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August 17, 2012Immigration is the act of leaving one’s country and settling in another country with the intent of obtaining permanent residence. Factors that lead to immigration are economic, political, poverty or natural disaster. According to the United Nations, in 2005, there were approximately 191 million international migrants worldwide. This number represents 3% of world’s total population. Sixty percent of the immigrants, in 2005, were living in developed countries. It is expected that the numbers of people living outside their country of birth will further rise in the future.
The UN Census 2005 revealed that the Middle West USA, some European regions, few areas of South West Asia and few regions of the East Indies host most of the world’s immigrants. However, almost all immigrant censuses have suffered from low reliability because of undocumented labor migration which has a concealed character. Today, the International Organization for Migrations estimates the number of worldwide migrants to be over 200 million in aggregate.
The economic motive has contributed more in immigration than any other factor. Economic migrant is someone who has emigrated from one’s country to another country for seeking employment or in pursuit of improved financial status. There are strict immigration restrictions in many countries to stop a migrant entering a region for finding work in the absence of a valid work visa. The impact of economic migration can be understood by the World Bank estimate in 2009 which revealed that out of $420 billion remittances, $317 billion went to developing countries.
United States is among those countries that have been most influenced by the act of immigration. In 2006, United States accepted more immigrants as permanent residents than all the other countries combined. In 2008, more than a million migrants were naturalized as U.S. citizens while over 14 million people came to the United States from 2000 to 2010 in search of permanent residence. Most of these immigrants originally belonged to Mexico, India, Philippines and China. About two-thirds of legal immigration to the United States each year is for family reunification. The number of foreign immigrants who become legal permanent residents of the United States as a result of family reunification, significantly exceeds those who become legal permanent residents because of employments skills and humanitarian reasons.
Since immigration is an important factor which affects a country’s level of employment, inflation, demographics, level of crimes, culture and economic environment, much has been written on the act of immigration. Print media is overflowing with immigration articles and columns that describe the effects, reasons and ways of getting immigration. As immigration is becoming more common, the frequency with which immigration articles used to appear in media, has almost quadrupled. Experts, scholars and mentors continuously see in black and white the immigration advice and point out the most suitable countries for immigration purpose. Students are the notable readers of such immigration articles.. There are other types of immigration articles which make their readers aware of the affects of immigration. In addition to the articles, books, surveys and short documentaries on the topic have enjoyed much popularity among public and helped in raising the general awareness level.