As migration grows, immigrants face greater barriers. (Environmental Intelligence).

An estimated 175 million people lived outside their country of birth in 2000, according to a new report by the United Nations Population Division. That is more than double the number who did so in 1970. Regionally, Europe hosts the largest migrant population (56 million), followed by Asia (50 million) and North America (41 million).

Among individual nations, the United States has the largest migrant population in absolute numbers, at 35 million. Russia ranks second, at 13 million. In percentage terms, the leading host nations are the United Arab Emirates, where 74 percent. of the residents are migrants, Kuwait with 58 percent, and Jordan with 40 percent.

In the developed world, 1 in 10 people is a migrant, compared to 1 in 70 in developing countries. Still, migrant populations are large in several developing countries, particularly in India (6 million), Saudi Arabia (5 million), and Pakistan (4 million).

Migrants sent home $62 billion in remittances in 2000. In countries such as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, El Salvador, Jamaica, Jordan, Nicaragua, and Yemen, remittances accounted for more than 10 percent of GDP.

Between 1995 and 2000, 12 million people migrated from less-developed to more-developed regions. With the overall populations of developed countries projected to decline as a result of below-replacement fertility levels, the report notes that the European Union could prevent its total population from declining by maintaining the immigration levels of the 1990s. For Europe as a whole, immigration would need to double. And even greater immigration would be needed to maintain the working-age population and prevent population aging. In many countries, says the report, maintaining the ratio of working-age people to those 65 and older would require levels of immigration that are "entirely out of line with reasonable expectations."

A growing number of nations, both developed and developing, have adopted policies aimed at curtailing, rather than encouraging, immigration. Whereas only 7 percent of the world's governments viewed immigration levels as too high in 1976, that share had increased to 23 percent by 2001. By then, 44 percent of developed countries and 39 percent of developing countries had adopted policies to lower immigration.

In contrast, in Eastern Europe, a majority of countries has adopted policies to discourage people from leaving. The end of the Cold War and conflict in the Balkans triggered large movements of people within--and out of--those countries in the early 1990s. Some 1.5 to 2 million people migrated annually within Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

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