The number of foreign citizens in Iceland has increased for the past few years.  On 1 January 2008 foreign citizens in Iceland were 21,434, or 6.8% of Iceland’s population, compared with 6% the previous year.

The number of foreign citizens in Iceland increased from 18,563 individuals in 2006 to 21,434 individuals in 2007, or by 15.5%. This is a slower increase than in 2005 and 2006. In 2006 the number of foreign nationals increased by 34.7% compared with 29.5% in 2005. The proportion of foreign nationals in Iceland is now higher than in other Scandinavian countries, which may be due to the fact that the other Scandinavian countries have longer history of immigration and therefore more immigrants have gained citizenship in the new country. As in previous years, the largest groups of foreign nationals come from Poland (8,488), Lithuania (1,332), Germany (984) and Denmark (966).

Until 2003, women with foreign citizenship were more numerous than men. Since 2004 the trend has reversed and now 8.1% of all men are foreign nationals compared with 5.5% of women.