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Countries with the Most Immigrants

Try to name the countries that have the largest foreign-born populations.
2019 data. Source: United Nations via Wikipedia.
Also see by capita
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: March 28, 2021
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First submittedMarch 30, 2014
Times taken98,316
Average score70.0%
Rating4.84
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Immigrants
%
Country
50.6 m
15.4
United States
13.1 m
15.7
Germany
13.1 m
38.3
Saudi Arabia
11.6 m
8.0
Russia
9.55 m
14.1
United Kingdom
8.58 m
87.9
United Arab Emirates
8.33 m
12.8
France
7.96 m
21.3
Canada
7.55 m
30.0
Australia
6.27 m
10.4
Italy
Immigrants
%
Country
6.01 m
13.1
Spain
5.88 m
7.0
Turkey
5.15 m
0.4
India
4.96 m
11.3
Ukraine
4.22 m
7.2
South Africa
3.71 m
20.0
Kazakhstan
3.64 m
5.2
Thailand
3.43 m
10.7
Malaysia
3.35 m
33.1
Jordan
3.28 m
1.5
Pakistan
+22
Level 81
Aug 8, 2018
Enjoyable,. I was struggling with a couple of answers and had to work out the overall population based on the hints given. This then gave me an idea of the size of the country and enabled me to have a better guess at them..
+15
Level 73
Aug 8, 2018
Does this include refugees? Could be specified (yes or no) at the beginning. I'm thinking of Lebanon, for example.
+9
Level 82
Aug 17, 2018
I guess it does, like all residents.
+1
Level 67
Oct 2, 2018
Lebanon doesn't even have 2.5+ million Syrian refugees.
+7
Level 87
Mar 28, 2021
No, but doesn't Mexico have lots of Central American folks trying to push through but settling in?
+1
Level 55
Oct 26, 2023
That was my thought too.
+4
Level 58
May 16, 2021
I thought for sure Kenya and Uganda would make the list because they are hosting many refugees, but it seems when I research it that the numbers are not high enough to put them on this list. I was surprised.
+1
Level 25
Oct 26, 2023
i was thinking of just refugees so i didnt get many right
+6
Level 69
Aug 8, 2018
20/20 with 0:01 remaining =0
+15
Level 87
Aug 8, 2018
I'm guessing an update to 2018 would show several million Venezuelans now living in Colombia.
+15
Level ∞
Mar 28, 2021
Unfortunately, the UN is pretty inconsistent with how it calculates this stuff. Colombia should appear on this list but doesn't for some reason.
+1
Level 37
Mar 31, 2023
... Or Curacao, or Aruba, or Mexico, or the US.
+4
Level 69
Oct 30, 2018
I wonder why Kazakhstan became so popular?
+27
Level 82
Oct 30, 2018
There were some serious famines in Kazakhstan under the Soviet Union resulting in large population displacements and a large Kazakh diaspora. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of these dispersed Kazakhs have been returning to Kazakhstan. There has also been a lot of immigration from the neighboring -stans to the south, especially Uzbekistan.
+18
Level 64
Nov 1, 2018
Kazakhstan is economically doing well too, there are probably more job opportunities than in other stan countries. Also, Borat.
+3
Level 75
Oct 26, 2023
Looks like his Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan are paying of after all.
+6
Level 76
Apr 1, 2019
Would Kazakhs who return to their country of origin actually be called immigrants?
+2
Level 70
Apr 1, 2019
They may be classified as such if they were just Soviet citizens previously. Some people must presumably have been given a nationality they didn't identify with following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
+3
Level 82
Sep 30, 2020
Yanni, yes, if they were residents of other countries when Kazakhstan declared independence and then became citizens of those countries, as many of them did. There were large numbers of Kazakhs living in Russia, in particular. Still are.
+1
Level 19
Oct 26, 2023
Oh, really? I thought it was because of the war in Ukraine, russians were immigrating to Kazakhstan so that they wouldn't have to go to war.
+1
Level 26
Mar 20, 2024
i figured that since the -istan countries are opening up they might wanna immigrate, and so I typed russia and Kazakhstan. Also I heard their opening up medical schools with prices cheap enough for south asians
+3
Level 82
Oct 30, 2018
The entire UAE is almost 90% immigrants now? Wow.
+31
Level 24
Apr 17, 2020
Yeah, I am one of them. Even though I was born in the UAE and have lived here all my life, there is no possibility of citizenship. A sad situation really.
+10
Level 54
May 13, 2021
all gulf countries with a huge immigrant population percentage have an extremely difficult way of getting citizenship (kuwait, bahrain, qatar, and the uae).
+1
Level 81
Oct 31, 2018
People go back and forth to DPRK quite often. There are a lot of children born to couples of mixed Chinese and Korean citizenship (of Korean ethnicity).
+2
Level 80
Oct 31, 2018
Why so many immigrants into the Ukraine? I read somewhere they have low wages, lower than China. Displacement from the war would be more internal than from external sources.
+5
Level 72
Nov 1, 2018
I would guess displaced Russians of Ukrainian descent, but I haven't looked into it.
+5
Level 82
Nov 2, 2018
I think it's similar to the answer I gave above for Kazakhstan.
+1
Level 76
Nov 17, 2018
The most important reason for Ukraine being here must be internal migration within the Soviet Union before its collapse.
+10
Level 90
Jan 8, 2019
It is really insane that China is not in this list.
+3
Level 92
Mar 6, 2019
Is it? Sure it's a big country, but their entrance policies aren't exactly welcoming.
+11
Level 82
Apr 1, 2019
I would say so. Yes, they're notoriously xenophobic, but having fewer immigrants in the entire country than Kuwait? That's pretty extreme. And probably not even accurate. I bet the source is counting China, Hong Kong, and Macau separately.

