Close to 25,000 new immigrants arrived in Israel last year - some 10,000 fewer than the year before. Yarden Vatikai of the Jewish Agency told Arutz-7 today that although the "pushing-out factors" are down, the "drawing-in factors" have apparently increased. He explained: "Countries such as Argentina, from where we had a big Aliyah [Jewish immigration to Israel] boom in 2002 because of the economic problems there, now show a decrease in Aliyah, because the situation has stabilized. But in countries such as the U.S., Mexico, and England, where Jews are not running away from anything and rather come to Israel because they want to, the numbers have been up by 20 and 25%. The numbers of Jews from these places are still not very high, however." Some 2,400 people immigrated to Israel from the United States and Canada in 2003, compared to about 2,040 in 2002.



Vatikai also noted that the amount of Jews remaining in the former Soviet Union is down, "and in fact the number of new immigrants from there has decreased every year since 1990, when we had close to 200,000."