Immigration and Adaptation - Essay Example

The number of international immigrants has grown rapidly over the last fifteen years. Migration is an essential process of ensuring an interconnected world. On the other hand, it has become an important discussion point for many nations. The increasing number of refugees across different nations often forms the face of migration in the media, but close to 90% of the worlds 258 million refugees voluntarily moved across the borders for economic reasons (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2017). The voluntary migration is usually gradual, ensuring less stress on social fabrics and logistics of destination states.

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The UNDESA report reveals different facts that were out of my knowledge. Before analyzing the above report, I knew that the global population was growing faster than the number of international immigrants. The UNDESA report proves that the number of global immigrants encompasses 3.4% of the world population in the year 2017 as compared to 2.8% in the year 2000. In Europe, Canada and United States, 12% of inhabitants are international immigrants (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2017). The above case indicates that the number of international immigrants is growing faster than the global population which only stands at 1.09% per year (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2017). Understanding the rate of population growth is significant in ensuring population control in different countries.

The fact that Europe and Asia have the largest number of global immigrants contradicts my previous notion about the international immigrants. Earlier, I knew that most migrants were found in South America and in Africa due to the large numbers of refugees in those regions. Europe and Asia mostly experience voluntary migrations which contribute 90% of the total number of global refugees (Gerland et al., 2014). Understanding the number of refugees per region is important in ensuring effective economic planning.

According to United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2017), the number of refugees constitutes 0.3% of the total global population, a scenario that contradicts my previous notion. I knew that the total number of refugees across the world was 22.3 million which represent 0.24% of the world population. The variation in the number may result from the high growth rate in the number of international refugees.

References

Gerland, P., Raftery, A. E., Sevcikova, H., Li, N., Gu, D., Spoorenberg, T., ... & Bay, G. (2014). World population stabilization unlikely this century. Science, 346(6206), 234-237.

United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2017). Trends in International Migrant Stock: The 2017 revision (United Nations database, POP/DB/MIG/Stock/Rev.2017).