::does some sniffing around::

yep.. as I thought. If you add all 3 together the total number of immigrants in China is 4,149,980.

+1
Level 26
Mar 20, 2024
i think before the war (and even after) kuwait was a hotspot for south asian and other Muslim country immigrants
+1
Level 82
Apr 1, 2019
^this would actually put China above Thailand. Not sure if QM wants to update this, though. And further complicating things it might be that some of the immigrant population in Hong Kong and Macau are from mainland China and vice versa... but I bet they still beat out Kuwait.
+14
Level ∞
Mar 28, 2021
@kalbahamut. No, that's not correct. You can't count China, Hong Kong and Macau separately because the majority of those "immigrants" are internal. For example, a person born in mainland China who now lives in Hong Kong would be counted as an immigrant.

China has essentially no foreign-born population.

+1
Level 82
Apr 1, 2021
What did I say that was incorrect? You are disagreeing with the methodology of the source you cite for the quiz, not with me. And I raised the same potential disagreement myself. Doing some further digging and based on census data it looks like the total number of immigrants living in all Chinese territories that are not from other Chinese territories is about 1.5 million. So, less than the 3 million in Kuwait. Still quite far from "essentially none." Maybe you meant that my guess about this was incorrect.
+4
Level 53
May 6, 2022
it really doesn't matter you don't need to write a whole paragraph just to tell that you are right, even if you are wrong(not saying u are right or wrong)
+1
Level 82
Nov 11, 2022
But your contribution matters a lot, doesn't it? Thanks for sharing.
+1
Level 61
Oct 27, 2023
Why is it insane? They already have 1.4 billion people... they don't need anymore!
+2
Level 50
Feb 9, 2020
Wow didn’t expect Kazakhstan. Missed Thailand too idk why
+1
Level 82
Sep 30, 2020
Thailand is a great place for expats. Probably the best in the world.
+3
Level 26
Feb 10, 2021
of course, we all got the USA
+5
Level 68
May 13, 2021
europe is dead
+5
Level 71
May 13, 2021
Not quite. Covid has severly limited migration, the far right has continued to grow across the continent (including in politics), Denmark is sending back many of the Syrians that came, and the UK left the EU.

