Immigration

[25][26] Research has found extensive evidence of discrimination against foreign-born and minority populations in criminal justice, business, the economy, housing, health care, media, and politics in the United States and Europe.

Since the Neolithic, most migrations (except for the peopling of remote regions such as the Arctic or the Pacific), were predominantly warlike, consisting of conquest or Landnahme on the part of expanding populations.

Canada, France, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the United Arab Emirates made up the rest of the top ten desired destination countries.

[36] One theory of immigration distinguishes between push and pull factors, referring to the economic, political, and social influences by which people migrate from or to specific countries.

[40] Immigrants are motivated to leave their former countries of citizenship, or habitual residence, for a variety of reasons, including: a lack of local access to resources, a desire for economic prosperity, to find or engage in paid work, to better their standard of living, family reunification, retirement, climate or environmentally induced migration, exile, escape from prejudice, conflict or natural disaster, or simply the wish to change one's quality of life.

[43] Emigration and immigration are sometimes mandatory in a contract of employment: religious missionaries and employees of transnational corporations, international non-governmental organizations, and the diplomatic service expect, by definition, to work "overseas".

[citation needed] Non-economic push factors include persecution (religious and otherwise), frequent abuse, bullying, oppression, ethnic cleansing, genocide, risks to civilians during war, and social marginalization.

When they arrive in a new country, this is often with many uncertainties including finding work,[50] where to live, new laws, new cultural norms, language or accent issues, possible racism, and other exclusionary behavior towards them and their family.

Those with security concerns cite the 2005 French riots and point to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy as examples of the value conflicts arising from immigration of Muslims in Western Europe.

[8] In a survey of the existing literature, Örn B Bodvarsson and Hendrik Van den Berg write, "a comparison of the evidence from all the studies... makes it clear that, with very few exceptions, there is no strong statistical support for the view held by many members of the public, mainly that immigration has an adverse effect on native-born workers in the destination country.

[19] A successful two-year in situ anti-poverty program, for instance, helps poor people make in a year what is the equivalent of working one day in the developed world.

[118] According to a 2017 survey of the existing economic literature, studies on high-skilled migrants "rarely find adverse wage and employment consequences, and longer time horizons tend to show greater gains".

[181][182][183][184][185][186][187][188][189][190][191] According to Abel Escribà-Folch, Joseph Wright, and Covadonga Meseguer, remittances "provide resources that make political opposition possible, and they decrease government dependency, undermining the patronage strategies underpinning authoritarianism.

[222] In the United States, immigrant workers hold a disproportionate share of jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM): "In 2013, foreign-born workers accounted for 19.2 percent of STEM workers with a bachelor's degree, 40.7 percent of those with a master's degree, and more than half – 54.5 percent – of those with a PhD"[223] Using 130 years of data on historical migrations to the United States, one study finds "that a doubling of the number of residents with ancestry from a given foreign country relative to the mean increases by 4.2 percentage points the probability that at least one local firm invests in that country, and increases by 31% the number of employees at domestic recipients of FDI from that country.

"[224] A 2017 study found that "immigrants' genetic diversity is significantly positively correlated with measures of U.S. counties' economic development [during the Age of Mass Migration].

Less privileged individuals, including the mass of poor people in low-income countries, cannot avail themselves of the legal and protected immigration opportunities offered by wealthy states.

[citation needed] Immigration policies which selectively grant freedom of movement to targeted individuals are intended to produce a net economic gain for the host country.

[253] A 2018 study in the American Political Science Review cast doubts on findings that ethnoracial homogeneity led to greater public goods provision.

[268] A 2017 study in the Journal of Comparative Economics found that "individuals whose ancestors migrated from countries with higher autocracy levels are less likely to trust others and to vote in presidential elections in the U.S.

[306] A 2015 report by the National Institute of Demographic Studies finds that an overwhelming majority of second-generation immigrants of all origins in France feel French, despite the persistent discrimination in education, housing and employment that many of the minorities face.

"[311] A separate study of Switzerland found that naturalization improved the economic integration of immigrants: "winning Swiss citizenship in the referendum increased annual earnings by an average of approximately 5,000 U.S. dollars over the subsequent 15 years.

[315] A 2017 study found that "faster access to citizenship improves the economic situation of immigrant women, especially their labour market attachment with higher employment rates, longer working hours and more stable jobs.

Our own research, which explains the failed integration of Muslim immigrants in France, suggests that such policies can feed into a vicious cycle that damages national security.

Indeed, the failure of French security in 2015 was likely due to police tactics that intimidated rather than welcomed the children of immigrants – an approach that makes it hard to obtain crucial information from community members about potential threats.

[331] A 2020 study using data from large-scale comparative surveys in Germany, France, and United Kingdom found that sampled households with a language barrier tend to have poor living conditions and are migrants.

[334][335][336][337][338] Research also suggests that there may be possible discrimination by the judicial system, which contributes to a higher number of convictions for racial minorities in Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Denmark and France.

[28][27][344] A 2016 meta-analysis of 738 correspondence tests in 43 separate studies conducted in OECD countries between 1990 and 2015 finds that there is extensive racial discrimination in hiring decisions in Europe and North-America.

In the early 2000s, the United Kingdom adopted the Detention Duty Advice (DDA) scheme in order to provide free, government-funded, legal aid to immigrants.

Canada's immigration detention system has significant legal and normative problems, and the rubric of 'access to justice' that is presented by international law fails to identify these faults.

[28] A 1995 study found that car dealers "quoted significantly lower prices to white males than to black or female test buyers using identical, scripted bargaining strategies.

Net migration rates per 1,000 people in 2023. On net people travel from redder countries to bluer countries.
The global population of immigrants has grown since 1990 but has remained constant at around 3% of the world's population. [ 32 ]
The number of migrants and migrant workers per country in 2015
In recent decades, immigration to nearly every Western country has risen sharply. [ 35 ] The slopes of the tops of the differently-colored columns show the rate of percent increase in foreign-born people living in the respective countries.
The largest Vietnamese market in Prague , also known as "Little Hanoi". In 2009, there were about 70,000 Vietnamese in the Czech Republic . [ 37 ]
London has become multiethnic as a result of immigration. [ 38 ] In London in 2008, Black British and British Asian children outnumbered white British children by about 3 to 2 in government-run schools. [ 39 ]
The Iron Curtain in Europe was designed as a means of preventing emigration . "It is one of the ironies of post-war European history that, once the freedom to travel for Europeans living under communist regimes, which had long been demanded by the West, was finally granted in 1989/90, travel was very soon afterwards made much more difficult by the West itself, and new barriers were erected to replace the Iron Curtain." —Anita Böcker [ 54 ]
The Indo-Bangladeshi barrier in 2007. India is building a separation barrier along the 4,000 kilometer border with Bangladesh to prevent illegal immigration.
UNHCR tents at a refugee camp following episodes of anti-immigrant violence in South Africa, 2008
Share of migrants in all countries. Data from 2015.