Could West Africa be the next big source of American immigrants?
A new Gallup poll, taken in 154 countries, finds that around 13 percent of the world’s adults say they would like to move to another country — the United States is the top desired destination with a projected 138 million people willing to move to the country. Britain, Canada, France, and Saudi Arabia come next. ...
A new Gallup poll, taken in 154 countries, finds that around 13 percent of the world's adults say they would like to move to another country -- the United States is the top desired destination with a projected 138 million people willing to move to the country. Britain, Canada, France, and Saudi Arabia come next.
A new Gallup poll, taken in 154 countries, finds that around 13 percent of the world’s adults say they would like to move to another country — the United States is the top desired destination with a projected 138 million people willing to move to the country. Britain, Canada, France, and Saudi Arabia come next.
The survey also ranks countries by percentage of population who would like to move to the United States, finding extraordinarily high numbers from Liberia and Sierra Leone. Guinea also cracks the top 11. Along with Cambodia, these are the only non-Latin American countries on the list:
Of course, these are relatively small countries. The estimated 1.5 million or so Liberians who would want to move to the United States if they could are dwarfed by the 19 million Chinese who want to. But when you look at the raw numbers, Nigeria comes out extremely high, along with Ghana:
America’s African-born population has been growing, but it’s still pretty small. According to 2011 census data, Nigerians account for .6 percent of U.S. foreign born residents. Ghana was .3 percent, Liberia was .2 percent, and Sierra Leone was .1 percent with “West Africa, other” accounting for .2. (India and China, by contrast, are over 4 percent, and obviously the vast majority are from Latin America.)
Obviously most of those who want to come to the United States won’t be able to, but the preference survey does suggest we should expect those numbers to increase.
Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating
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