Meanwhile Greece has sealed off the Turkish border for Syrians, the Italian Navy has been patrolling Mediterranean waters to pick up migrants and prevent them from entering, the German Army was sent to Africa to reduce migration and paid several dictators to cooperate. Other countries are paying other African nations to take foreign Africans too.

But perhaps the most severe of all, Sub Saharans are still using the Libya route in an attempt to get to Europe but are often caught and enslaved by the very people they've paid to take them. One can see grown Nigerian men being sold for $400 there. For those who make it past Africa, the Mediterranean still continues to claim the lives of many.

Too late for a nice clean solution? Yes. Too late for a messy but possible solution? No.

+6
Level 82
Nov 11, 2022
Just going to ignore the obvious and blatant ignorantly racist and xenophobic implications of the comment for a second... and say... seems like migrants mostly prefer going to places that are vibrant and alive. Not dead. The places with zero immigration have economies in the toilet, few jobs, few public resources, with cultures that are difficult or unappealing to try and integrate into. Is that the end goal? You want to be more like those places?
+2
Level 67
Oct 26, 2023
A lot of the immigrants in European countries are from other European countries
+1
Level 77
May 13, 2021
Vatican?
+9
Level 62
May 13, 2021
...has a population of less than a thousand.
+3
Level 45
May 13, 2021
No Netherlands here? surprising
+1
Level 71
May 13, 2021
I'm pretty sure Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait all have large immigrant populations relative to their size.
+2
Level 59
May 13, 2021
I missed France! I thought I had already typed it!
+3
Level 57
Jul 20, 2021
Erm.. Well, technically, the US should be 98% immigrants - most of them white.
+17
Level ∞
Jul 20, 2021
Do you know what an immigrant is?
+3
Level 56
Dec 2, 2021
I believe this only counts recent immigrants not immigrants from centuries ago
+1
Level 81
Nov 11, 2022
Centuries? The US is not even 2 centuries old. The colonization from before independence wasn't that many people. The largest cities were all quite small. The oldest European settlements were very small.
+5
Level 37
Mar 31, 2023
The US was created in 1776, making it 247 years old.
+7
Level 82
Nov 11, 2022
If your parents, grandparents, great grandparents, or great great great great grandparents immigrated somewhere... that doesn't mean you are yourself an immigrant. If it did, then every country outside of Africa would be 100% immigrant, and most within would be close to that figure. Stop thinking tribally. People are people.
+2
Level 43
Jul 4, 2022
Kazakhstan, greatest country in the world
+1
Level 68
Jan 16, 2023
Didn't expect Thailand at >5 % but the 20 % ?! at Kazakhstan surely were the biggest surprise, wow.
+1
Level 56
May 12, 2023
im honestly very shocked jordan managed to reach this high amount of immigrants
+1
Level 80
May 24, 2023
I think that this needs updating in light of events of the past year and a half or so.
+1
Level ∞
Oct 26, 2023
Not really.
+2
Level 29
Oct 26, 2023
Doesn't the Vatican city have 100% foreign born population?
+1
Level 60
Nov 20, 2023
It's by people, not percentage.
+1
Level 22
Oct 26, 2023
im surprised sweden isnt on here
+1
Level 51
Oct 26, 2023
sweden doesnt have a very big population
+1
Level 50
Oct 26, 2023
I think it would be cool to include a top country box to give a geographic hint, or a cause, like "war" or "natural disaster" if that is available in the data.
+1
Level 19
Oct 26, 2023
For those who were wondering why Kazakhstan was on there, I believe it's because many Russian men are fleeing to Kazakhstan to avoid being drafted to the war in Ukraine.
+3
Level 19
Oct 26, 2023
That may be part of it but it's actually a different reason as said in an earlier comment
+1
Level 26
Mar 20, 2024
i think uzbek, tajik, turkmen, kyrgis people go there for work/study
+1
Level 44
Oct 30, 2023
Doubtful, given the quiz was last updated almost a year before the current invasion began.