112,000 undocumented people live in Belgium: Researchers

By Selen Temizer

BRUSSELS (AA) - Out of a total population near 12 million, some 112,000 people are living in Belgium without a residence or work permit, a report said on Wednesday.

Citing estimates made by Vrije Universiteit Brussel researchers Pieter-Paul Verhaeghe and Sylvie Gadeyne, local news site 7sur7 reported that the figure corresponds to the population of Bruges, one of the country's popular tourist attractions.

Every year, about 500 people not listed in the population register die in Belgium, and the researchers used this fact to calculate that every day there are 489,000 unregistered people in the national territory, according to the report.

This number also includes occasional tourists or asylum seekers with a residence permit, it said, and by subtracting these groups from the 489,000 unregistered people, the researchers arrived at the number of 112,000 undocumented people.

It added that 52,000 of them live in the capital Brussels alone.