Bulgarian emigrants are about 3 million people. Unofficial data published in "24 Chasa" show that these people have left the country in the last 23 years, but still have native passports.
An official census of state statistics shows that in 2011 there were 2.1 million Bulgarian citizens worldwide. Since then, however, neither the State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad nor the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have updated their statistics.
In addition, only Bulgarian citizens appear in these data, but not people who are Bulgarians but do not have our passport.
Turkey remains with the largest community of immigrants from Bulgaria. The official figures are for 500,000 people with our passports, but the vast majority of them are actually emigrants from the revival process at the end of communist rule.
However, more than 1 million people unofficially exceed the number of Bulgarian emigrants in the next 3 countries in the ranking. According to the state data, 300,000 Bulgarians live in the United States, as many in Greece, and 250,000 in Spain. According to various associations of our compatriots, there are other larger Bulgarian colonies in these countries.
Bulgarians are second only to Albanians in Greece, mainly because our southern neighbor does not require a work permit.
The largest growth of Bulgarians living abroad is reported by Germany, attracting our workers from Spain and Italy in crisis.
According to official data, as of 2013, 120,000 of our compatriots live in Germany. 20% of them are married to Germans.
In Germany, Bulgarians make up the largest group of foreign students after the Chinese.
Source: dnes.bg.