Patterns of migration 2024
From south and east to north and west
The United Nations Population Division has released its international survey of emigration and immigration by country. Many Western countries are engaged in politically charged discussions about the impact of migration on our societies. I will address those concerns in a future article, but let us begin with the raw data.
A point of clarification for our data set: the UN counts the total number of people living in one country who were born in another country as migrants, and there are 314 million of them. Thus they conflate several categories: naturalized citizens; permanent residents (legal aliens); visitors (also legal aliens, such as students and tourists); and illegal aliens.
The largest country-to-country migrations are as follows.
Mexico to USA: 11.279 million
Afghanistan to Iran: 3.752 million
Syria to Turkey: 3.563 million
Russia to Ukraine: 3.375 million
India to UAE: 3.248 million
India to USA: 3.165 million
That is the full list of migration flows over 3 million people. The largest migration flow, the Mexico to USA route, is enormous: three times the second largest migration flow.
Next let us address the sources of migration, with a pie chart and a map.
India and China are the most populous countries on earth, so it is not surprising they are the biggest source of migrants. Mexico’s standing in third place is likely due to its proximity to America. Ukraine and Russia are in a war. Other than that, most (not all) of the leading sources of migration have poor quality of life.
Finally, let us examine the destinations of migrants, with a pie chart and a map.
Clearly, the destination of migrants is far more concentrated than their source. Indeed the Herfindahl index of concentration is about 2.5 times as large for destination as for source. Other than Saudi Arabia, the other members of the top eight destinations have high quality of life (USA, Germany, UK, France, Spain, Canada, Australia). Interestingly, in the cases of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, migrants have very little hope of naturalization, but the opposite is the case for the Western countries.
America hosts about 18.8% of the world’s migrants, a wild disproportion. Many of these people are legal immigrants who became self-supporting naturalized citizens, like Elon Musk, Melania Trump, and Mrs. Surak. But estimates of the number of illegal aliens in America range from 20 million to 30 million.
As a percentage of the population, this is unusually high by historical standards, according to CIS.
I imagine these numbers are comparable across the Western world. The social impact is considerable and complex, as we shall discuss later.
Surak, as always a fine job of compiling the statistics and presenting them so they are easily comprehended. Just a remark on illegal immigration in the US-- it is estimated (by FAIR) that illegal immigrants now number about 20 million, costing US taxpayers in excess of 150 billion dollars this year. To date, Trump has exported less than 10%, which logically means that when he leaves office, the majority of illegals will still be residing here. Trump claims that we now have no illegal immigration. I think he means at the Mexican border, because illegals have over 5500 miles of border with Canada to cross over, largely unprotected.
How many legal immigrants are here? How many on expired visas?
Numbers of illegals here can change quite a bit, depending on our economic conditions and who sits in the White House.
This is a fantastic compilation of data. You put a lot of effort into this, so I want to consider my post before making a comment. This is a migration/movement is a critical issue on many levels.
Thank you for your efforts...
Sword of God Militia!
P.S. I am officially an enemy of the state in Great Britain. I have been advised that I cannot get a visa and if found in England I will be arrested!