30% drop in OECD migration

NEW DELHI: The Covid-19 crisis caused the sharpest drop of over 30% in permanent migration flow to the OECD nations. At about 37 lakh, permanent migration numbers were at their lowest level since 2003. Family migration showed the largest decline. Before the pandemic in 2019, the permanent migration flow to OECD nations stood at 53 lakh, with similar figures for 2018 and 2017.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is an association of 38 member countries, such as European countries, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. On Thursday, OECD's annual report - International Migration Outlook (2021) - indicated that foreign-born workers have been disproportionally affected by job losses since the pandemic began.
The migration report dives deep into data for 2019. Here, Indians topped the charts when it came to acquiring citizenship in OECD countries. China continued to retain its top slot (which it has held for decades) as the largest source country of new immigrants, followed by India. Nearly 1.5 lakh Indians acquired citizenship of an OECD country during 2019. Nearly 63,578 Indians acquired US citizenship (which is 7.5% of the total new citizens during this period). Canada was another popular choice for the Indian diaspora, with 31,329 Indians acquiring its citizenship (12.5% of the total new citizens). Further, 28,470 Indians became Australian citizens and 14,680 acquired UK citizenship.
The report stated that countries for which 2020 data was available saw citizenship numbers drop by 17% compared to 2019. This is largely due to the major drop in absolute numbers in the US, where naturalisations (citizenships awarded) fell by 3.3 lakh, to reach their lowest level since 2003 at 5.2 lakh. Part of the decline seems due to delays by Covid-related office closures. The numbers fell in UK, Germany, France too.
During 2019, Chinese and Indians continued to be the largest groups of new immigrants. With the arrival of 4.6 lakh migrants from China during 2019 (35,000 more than in the previous year), it represented almost 7% of the total new migrant inflow to OECD countries. Nearly 4 lakh Indians migrated to OECD countries during 2019, an increase of around 53,000 over the previous year. Migration from India represented 6% of the overall migration. In particular, the number of new Indian migrants increased sharply over 2018 in the UK (by 30 000), in Canada (by 15 000), and to a lesser extent in Germany (by 5000). Interestingly, the growth in new migrants from India over this two-year period is 15.5% whereas for China it is 8.3%.