Immigration is now at the center of American and British politics.
One of the primary reasons the British voted to leave the European Union was anti-immigration sentiment. Donald Trump’s rise as a major political figure – with over 40% of voting public supporting him – is largely attributable to his insistence that curtailingimmigration is the way to regain America’s “greatness”.
Nigel Farage, former leader of the anti-immigration UK Independence Party, says foreign-born residents have made his country “unrecognizable.” “The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems,” Trump said in reference to immigration during his announcement that he was running for President.
Trump and Farage see immigration as an existential threat. But do the United Kingdom and the United States have especially large foreign-born populations? Is the number of foreign-born residents in those countries rising at rates faster than in other countries? And how is the composition of the foreign-born population changing?
We can answer these questions because every five years, the United Nations Population Division publishes estimates of the size and birthplace of every country’s foreign-born population. These data are obtained primarily from population censuses done by these nations. These estimates include unauthorized immigrants.
Our analysis of the data shows that, among large countries, the United Kingdom and United States do in fact have very high proportions of foreign-born residents and that these populations are growing quickly. The U.S. and UK are changing, and it should not be shocking that it has provoked a reaction.
But the UK and U.S. are not alone. Foreign-born residents make up a similar share of the population—and are growing at a similarly high rate—in countries like Canada, Germany, and Spain. Though anti-immigration groups have emerged within these countries, they have not seen mainstream nativist political movements as intense as those in the United States and United Kingdom.
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