Indians Among Top Migrants to OECD Countries

The number of Indians migrating to countries that are a part of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has increased about twofold in the last two decades, new data shows. Indians ranked fourth in the world among people who migrated to OECD countries in 2016, behind China, Romania and Syria.

The OECD, an intergovernmental economic organization founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade, features 36 rich countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, France and Canada, as members.

Indians made up 2.9 percent of all migrants to OECD countries in 2000. This share increased to 3.8 percent in 2016, the latest year for which data is available, according to the OECD International Migration Outlook 2018 published recently, Livemint.com reported. The number of Indian migrants to OECD countries has risen from 113,082 in 2000 to 271,503 in 2016. The percentage of Indians was at the highest in 2010, when they comprised 4.9 percent of the people moving to an OECD country.

China topped the list, with more than half a million migrants. India, however, emerged as the top country whose citizens became nationals of an OECD country in 2016.

The countries to which Indians are relocating are becoming more diverse, the report added. While the United States and the United Kingdom accounted for a majority of Indian emigrants in the early 2000s, countries such as Australia and Germany are now seeing an increased inflow from India. The maximum number of migrants in Australia came from India as compared to any other country in 2016, the report said, citing OECD data.

Though the number of Indians moving to the top five destinations — the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany — fell by 10 percentage points since 2000, these countries still attracted 75 percent Indians in 2016, the report said. In 2016, the United States and the United Kingdom accounted for only 37 percent of Indians who migrated to OECD countries, as compared to almost 50 percent during 2000-2010.

About 30 percent of people who moved abroad from India migrated to OECD countries, down from 30.6 percent in 2010, the publication reported, citing World Bank data. Remittances from OECD countries to India have largely remained unchanged, and account for a third of total remittances to the country, according to the World Bank data.

OECD countries had over 4 million temporary foreign workers in 2016, the highest since the organization began measuring such flows 10 years ago, Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General, said in a statement. The main receiving countries for foreign workers were Poland (672,000, mainly from Ukraine) and the United States (660,000, with India as the main origin country), the report said.