The first registered presence of Islam in Belgium was in 1829, a year prior to the country's independence in 1830. A report by the Turkish consul in Antwerp estimated roughly 6,000 Muslims in Belgium at the time. During WWII, French Muslim soldiers from French West Africa were stationed in the southeast. In 1964, bilateral labour immigration agreement were signed between Belgium, Turkey, and countries in the Maghreb. Over 10,000 workers from these countries moved to Belgium and mostly worked in low-skilled jobs such as coal mining, steelmaking, the automobile industry, etc. This stopped in 1974 when all foreign manual labour was banned from entry into the country and, in the same year, Islam was officially recognised as a religion in Belgium.