Robert Tenorio responds to new data (pdf) on the world’s 232 million migrants:
Do most migrants go from poor countries to rich countries?
No. This may be one of the biggest surprises from the UN data. The number of people living in developing countries who were also born in a developing country is about the same as the number of people from developing countries who now live in developed ones. This so-called “South-South” migration partly reflects new economic opportunities in developing countries and stagnating growth in the rich world, but that’s not the whole picture. Many migrants simply find it easier to move to developing countries. This may be because of more relaxed immigration laws, family and social networks that facilitate the move, or ordinary geographic proximity. Another large contributor to South-South movement is conflict, as over 2 million Syrian refugees in Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey have recently made clear.
The US remains the world’s top migration destination in absolute terms, with 45 million residents born abroad. But its rate of growth, 2.1 percent annually over the past three years, falls far behind that of South Africa (6.7 percent), Thailand (8.3 percent), or Ecuador (9.7 percent).
The Dish 