 |
 |
83/94 |  |
Trends in Inflows of foreign nationals
Despite differing national views concerning who is an immigrant, it is possible to give, on a more or less comparative basis, some idea of trends in immigration on the basis of official data through the use of indices. Although the levels may not be comparable, the year-to-year changes are less subject to comparability problems.
Definition
An immigrant is variously defined as a person who obtains the right of permanent residence (settlement countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States), who obtains a residence permit of a minimum limited duration (generally one year or more), or who registers in a population register and intends to stay in the host country for longer than a specified number of months.
Comparability
Official data on immigration are from different sources: data on settlement or long-term permits for Australia, Canada, France, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal and the United States; a border-crossing survey for the United Kingdom, the Labour Force Survey for Ireland. Data for Italy and Turkey are from residence permits but include many temporary entries. Data for all other countries are from population registers or registers of foreigners. From 2001 on, data for the Czech Republic are not comparable with data for previous years. The last column of the table gives a figure for "permanent-type” authorised immigration in 2004 for 17 countries on a roughly comparable basis (see "Immigration by category of entry”).
In countries where an immigrant is defined as a settler or someone who obtains a residence permit of a minimum limited duration (generally one year or more), a significant number of persons entering with temporary permits are excluded by definition. In the case of Germany, for example, more than half of the recorded inflows of foreigners concern short-term movements that are not counted as immigration in many other OECD countries.
|
Long-term trends After some signs of stabilisation in 2002-2003, migration flows into OECD countries increased again in 2004. However, the situation is far from uniform across countries. The Scandinavian countries as well as Germany, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg and Turkey show little to any increase relative to 2003, while inflows have increased strongly in Australia, Austria, Finland, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. On the other hand, in all countries for which information is available, outflows of foreigners increased as well over the same period, except in the United Kingdom. Moreover, recent changes in immigration vary a lot from one country to another. In the United States, grants of green cards rose by about 240 000 after a decline of similar magnitude in 2003 as a result of constraints introduced in the aftermath of the events of September 11th 2001. The increase may reflect more the processing of previous backlogs than a real upward trend. Spain experienced an increase in municipal registrations of foreigners of almost 50 percent compared to 2003. The increase includes some irregular migrants and an undetermined proportion of temporary migrants. Except for Germany, Hungary, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States levels in immigration registered in 2004 tend to be significantly larger than those registered at the beginning of the nineties (see Table 1). North America has registered a recent increase but levels of immigration in 2004 are still below those registered in 2001. This is not the case in either Europe or in Australia. While Spain and the United Kingdom (and to a lesser extent Austria, France and Poland) reported a continuous increase in immigration over this period, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands and New Zealand experienced a slight and continuous downturn. Immigration has remained more or less constant in Japan and Korea since 2000, since 2001 also in Sweden and Switzerland. Trends in other OECD countries fluctuated over the period. In 2004, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France (and presumably Spain) were the main destination countries in the OECD for immigrants. However, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia and Canada were the countries where the inflows were the highest relative to the total population. The United States has high absolute levels, but on a per-capita basis, the number of long-term legal immigrants ("green card” immigrants) is modest compared to many other countries (see Chart1). |
Source
- OECD (2006), International Migration Outlook: SOPEMI – 2006 Edition, OECD, Paris.
Further information
Analytical publications
- OECD (2001), Migration Policies and EU Enlargement: The Case of Central and Eastern Europe, OECD, Paris.
- OECD (2003), Migration and the Labour Market in Asia: Recent Trends and Policies – 2002 Edition, OECD, Paris.
- OECD (2004), Migration for Employment: Bilateral Agreements at a Crossroads, OECD, Paris.
- OECD (2004), Trade and Migration: Building Bridges for Global Labour Mobility, OECD, Paris.
- OECD (2005), OECD Employment Outlook – 2005 Edition, OECD, Paris.
- OECD (2006), Local Economic and Employment Development (LEED) – From Immigration to Integration: Local Solutions to a Global Challenge , OECD, Paris.
- OECD (2006), OECD Employment Outlook , OECD, Paris.
Statistical publications
- OECD (2006), Labour Force Statistics 1985-2005: 2006 Edition, OECD, Paris.
Methodological publications
- Lemaître, G. (2005), "The Comparability of International Migration Statistics, Problems and Prospects”, OECD Statistics Brief, No 9, July, OECD, Paris.
Online databases
| Texts | |
| • | Indicator web page |
| • | Indicator in PDF |
| Tables (xls) | |
| • | Inflows of foreign nationals in OECD countries |
| Graphics | |
| • | Inflows of foreign nationals, standardised data |
Inflows of foreign nationals, standardised data
|
83/94 | |