India Emerges Second in Migrations to OECD Countries

India ranks 2nd in terms of Migrations to the OECD

Wednesday, 21st October 2020

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development is a conglomeration of 37 countries including European countries, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

All these nations have well developed economies and attract a large number of immigrants be it for work, studies or even asylum.

India has now replaced Romania and emerged as the second largest source country from where migrations to OECD countries are happening. This includes both the total inflow during 2018 as well as in acquiring citizenship.

The largest source country continues to be China. In 2018, nearly 4.3 lakh Chinese moved to OECD countries, accounting for 6.5% of the total migrations into OECD countries.

For India too, the numbers increased sharply in 2018 when the country saw an increase of nearly 10% in the migrations from India to OECD nations. It is estimated that almost 3.3 lakh migrations from India make up for about 5% of the total migration inflows.

As per recent data, the total inflow of new migrants from the entire country to OECD nations was 66 lakh, thus increasing the rate by 3.8%, a slight rise over the previous year.

Countries like Canada also recorded a swell in numbers and those like Germany and Italy also saw more numbers in terms of arrivals when compared with previous years. The OECD has made it clear that the data on migration flows according to nationality may encompass some temporary migrations for certain destination countries.

Before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis, the permanent migration flows to OECD nations from 2017–2019 was around 53 lakhs. This however does not include countries like Columbia and Turkey who have encouraged a large number of humanitarian migrations in recent times. Permanent migration flows exclude international students and temporary labour migrations.

The Angel Gurría, secretary general at OECD, said on a virtual press conference on Monday that the pandemic has changed the scenario drastically as now, many of the OECD nations have restricted entry to foreigners. In the first six months of this year there has been a sharp decrease, almost by 46%, followed by 72% in the second quarter, in the issuance of new visas-one of the largest drops ever recorded.

Source: Times of India