A crore Indians migrated in last 20 years: UN report

The just-released UN report on international migration has said that India has the world’s biggest Diaspora at 18 million. It also highlighted that COVID-19 may have disrupted the migration of at least about 2 million global migrants till mid-2020s, reports senior journalist Sanjib Kr Baruah.

New Delhi: In the 20 years from 2000 to 2020, ten million or one crore Indians migrated to foreign countries, the UN report on international migration for 2020 released on Friday has found.

At a total of 18 million migrants, India has the world’s biggest Diaspora or people who were living outside their country of birth. India is followed far behind by Mexico (11 million), Russia (11 million), China (10 million) and Syria (8 million).

Interestingly, during 2000-2020, the size of the migrant population coming into India grew as well as for nearly all countries of the world. India saw a huge gain during the period (about 10 million) followed by Syria, Venezuela, China and the Philippines.

In 2020, about 281 million people are estimated to be living outside of their country of origin.

The Indian Diaspora is distributed across a number of major countries with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) being the biggest point of destination for Indians with 3.5 million, followed by the United States with 2.7 million, and Saudi Arabia with 2.5 million.

Many Indians have also migrated to Australia, Canada, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, and the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland.

While the majority of the increase in the regional migration corridor of South Asia was due to labour migration from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka to the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, it is yet too soon to understand the full extent of the COVID-19 pandemic which in 2020 “may have slowed the growth of this regional migration corridor”.

“In many of the GCC countries, tens of thousands of migrant workers in the construction, retail and transportation sectors lost their jobs due to the pandemic and were required to return home,” the report pointed out.

The report highlighted the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic may have disrupted the migration pattern by about 2 million.

“It is too soon to understand the full extent of the impact of the pandemic on migration trends, the present highlights indicate that the disruptions caused by COVID-19 pandemic may have reduced the international migrants by about 2 million globally by mid-2020s, corresponding to a decrease of around 27 per cent in the growth expected from July 2019 to June 2020,” the report added.

The increasing trend of international migration of Indians is in keeping with the worldwide trend as about 108 million migrated to foreign countries during 2000-2020.

While most of the global increase was due to labour and family migrations, humanitarian crises in many parts of the world contributed to an increase of 17 million in the number of refugees and asylum seekers between 2000 and 2020.

In 2020, the number of people forcibly displaced across national borders worldwide stood at 34 million, double the number in 2000.