Immigration grew at the beginning of the 1980s when a small number of Asians, Africans, and Poles arrived and found work in construction, agriculture, and domestic services. Nevertheless, immigration was still limited in size. In 1986, legal and unauthorized immigrants totaled approximately 90,000. One third of them were from European Union countries. The 1991 Census registered 167,000 "foreigners" in a total population of 10,259,900.
The collapse of the Central and Eastern European regimes in 1989 transformed immigration to Greece into a massive, uncontrollable phenomenon. As a result, although Greece was at that time still one of the less-developed EU states, in the 1990s it received the highest percentage of immigrants in relation to its labor force.