According to Statistics Iceland, 702 immigrants call the West Fjords their home, thereby comprising 9.5% of the region’s population. This is an increase from the beginning of this century, when they comprised 6.7% of the population, or 556 in all.
Poles are the largest immigrant group in the area (as they are for the rest of Iceland), numbering 433 in the beginning of 2009. Of them, men outnumber women almost three to one. Most immigrants in the West Fjords live in Ísafjörður, the largest town in the region.
Looking at the country as a whole, in 1996 immigrants from Nordic countries comprised one-third of the immigrant population. Today, they make up only 6.3% of that group. At the same time, European immigrants from outside Scandinavia have grown, from 39.8% of all immigrants in 1996 to 72.9% today. At the same time, immigrants from North America have decreased, from 8.2% of the immigrant population in 1996 to 2.6% today.
Poles remain the largest minority in the country, numbering 11,575 individuals (40.4% of the total immigrant population), most of them adult males.