-“Why do you ask, boy?”
-“I read that the United States were the best immigration land but in the news, it says that the government is fighting over it! So which is it?”
-“OH! I see! Well, it’s almost all wrong then but it depends on which measure you use. Let me explain.”
The United States is the country with the most incoming immigrants, about a million every year. That much is true! Germany and Spain follow at 600 thousand, Then it goes to 400 in the UK and 350 thousand in Japan and Italy, almost a quarter of a million for Canada and Korea.
If we stop there and compare the US and Canada’s populations however, the later has one tenth that of the former ( 320M /USA vs 35M+ /Can ). For their ratio to be equal, Canada should welcome 100M thousand immigrants yearly instead of 250. That means Canada receives more immigrants by far in percentage.
By that metric, Luxembourg with barely more than half a million folks is on top with almost 3% immigrants per year. Canada falls to 12th place with less than one percent and the USA below 20th with less than half a percent.
We should go further still and take into account the immigrants that go back to their countries of origin or elsewhere for that matter and add the citizens from each that leave too ( known as emigrants or ex-patriates ). That way, we end up with the real number of immigrants actually present as a percentage of population.
If we do that, Luxembourg is still on top with almost 33% immigrants, one out of 3 persons that lives there! Israel, Switzerland and Austria have between 28 and 25% and the rest less than 20%. With this true count, Canada goes back up to 6th place and the US jumps 10 places from 22nd to 12th. And the decline in percent points is rapid hence, by 25th place out of nearly 200 nations, the real percentage of immigrants falls below 5%.
-“So Luxembourg is the best immigration country then?”
-“Well son, that depends … on what you call best.”
You see, even with our above counts getting more complicated, we have not considered the special cases. Imagine for a moment a nation with a very small native population that has lots of natural resources. They would need to import workers to tend the fields and the likes. But you don’t need to give an immigrant status to these workers. You can simply give them work permits. That way, they work there yes, but are not immigrants since they go back home when their contracts expire. In pure numbers, such countries could have more foreigners on their land than even Luxembourg but not more immigrants. And here is where best changes meaning for those workers have no real rights. In Luxembourg, Canada or America, a legal immigrant can vote and take part in society until he or she has earned their citizenship. Not so for a worker that just works especially if seasonal work such as agriculture is concerned. So best in numbers would not necessarily mean best in treatment.
-“Do such countries exist?”
-“Oh, you bet!”
Counting only autonomous nations, the United Arab Emirates are on top by that measurement at 83-84% of foreigners followed by Qatar at 74%, tiny Monaco is at 64 ( almost part of France in practical reality as Andorra with France and Spain – with 57% ), Kuwait at 60, Bahrein at 55 and Brunei over 49% approaching 50. All of these then have as many foreigners as nationals or more. With that complete count of all types of foreigners and legal immigrants, Luxembourg comes in next with only 43%+ in 8th place & with Singapore and Jordan rounding out the top ten. And that is a perfect way to end the count for most of the last’s 4 out of 10 immigrants are Palestinians or other refugees. If Israel finally accepted Palestine and those could return to their homeland and did and the same happened with the refugees from Syria that fled the civil war in the last 3 years …
Jordan would return to a more balanced proportion of immigrants.
-“OOOOOOH! I think I got it! Thank you, dad!”
-“You’re very welcome, now go wash your hands : it’s time for supper.”
Tay.
Sources :
http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2012/11/18/is-the-u-s-the-most-immigrant-friendly-country-in-the-world/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_immigrant_population
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/factbook-2013-en/01/02/01/index.html?itemId=/content/chapter/factbook-2013-6-en
Definitive Lapse of Reason 