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Washington Post: A revealing map of who wants to move to the U.S.

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  • Washington Post: A revealing map of who wants to move to the U.S.

    A revealing map of who wants to move to the U.S.

    The Washington Post
    March 22, 2013

    By Max Fisher

    Gallup released some new data this week on migration, for which they
    asked people from 154 countries if they would like to migrate, and if
    so where to. The United States was by far the most popular
    destination; Gallup estimates that 138 million people would like to
    relocate there. The United Kingdom was the second-most popular, with
    42 million potential migrants, followed by Canada, France and Saudi
    Arabia.

    Those numbers are so high that I wondered how many people in
    particular countries want to move to the United States. Gallup
    actually posted some of those numbers on its Web site and when I asked
    for more, kindly sent them over. I've mapped out the data above.

    It turns out that there are 44 countries where, according to Gallup's
    data, more than 5 percent of the adult population say say they would
    like to move to the United States. Five percent! That's a remarkably
    large share. In 15 of those countries, the proportion of the
    population that wants to move to the United States is above 10
    percent. And there are three countries where more than a quarter of
    the adult population would like to move here: Liberia, Sierra Leone
    and the Dominican Republic.

    First, a note about the map: It labels all countries where more than 5
    percent of adults want to move to the United States; in the darker
    countries, an even larger share of the population wants to
    migrate. But you might notice that the key does not increase by a
    fixed amount, but rather by incrementally larger amounts. I did this
    because the data are not distributed evenly but tend to cluster toward
    the bottom; mapping it out this way makes it easier to see the
    variation. Just keep in mind that the difference between a yellow
    country and an orange country, for example, is not mathematically the
    same as the difference between and an orange and a red country. Okay,
    back to the results.

    The data do not, as you might expect, always correlate with wealth. In
    other words, while it looks as though people in poorer countries are,
    in general, more likely to want to move to the United States, this
    doesn't explain the data entirely. GDP per capita is quite low in
    South Asia and the Middle East, but few countries in those regions
    broke about 5 percent.

    Rather, it appears that people in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa
    tend have an especially strong desire to the move to the United
    States, which also tends to have a high favorability rating in those
    regions. Latin America, of course, has a strong historical and
    cultural connection to the U.S., a fellow product of New World
    colonialism. As for sub-Saharan Africa, I have heard it said by
    scholars of the region that many Africans are well aware of, and tend
    to admire, the relative prosperity of African Americans.

    The country with the very highest number of adults who want to move to
    the United States is Liberia, where a staggering 37.3 percent say they
    would like to migrate here. That's astonishing: Imagine if more than
    one third of an entire country picked up and relocated. Part of this
    may be due to Liberia's strong historical connection to the United
    States; the country was established by freed American slaves in the
    early 19th century, celebrates Thanksgiving, flies a one-star version
    of the American flag and has depended on U.S. assistance since its
    two successive civil wars in the 1980s and 1990s. Liberia's high
    rating may also help explain second-ranked Sierra Leone, just next
    door.

    There are a handful of other countries with close historical ties to
    the United States on this list, which may help explain their
    inclusion. Though Southeast Asia is largely gray, one of only two
    outliers is the Philippines, which was of course a U.S. colony during
    the early 20th century. Armenia might be explained by the large
    Armenian population here.

    The only two developed, wealthy economies on this list have very close
    cultural connections to America: Israel and the United Kingdom. About
    6 percent of British and Israeli adults say they would like to migrate
    to the United States. And both countries, of course, build their
    foreign policies around a reliance on American friendship while also
    trying to avoid becoming a pawn of the United States or, according to
    a phrase sometimes used in British politics, `the 51st state.' In
    2011, the Israeli government sponsored a series of ads aimed at
    Israelis who had moved to the United States, urging them to remember
    their Israeli roots and to move home if possible.

    There are two absences on this map that I found surprising: India and
    China. There are very large Indian-American and Chinese-American
    populations here, of course, and a steady stream of arrivals from both
    countries. It's possible that the size of the countries made polling
    more difficult. It's also possible that those immigrants tend to come
    from certain regional or demographic groups within China and India,
    meaning that the rest of those countries are less interested in
    migrating. Still, even if only 1 percent of India and China wish to
    become American, that's still 25 million people.

    Finally, consider what would happen if all 138 million of the adults
    who want to move to the United States were suddenly able to follow
    through on that. (The cost of uprooting one's family and making the
    trip, of course, might be even more limiting than American immigration
    laws.) The U.S. population would grow to 453 million, and it would be
    a potentially much more African and Latin community. And more British,
    too. Sounds like an interesting mix.


    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/03/22/a-revealing-map-of-who-wants-to-move-to-the-u-s/

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