Immigration into Germany in 2014 at highest level for two decades

A migrant girl looks from a train's window at the Keleti train station in Budapest, Hungary, September 3, 2015 as Hungarian police withdrew from the gates after two days of blocking their entry. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger

BERLIN (Reuters) - Net immigration into Germany last year hit its highest level since 1992 and the number of people claiming asylum benefits jumped by 61 percent, the Statistics Office said on Thursday, with expectations that figure will rise this year to 800,000.

Roughly 550,000 more people moved to Germany last year than left and the majority were from Europe, mostly from Poland. Relatively liberal asylum laws and generous benefits making Germany the EU's biggest recipients of people seeking asylum.