Austria is the most anti-immigration country in the world: Survey

By Timo Kirez

GENEVA (AA) - No other country in the world wants to curb migration as much as Austria, according to a new survey released on Wednesday.

The Democracy Perception Index 2023 survey, done by NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen's Alliance of Democracies group, shows that Europeans generally want migration to be reduced more than the rest of the world.

While only 12% of respondents worldwide ranked reducing migration among the top three issues their government should focus more on, in Europe the figure was 19%.

The highest scores of all 53 countries analyzed were in Austria (34%), Germany (31%), the Netherlands (30%), France (28%) and Sweden (27%).

The first non-EU country on the ranking was Chile with 26%. By contrast, migration is less important to countries such as Russia (5%), Ukraine (4%), Brazil (1%) and Nigeria (1%).

The survey also shows that global respondents consider it more important that governments focus more on reducing poverty, fighting corruption, promoting economic growth, and improving healthcare and education.

For the Democracy Perception Index 2023, the German market research institute Latana, in cooperation with the Alliance of Democracies, surveyed almost 54,000 people in 53 countries in which three-quarters of the world's population lives.