Final Word from Thursday, February 26, 2026

As of the end of last year, there were 1.13m foreigners living legally in the Czech Republic, according to the interior ministry, including 125,280 Slovaks and 111,310 other EU nationals. That means that 894,607 third-country foreigners were living here legally. Yet Finance Min. Alena Schillerová of ANO has stated repeatedly that there are 2m foreigners in the country, of which as many as 500,000 are working illegally. This means that the number of third-country foreigners could be twice the official figure. The interior ministry reported on Page 7 of its latest migration report that its officers caught 10,838 illegal migrants last year, including illegal residents. The SÚIP labor inspectorate conducted 6,278 worker inspections last year and caught 2,484 illegal workers, of which 1,674 were non-EU foreigners. These numbers simply don't add up. Either Schillerová is pulling her 2m figure out of the air for political purposes, or hundreds of thousands of foreigners are living in the shadows with a lot of help from Czechs. [ Czech Republic European Union grey gray economy employment ]