived from the Ukraine, a 16 percent increase over last year and 6,600 from Russia - up 40 percent from 2014.

Immigration from the United States and Canada was down slightly to 3,770 new immigrants in 2015 compared with 3,870 in 2014. Overall, there was a 6 percent increase from Western Europe to 9,330, including the French.

"The high number of immigrants, particularly from Western countries, attests to the drawing power of the Zionist idea," Natan Sharansky, chairman of the executive of The Jewish Agency for Israel said in a statement. 

"The fact that immigrants choose to come to Israel is a sign that Israel invests their lives with meaning that they cannot find elsewhere," he said.

Sharansky said that because they had chosen to come here, Israel needed to "make every effort" to enable them to integrate into the workforce and education system so they can "put down roots in Israel and enrich Israeli society."

Fifty percent of all immigrants in 2015 were under the age of 30. The youngest was six weeks old, the oldest 97.