Countries with the Highest Proportion of Immigrants
For people living in cosmopolitan urban centers, it’s easy to overestimate the prevalence of immigrants around the world.
The median proportion of foreign-born people in all countries is just over 5%. In countries with a population greater than one million, only four are majority foreign-born, and only eight surpass the one-third mark.
Here are the top 20 countries with the highest proportion of immigrants in their populations:
| Country | Immigrants as a percentage of population |
|---|---|
 United Arab Emirates | 88% |
 Qatar | 77% |
 Kuwait | 73% |
 Bahrain | 55% |
 Oman | 46% |
 Singapore | 43% |
 Saudi Arabia | 39% |
 Jordan | 34% |
 Australia | 30% |
 Switzerland | 29% |
 New Zealand | 29% |
 Lebanon | 25% |
 Israel | 23% |
 Canada | 21% |
 Kazakhstan | 20% |
 Sweden | 20% |
 Austria | 19% |
 Germany | 19% |
 Gabon | 19% |
 Ireland | 18% |
Source: UN via World Population Review. Note: Only countries with a population of greater than one million are included.
The United Arab Emirates comes out on top for the highest proportion of immigrants in its population. Impressively, the small Middle Eastern nation ranks sixth in the world for total immigrant population (8.7 million people).
Other countries on the Arabian Peninsula also rank at the top of this list. In Qatar, current host of the 2022 World Cup, 3-in-4 people are immigrants. The high proportion of foreign workers in the country also results in an extreme demographic skew—approximately 75% of the population of Qatar is male.
The one extreme outlier in the region is war-torn Yemen, where only 1.3% of the (Read more…)