Immigrant Population

Which countries have the lowest and highest share of foreign-born citizens?


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Map of the size of the immigrant population by country.

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A while back, we showed you a map of the immigrant population in Europe. Now, let’s have a closer look at the whole world.

When it comes to immigration, we can see that in the vast majority of countries only less than 15% or even 5% of the population was born in a foreign country. The countries that do have a larger immigrant population are mostly either: micro-states or countries with a small population, Western countries or Middle Eastern countries (especially those with a large oil industry).

Not surprisingly, the Vatican is no. 1 with all of their population born abroad. The other countries where more than 50% of its population was born abroad, are either Middle Eastern countries (UAE, Qatar, Kuwait), European micro-states (Monaco, Liechtenstein, Andorra), overseas territories in the Caribbean/Americas (Sint Maarten, British Virgin Islands, US Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Falkland Islands) or Macau.

Three countries have an immigrant population less than 0.1%: Cuba, China and Vietnam.

The data comes from the United Nations. Note that data for Taiwan comes from its National Migration Agency, as the UN rarely includes data for Taiwan.

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