Economic Migration Controls and Rules : Anti or Pro Globalization?
Immigration is an important political issue in many counties. Antagonistic attitude towards immigration is getting strongest ground (i) in countries with high rates of immigration such as Australia, Lebanon OR (ii) countries with the strong public xenophobia, the fear of loosing their cultural identity such as Germany, United Kingdom etc. There is acute fear of perceived threats such as loosing jobs casing unemployment of the native population, residential price hike due to higher demands, misuse of social security money and raising taxes, increasing crime rate, foreign diseases, terrorism and dilution of mainstream culture. However, researches indicate that these perceived fears have no empirical grounding as in immigrants provide labour and generate government revenues and generally produce more resources than they consume.
Immigrants in proportion to the native population
United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait had the highest number of immigrants where immigrants as a proportion to the native population constitute more than 70% in 2018. Japan and Russia have recorded the lowest proportion of immigrants in comparison to the native population while Germany and Canada having the highest number of immigrants as a proportion to the native population among the G8 nations.
Immigrants in absolute number
According to the UN report, 20% of the world’s immigrants live in the USA. The USA has the highest total number of immigrants, followed by Germany and Russia. India was the largest country of origin of international migrants (17 million) in 2017, followed by Mexico (13 million). Female migrants outnumber male migrants in Europe.
Not to confused: Refugees are not economic migrants
According to the UN report 2017, the total number of refugees and asylum seekers in the world was 25.9 million. with 3.1 million refugees and asylum seekers, Turkey hosted the largest refugee population worldwide, followed by Jordan (2.9 million), and Lebanon.
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