UN statistics shows migration boosts global development

As preparations for the upcoming session on migration and development of the current General Assembly are underway, national, UN statistics on regional and global levels draw a complex picture of the movement of people between countries in the 21st century.

Conceived more than two years ago by the General Assembly, the High-level Dialogue on migration and development will focus on ways to maximize the development benefits of international migration and reduce difficulties. The two-day meeting, scheduled for Thursday, follows a period of intense public attention to the cross-border movement of people, and multilateral talks on international migration.

According to an analysis by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 3 percent of the world's population, or 191 million people, lived in a country other than their native countries in 2005, with one third moving from a developing to a developed country, one third moving from among developing nations, and another third originating in the developed world.

An increasingly large number of workers moving to developed countries are college graduates. Without migration, the size of the labor force in the developed world will shrink starting from 2010, the analysis said.

Migration statistics from 228 countries and areas indicates that the United States leads the world by taking 38 million migrants in 2005, or nearly 13 percent of its population. Australia and Canada have the highest percentage of migrants among their populations, which stands at 19.6 percent and 18.9 percent respectively.

Currently almost half of the world's migrants now are women, and they outnumber male migrants in the developed countries. Remittances, even when used for consumption, stimulate demand and support local enterprises. Overall, remittances could have an impact equivalent to about half a trillion U.S. dollars, according to the UN statistics.

Despite tensions and controversies in many receiving countries, more than 50 percent of governments surveyed by the United Nations in 2005 expressed an intention to maintain incoming migrant flows at roughly the same level. Just about 20 percent have plans to reduce the incoming flows, while 6 percent of governments favored higher levels of immigration in 2005.

Source: Xinhua