Indian Migrants’ Choice Of Destination Changing : OECD Report; Migrants To Germany, Australia Rising

India sends the fourth largest number of migrants to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries after China, Romania and Syria according to the report OECD International Migration Outlook, 2018.

The 34-member OECD bloc consists of countries like the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany among others. Most of the OECD nations have had high HDI figures through the last few decades.

The number of Indian migrants to OECD countries has increased from 113,082 in 2000 to 271,503 in 2016, Mint has reported. Indians constituted 3.8 per cent of total migrants to OECD nations in 2016.

While the number of migrants to US, UK, Germany, Canada and Australia fell by 10 percent in comparison to 2000, they still account for 75 per cent of Indian migrants to the OECD in 2016. Remittances to India from the OECD countries has remained more or less the same, accounting for a third of total remittances to India. US accounts for half of the remittances to India from OECD nations.

The press release on the report further added "In 2017, around 5 million new permanent migrants arrived in OECD countries. In addition, more than 4 million temporary foreign workers were recorded in total in OECD countries in 2016, the highest since we began measuring such flows ten years ago. International student numbers have also reached record levels, with more than 3 million enrolled in higher education establishments in OECD countries. Overall, 127 million foreign-born people were living in OECD countries in 2017."