Immigration – entering the country for permanent residence. It also includes the process of repatriation – the return to the country of origin of citizens who had previously left it.
It falls into five main categories:
★ Legal immigration. It’s a right to legal permanent residence in a different country;
★ Work immigration. Many countries depend on foreign labor. Agreements on its contracting are concluded between countries with surplus labor in some regions of Asia and, for example, several countries in the Middle East and Europe;
★ Illegal immigration. Almost all industrialized countries have illegal immigrants as we can read about in essays on the topic. Some of them cross the border, others remain in a foreign country with expired visas; they usually replace jobs that are at the lowest level of the labor hierarchy;
★ Political immigration. The size of this category was extremely insignificant, then it increased noticeably – to more than 1 million people by the end of the 90s. Asylum requests are made by people for political reasons, as well as due to the difficult economic situation in their countries;
★ Refugees. Submitted by the UN, in the world at the end of the 90s. there were more than 22 million refugees. Most of today’s refugees live in special camps. Trusted by the UN or private agencies. It is estimated that only less than 1% of refugees settle in the developed Western world.
Immigration Types
In many countries of the world, immigration has a great impact on the size of the population and its composition (and, as a consequence, on the economic and political situation). Immigration in the modern world, especially in recent decades, played an important and multifaceted role in the development of mankind.
Immigration is usually understood as a territorial movement of the population crossing the state border. Modern science distinguishes the following types of international migrations on a chronological basis: permanent, temporary-permanent (movement of the population for a period of 1 to 6 years), seasonal, and the so-called pendulum (caused by daily or weekly travel to neighboring countries, as a rule, for work).
Without exception, immigration is caused by two types of reasons: political and economic. Migration for political reasons is a consequence of the existence (emergence, fall) of certain political regimes in some places of the consequence of armed conflicts, and often gives rise to a large number of forced immigrants, refugees, displaced persons, etc. A characteristic feature of such migrations is their irregularity. It should also be noted that politically induced migrations, although caused by non-economic reasons, lead to the redistribution of labor resources between countries, which affects the development of the economies of both countries.
Conclusion
The scale of migration for political reasons is not comparable to migration for economic reasons. The last is more or less permanent and involves a huge number of people. Many people move from poor places to seek a better life in more rich and wealthy ones. But the economy of the Western world depends on such labor, so immigration is not only necessary for people but very often it’s needed for countries where people migrate to as well.
