54 lakh foreigners work in India
Fri Mar 2, 2012 4:58 am (PST)
India in top 10 global immigration hubs....Rukmini Shrinivasan
New Delhi: The number of foreign immigrants living in India is steadily declining, but India continues to be among the 10 countries with the highest in-migration in the world. At the same time, India sends the fourth largest number of emigrants to other countries.
In 2010, there were 5.4 million foreign-born persons living in India, according to new estimates released by the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. These numbers make India home to the ninth largest number of foreign-born persons in the world.
But this number has been on decline since post-Partition migration and an influx of refugees from Bangladesh following the 1971 war. In 1990, there were 7.5 million foreignborn persons in India, and by 2000 this number was down to 6.4 million due to the death of the older immigrants.
In the 2001 census, 97% of all immigrants were from south Asian countries. Three million were from Bangladesh, followed by a million from Pakistan and 600,000 from Nepal.
US home to most immigrants
New Delhi: India is among the top countries when it comes to attracting immigrants. While a source country-wise break-up is not available for immigrants in 2010, past trends indicate that the likes of French diplomats in Delhi, American investment bankers in Mumbai and British techies in Bangalore form a tiny part of this diaspora.
These numbers are de facto and should cover both legal and illegal immigration, a UN Migration Team spokesperson said. However, unnaturally high growth rates for some border districts indicate that undocumented immigration does exist.
"There is a difference between historical migration, such as that from Bangladesh, and new migration flows which we in India need to acknowledge," says Binod Kharia, chairperson of the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University and director of the International Migration and Diaspora Studies Project, co-sponsored by the government of India.
The US remains by far the world's biggest destination for immigrants, and this number continues to grow. Pakistan is at number13.
India is also the world's fourth biggest exporter of people-in 2010, India sent out over 5.6 million people as emigrants. Mexico, China and Pakistan form the top three. Though not the largest group, Indian emigrants sent home more money in remittances-$39 billion-than any other country's emigrants.
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