The Most Common Origins of Immigrants

A world map showing the most common origins of immigrants by country reveals some prolific immigrant nations as well as the influence that conflict and economic collapse can have on migration patterns. This is based on data from the United Nations Population Division.

The most common pattern around the world is neighbors providing the most immigrants to one another. This is for example the case in the U.S. and Mexico, which are the biggest source of immigrants to each other. It is the same between Albania and Greece or Honduras and El Salvador, for example. This pattern is disrupted however, when many people leave their country at the same time due to conflict, war or poverty. Venezuelan immigrants are now the largest group in nine neighboring countries, while six neighbors of the Democratic Republic of the Congo have taken in large groups of their citizens. For Somalia, its five neighbors. Ukrainian immigrants as of 2020 already were the biggest group in four neighboring nations, equal to Syria and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Then there are also those nations which are known to send immigrants all over the world, not just in their direct neighborhood. Among them are India and China, with their citizens being the largest group of immigrants in neighboring nations as well as on the Arabian Gulf in the case of India and in Canada and Australia in the case of China. In Europe, Poland is the most prominent nation of emigration, with Poles being the largest group of immigrants in the United Kingdom, Germany and some Scandinavian nations.

Only a handful of countries have a more unique major immigration partner that is not their neighbor. These instances are often tied to colonialism. The biggest immigrant group in Equatorial Guinea and Morocco are from France, while for the Netherlands it is Suriname, for Portugal Angola, for France Algeria, for Cuba Spain and for New Zealand the United Kingdom.