Almost a quarter of people living in Germany are either foreigners, or German citizens of foreign descent, which marks an increase of 4.4 percent compared to 2016, showed a report released on Wednesday by the statistics office in the German city of Wiesbaden.

“Some 19.3 million people of foreign descent lived in Germany at the end of 2017. Some 51 percent of those were German citizens, and the rest were foreigners,” the statistics office said.

Most foreigners, some 2.8 million, are of Turkish descent. They are followed by the Polish (2.1 million), and Russians (1.4 million).

Some 398,000 people of Croatian descent, with or without German citizenship, lived in Germany at the end of 2017.

People born outside Germany, as well as people with one or both parents born abroad, were included in the statistic.

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