Only in Europe...

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by rah
Sorry, I looked and found no source that gave a simple summary. But reading the sites that I did, it's not even close, the US is by far the leader. (and this only counted legal aliens) The estimates for illegal aliens were unbelievable. The world does vote with it's feet.

I'd be interested to see the per capita immigration figures for many countries. Also breakdowns per states EU and US - Does California lead the US for example, and does England get more than the rest of Europe, as perception seems to suggest

I believe the US outranks by far, just interested to see the splits.

[rah]

The Info for the US was readily available on the INS site. State by state breakdowns were also available. If you search for "immigration" in most search engines, most of your hits will point at that site. It was much harder finding info on other countries.

[Roland]

"But reading the sites that I did, it's not even close, the US is by far the leader. (and this only counted legal aliens) The estimates for illegal aliens were unbelievable. The world does vote with it's feet."

You know it's funny what you can imagine. You could also give me a standard for determining the immigration leader ? Absolute nrs or relative to population ?

If we go relative.... the best measure is the %age of foreign-born population. And of course I knew the numbers when I asked you...

http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p23-206.pdf

"In March 2000, an estimated10.4 percent of the U.S.population was foreign born..."

http://www.bmwa.gv.at/news/2001/08/2dd2/2001%200816%20Kurzfassung.pdf

"Im März 2000, dem Zeitpunkt der Arbeitskräfteerhebung (AKE) von Statistik Austria, gaben 839.600 Personen an, im Ausland geboren und nach Österreich eingewandert zu sein. Das waren 10,4% der Bevölkerung."

=

"In March 2000 when the statictics office did its labour force survey, 839.600 persons stated to be born abroad and having immigrated to Austria. This amounts to 10,4% of population."

There are other estimates for Austria and the US that put the share at 13-15 %. So on what exactly do you base the claim to be the immigration leader ?

[Roland]

The net immigration rate of the EU has been hovering around 0.25 % in the 1990s, ie about 800k-900k per year. As illegal immigrants avoid the census (we call them "submarines" for a reason) this an approximation for legal immigration.

http://europa.eu.int/comm/eurostat/Public/datashop/print-product/EN?catalogue=Eurostat&product=3-po020in-EN&mode=download

This is quite similar to US levels, especially as the US numbers are gross (estimates for emigration from the US are about 200k per year):

http://www.ins.gov/graphics/aboutins/statistics/IMM2000AR.pdf

As for illegal immigrants - estimates are all over the place. For Austria they vary from 1.5 % - 3 % of the population. So not much difference there either.

[Roland]

Ah yes: "number of immigrants that want to become citizens of".

The US does about 0.5-1 million naturalizations per year, so roughly 0.2-0.4 % of the population. That is, again, the same rate as in Austria (this year we should be clearly above 0.4 %, but this is a base effect from the immigration wave of the early 90s).

[Dinner]

Hmm, I can see Austria and the US numbers being very similiar. Both are highly developed nations which border less developed areas and both have rugged, highly porse borders which hinder efferts by the government to enforce labor laws.

Population percentages are a useful bar to measure immigration, however, they only tell half the story and the other half is told by the raw numbers of people who imigrate. It is the raw numbers which I would use to give the US the edge over Austria in the title of leading immigration nation. Although many aspects of immigration strengthen the host country I do question if having to high a foreign born population percentage is positive for the country in the long run. I believe it is better to regulate the flow of people so that each wave has an opportunity to assimilate to their new host culture.

[Dry]

Originally posted by Sagacious Dolphin
I'd be interested to see the per capita immigration figures for many countries. Also breakdowns per states EU and US - Does California lead the US for example, and does England get more than the rest of Europe, as perception seems to suggest

From a pure logical pov, I would guess the european state with highest per capita legal immigration should be the one with lowest birthrate, I mean... Vatican.

Now, more seriously, as far as I remember, it was Germany... but I not sure at all... need to check.

[Roland]

"Both are highly developed nations which border less developed areas..."

Neighbouring countries are mostly for transit. For example I saw a stat a while ago that there are more Austrians in Slovenia then the other way round.

"It is the raw numbers which I would use to give the US the edge over Austria in the title of leading immigration nation. "

So it's just size, not about quality. Bah. I'll call my big brother now - the EU.

Would you agree then that the EU is the leading immigration destiny of the world ?

[The Mad Monk]

Originally posted by MikeH
Why would any European want American citizenship anyway unless they were nuts?

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=58059

[MikeH]

Originally posted by rah
Apparently they do. Not surprising at all.
The US is still the number 1 country in the world in terms of the number of immigrants that want to become citizens of. The whole world can't be all wrong.

Rich

As Roland just showed that's not exactly true is it?

UK is still very popular for immigration and although somewhere like Germany takes in twice as many as we do a year it has twice the population and a lot more space. Remember we're the size of one of your small state and have 60 million people living here. We can't physically take that many immigrants because there's nowhere for them to live.

Mad Monk: I said unless they were mad didn't I?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Roland
So it's just size, not about quality. Bah. I'll call my big brother now - the EU.

Would you agree then that the EU is the leading immigration destiny of the world ?

The EU isn't a state mirely a collection of states. Thus the US as a truly sovereign nation would still hold the title.

[Roland]

The US may be a nation, but it isn't a state either.

[Dinner]

It most certainly is. Any questions to the contrary were settled by 1865.

[Roland]

That settled the issue of treaty character of the constitution in the negative.

State as in "Staat" or "état" is another matter.

[Ecthy]

What is it then? A Reich?