According to the latest data, the number of people moving to high-income economies seeking permanent residency in 2022 peaked, with India overtaking China as the largest source of immigrants in 2020 and 2021.

After the outbreak of COVID-19 (COVID-19) subsided, another wave of immigrants around the world. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a group of 38 market economy countries, the number of new migrants moving to OECD members reached 6.1 million in 2022, up 26 percent year on year and 14 percent from 2019 before the outbreak.

Among them, the United States was the largest destination, receiving 1.04 million people, followed by Germany (640,000), the United Kingdom (520,000), Spain (470,000) and Canada (430,000).

About 40% of the new immigrants came from the families of the early immigrants. Although the number of people who went abroad to apply for jobs accounted for only about 20 percent of the total, it was up 36 percent year on year.

The number of immigrants reached a new high, mainly due to the backlog of immigrant applications after the epidemic

In an interview with Nikkei Asia, Jonathan Chaloff (senior policy analyst at the OECD's International Immigration Department, said the main reason for the record number of immigrants is that the large backlog of immigration applications was finally processed after the epidemic.

The second is the strong demand for manpower in most OECD countries facing labor shortages. In addition, policy changes are also a factor, with several major OECD countries, including Canada, Australia and the UK, making major policy changes to accept more foreign migrants.

India replaced China as the largest source of immigrants in 2020, while in 2021, more than 400,000 Indian citizens went to OECD countries, followed by China (280,000), Romania (210,000) and Ukraine (180,000).

Charloff noted that many Indian students travel to countries like Canada and Australia because they allow graduates to stay and work. They are familiar with English, so they are easier to integrate into these countries.