How Many Immigrants Are There?

By: Nick Hunter

What do we mean when we talk about immigrants? We know that they are people from other countries. If
you live in a city, there may be areas where the people come from a different culture and country, such as
Pakistan or India. Although these people may be immigrants, we should be careful not to confuse ethnic
minorities with immigrants.

Immigrants are people who were born in another country. Ethnic minorities are people who have a different
culture and way of life from the main culture in a country. Ethnic minorities are often second- or third-
generation immigrants because their parents or grandparents were immigrants. Although the younger
generation may continue to speak the language and follow the customs of the place where their parents
were born, they were born in the country where they live now. To find out how many immigrants there are,
we need to know how many people are living in a country other than the one in which they were born. Some
will be settlers who have become citizens of the new country; others may be planning to return to their home
country in the future. The United Nations says that anyone living outside their country of birth for more than
one year is an immigrant. This is called the stock of immigrants in a country. There are around 215 million
people who live in a country other than the one in which they were born. This sounds like a huge number,
but it only represents about three per cent of the world’s population. Newspaper headlines and other media
often suggest that immigration is growing and out of control. According to the United Nations, this is not the
case. For the last 20 years at least, the proportion of the world’s people who are immigrants has remained
around three per cent. However, as we shall see, some countries have far more immigration and emigration
than others. The number of people moving into a country in any year is called the flow of immigrants.

We have already seen that not all immigrants move to their new countries legally. Legal immigrants need to
have permission to live in their new home. This may involve getting an official visa that allows them to stay
for a certain amount of time or to work in a particular job. Illegal immigrants are either people who cross the
border without permission or those who remain in the country after their visa has expired. Illegal immigrants
often do not appear on official records, so it is difficult to know exactly how many there are. It has been
estimated that up to one in every five of the world’s immigrants is illegal. The United States has the largest
number of illegal immigrants at more than 11 million people.