Global Migration

Human migration is increasing dramatically around the world causing ethnic and racial tension along with some major changes to immigration policies in countries around the world.  “About 258 million people, or one in every 30, were living outside their country of birth in 2017” https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/10/migration-how-many-people-are-on-the-move-around-the-world

We are all aware of how the Trump administration feels about immigrants (to the delight of his anti-immigrant base supporters), and we see more EU countries electing more anti-immigration governments.  https://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2018/06/anti-immigration-populism-driving-agenda-europe-too/

Here is a web site that will answer most statistical questions about world migration: https://migrationdataportal.org/?i=stock_abs_&t=2017

1. In 2015, the number of international migrants worldwide – people residing in a country other than their country of birth – was the highest ever recorded, having reached 244 million (from 232 million in 2013). As a share of the world population, however, international migration has remained fairly constant over the past decades, at around 3%.

2. Germany became the second most popular destination for international migrants globally (in absolute numbers), following the United States and preceding the Russian Federation, with an estimated 12 million foreign-born residing in the country in 2015 (against 46.6 million in the U.S. and 11.9 million in the Russian Federation).

3. “Often a distinction is made between voluntary and involuntary migration, or between refugees fleeing political conflict or natural disaster vs. economic or labor migration, but these distinctions are difficult to make and partially subjective, as the motivators for migration are often correlated.”  -Wikipedia
4. There are advantages and disadvantages to migration.  The advantages include a richer and more diverse culture, cheap labour, helping to overcome labour shortages, filling unskilled jobs, highly skilled immigrants enhance prosperity.  The disadvantages include language problems, racial/ethnic tensions, jobs lost to incoming workers, a loss of highly skilled workers from the country of origin, and overcrowding.

Let’s discuss!

Questions:

What will be the consequences of doubling or tripling the number of world migrants in 10 years?

How will the world population rate affect world migration?

Are immigrant remittances a problem for Canada?

Are Canada’s immigration policies adequate? Have our policies improved the country?