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mothballed • yesterday at 10:37 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

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.

Replies

Terr_ • yesterday at 11:00 PM

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."

➕ show 1 reply
martin-t • today at 12:17 AM

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.