About Immigration Factbook

What is Immigration Factbook?

Immigration Factbook (移民白書) is an independent comparative database of official immigration statistics for 20 Western countries — covering Europe, North America, and Oceania. It aggregates primary data from national statistics offices, treasury ministries, central banks, and international organisations (OECD, Eurostat, ILO) into a single bilingual reference.

The database covers five core themes with figures from each country's primary official source:

• Fiscal impact — net cost or contribution to public finances (Denmark: −16bn DKK/yr; Germany: −2.1bn €/yr — Finansministeriet, Ifo Institut)
• Employment gap — employment rate difference between immigrants and native-born (−3 pt to −20 pt across 20 countries — national statistics offices)
• Education (PISA 2022) — academic performance gap by immigration background, with and without socioeconomic controls (OECD)
• Crime statistics — origin-disaggregated suspect rates where officially published (Sweden BRÅ, Denmark DST, Germany BKA, Norway SSB)
• Demographics — immigrant share of total population (9% Italy to 37% Belgium — Eurostat, national census offices)

Launched in 2025, the site's primary aim is to improve access to this data for Japanese-speaking readers — a language for which very little Western immigration statistics were previously available in primary-source form.

Who uses this site?

• Researchers and students — cross-country comparative data with sources, reference years, and methodology notes in one place.
• Journalists — fact-checking immigration policy claims with official figures from named primary sources.
• Policy-interested readers — a single entry point to primary statistics from 20 countries across 5 themes, in Japanese and English.

Editorial policy

• Primary sources first: Data is sourced primarily from official publications (statistics offices, treasuries, central banks, international organisations). Where primary data is unavailable, we use peer-reviewed academic work or institutional research (e.g. Pew Research, National Academies), clearly identified with source type, funder, and methodological limits. Newspapers are not used as data sources.
• Neutral tone: We present data without evaluative adjectives. Readers are left to draw their own conclusions.
• Methodological transparency: Each statistic includes its source, reference year, and definition. Where methodologies differ across countries, this is stated explicitly.
• Explicit limits: Each page includes a "What this data does not show" section to prevent conflation of correlation and causation.
• Unverified data is not published: We do not publish figures that have not been directly verified from a primary source.

Funding & independence

Immigration Factbook receives no funding from any political party, government body, foundation, lobby group, or advertiser. The site is independently operated.

Update process

Data on each page is updated manually in line with each national statistics office's annual publication schedule. Updates are made only after direct verification of the primary source. The reference year is stated on each page.

Reporting errors

If you find a data error or a broken source link, please let us know. Corrections are made promptly after verification.

Contact: [email protected]