In case you missed it. . . .
Saturday, December 18, was, according to the United Nations, “International Migrants Day,” a day celebrated everywhere UN proclamations are honored, wherever that is.
There is, of course, a website devoted to the occasion, which notes–presumably with a straight virtual face–that the theme of this year’s observance is “harnessing the potential of human mobility.”
Migrants, we are told, “contribute with their knowledge, networks, and skills to build stronger, more resilient communities.” So having a lot of them is a good thing.
And it’s a good thing that is getting even better. In 2000, there were 173 million international migrants. Ten years later, in 2010, there were 221 million. By 2020, the number had swelled to 281 million, about 3.6 per cent of the entire world population. And the number grows year by year.
Migrants typically bring their Knowledge, Networks, and Skills from third-world countries of origin–which apparently have no use for such–to new homes in the developed world. The luckiest country in the latter group is, of course, the United States, which was fortunate enough in 2020 to host 51 million of them, about 18 percent of the world’s total.
The largest exporter of migrants is India, which in 2020 had 18 million of its nationals living abroad, followed by Mexico and the Russian Federation (11 million each), China (10 million) and Syria (8 million).
The International Organization for Migration (IOM), the agency of the UN that sponsors Migrants Day, broke the good news in a December 18th tweet, which included a handy assortment of emojis.
Interestingly, you will note that the Day is for celebrating the contributions made by migrants not only to their hosts–which are manifest and virtually self evident–but also to their home countries, which they benefit by, well, leaving.
Read more about all the benefits of worldwide migration here.