Comment by mothballed | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mothballed | Hacker News Reader

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If that's the case the theocratic monarchy in UAE takes the cake, I think, although maybe there are similar amounts elsewhere.

Pretty much all the highest % immigration countries are monarchy that I can think of, since in those country another tax payer is an easy win and immigrants that cause problem can be instantly booted so there is very little downside to taking anybody with $1 or a job who cares to come.

  Top Countries by Percentage of Immigrants (approximate recent figures):
  Qatar: Around 77% (or 76.7%).
  United Arab Emirates (UAE): Around 74-88% (some sources   show higher figures for earlier years).
  Kuwait: Around 69-73%.
  Bahrain: Around 55%.

Singapore not far behind (~40% from memory), a one party state but with voting, sometimes described as essentially an elected recallable monarchy. Also note most of those countries have relatively low emigration rates of native citizens.

I think "immigrants" is the wrong statistic here, since it includes workers with no path to citizenship. (In some cases, they can't leave because their employer stole their passport.)

It confuses "this is a good place to resettle" with "here I can arbitrage higher wages in order to send money back home."

I'm not sure it is wrong. I'd have no path to UAE citizenship, nor do I particularly want one, I'd likely have lower wages. And I'd still like to live there more than most places.

You're still an immigrant even if you can't become a citizen.

> > it includes workers with no path to citizenship

> You're still an immigrant even if you can't become a citizen.

Yes, like I said. My point is that these two scenarios are very different:

1. "I am +1 to the immigrant count because this is a great place for me and my family to live and I wish for us to move here permanently."

2. "I am +1 to the immigrant count temporarily because the wages here are so much more than I could earn at home, and I'm remitting that money back to my family who live somewhere else. As much as this is an opportunity for me, we could never move here because same wages would have my family homeless and starving, making this a terrible place to move permanently."

Both people are happily adding to the "immigrants inside" count, but they are very different judgements about the country.

That's a good point. Perhaps a better statistic would be people who want to emigrate or immigrate. We're introducing a bias by measuring only those who actually do.

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