April 28, 2007	Saturday	Rabi-us-Sani 10, 1428

JERUSALEM: Immigration to Israel is gradually declining, the country's Immigrant Absorption Minister Zeev Boim told the Jerusalem Post newspaper in an interview published on Friday.

The newspaper quoted Boim as saying that approximately 19,000 new immigrants arrived in Israel last year, compared to the previous three years, in which there were between 21,000 and 22,000 immigrants annually.

“The situation now for Jews all over the world has never been better,” Boim told the English-language daily.

He cited “no immediate physical danger to any Jewish community abroad. So we do not see the same reasons for making aliya (immigration to Israel) as we did in the last century.—AFP