Yesterday a report came out here on the facts and figures of foreign residents in Italy. The number is continuing to climb, which is no surprise given the ease of cross border flow among Europe Union countries these days. As of January this year, Italian officials set the registered number of foreigners living in Italy at 2,938,922. That's up ten percent from the previous year, they say.

Italy's current total population officially is reported to be close to 59 million, so that makes the foreign resident slice about one-twentieth of the whole frittata, so to speak.

This new report comes from ISTAT (Istituto nazionale di statistica), Italy's official statistical reporting agency (La popolazione straniera residente in Italia al 1° gennaio 2007 report here in Italian; English version of website here).