UN: India-UAE, India-US among top 10 migration corridors by 2024

The International Organization for Migration’s “World Migration Report 2026” released on Tuesday said that as of mid-2024, approximately 304 million people around the world were living in countries other than their country of birth.

International migrants have also increased as a share of the global population, but only incrementally, from 2.9% in 1990 to 3.7% in 2024.

The inter-country corridor from Mexico to the United States remains the largest in the world, with about 11 million people, the report said.

The second largest number of refugees is from Afghanistan to Iran, followed by Syria to Türkiye, consisting mainly of refugees displaced by the Syrian civil war. The corridor between Russia and Ukraine occupies the fourth position.

The India-United Arab Emirates corridor is the fifth largest corridor and is mainly populated by migrant workers. The report states that more than 8 million international immigrants live in the United Arab Emirates, with Indians being the largest ethnic group.

The India-US migration corridor is the sixth largest in the world, the report said. However, the India-US corridor is the second largest migration corridor involving North American countries, after the Mexico-US corridor.

The report states that approximately 3.2 million Indian immigrants will live in the United States in 2024, making them the second largest foreign-born group after Mexicans. However, current estimates by other agencies put the Indian diaspora in the United States at about five million.

“The number of international migrants from India has continued to increase significantly over the past few decades, with many arriving in the United States as highly skilled workers or international students,” the IOM report said.

The number of Indians in the United States is closely followed by immigrants from two other Asian countries, China and the Philippines, which will have nearly 2.5 million and about 2.3 million immigrants respectively living in the United States in 2024, the report added.

The report notes that expatriates also engage in political activities and advocate for policy changes in countries of origin and destination.

“The Indian diaspora in the United States, particularly through organizations such as the US-India Political Action Committee, has influenced US-India relations. Indian-Americans have played a role in strengthening bilateral trade agreements, defense cooperation and visa policies to the benefit of both countries,” the UN report said.

Some other important migration corridors from Asia involve large numbers of migrant workers from countries such as India and Bangladesh to Gulf states such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The top 20 international migration corridors between countries in 2024 also include the Bangladesh-India corridor and India-Saudi Arabia, ranked 11th.

The report notes that in Asia, the distribution of female and male migrants across the top ten countries of destination and origin is more diverse than in other regions. Among the main destination countries, the Gulf countries (including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) have a much higher proportion of male migrants than female migrants.

At the same time, India has a higher proportion of female immigrants than male immigrants. Among the top 10 countries of origin in Asia, almost all (except China and the Philippines) have a higher proportion of male immigrants than female immigrants.

Countries with extremely high proportions of male immigrants include India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Myanmar and Indonesia. This male-dominated immigration pattern is largely determined by labor migration trends, particularly to the Gulf and Southeast Asian countries, where demand from sectors such as construction, manufacturing and agriculture continues to drive the migration of working-age men.

This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.