187 Million Immigrants Have Moved to Freer Countries
https://www.cato.org/blog/187-million-immigrants-have-moved-freer-countries

MAY 3, 2021 11:52AM

187 Million Immigrants Have Moved to Freer Countries

By David J. Bier

SHARE

A great benefit of immigration is that it allows people to escape all kinds of tyranny. As George Mason University’s Ilya Somin has written in his excellent Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom, “Empowering more people to vote with their feet can save millions from lives of poverty and oppression, and expand opportunities for meaningful political freedom for many more.” Indeed, immigration has already freed millions of people.

Using the Cato Institute‐​Fraser Institute Human Freedom Index and the United Nations Population Division’s international migrant stock data, it is possible to estimate that about 187 million people have moved to freer countries than the ones in which they were born. The average immigrant moving to a freer country moved 70 spots up the Human Freedom Index ranking. This is roughly like moving from Libya to Mexico or from Mexico to the United States.

Cuban immigrants have benefited the most from immigration, moving up, on average, 172 spots relative to their birth country, which is about the difference between the United States and Cuba (which isn’t actually ranked on the HFI due to a lack of data but for the purpose of this post, was—along with 11 other unfree, authoritarian countries where data was absent to make a specific score—assigned the lowest score in the Human Freedom Index). A total of 204 countries and territories were used for this article. The other top freedom‐​enhancing immigrant nationalities are Iranians (153 spots up), Saudis (140), Ethiopians (135), Chinese (134), Omanis (128), Algerians (123), Iraqis (123), Turks (122), and Vietnamese (121).

Figure 1 shows the breakdown by origin region for the immigrants who have moved to freer countries as of 2019. Nearly 43 million were born in South or East Asia, with the leading countries being China, Bangladesh, and India (10.5, 6.5, and 6.5 million, respectively). About 39 million more born in Europe with Russia, Poland, and Romania leading (9.3, 4.4, and 3.1 million, respectively). The Mideast and Central Asia saw 36.2 million freedom movers with Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan leading (8.3, 5.1, and 4.9 million, respectively). Another 34.1 million were from South or Central America and the Caribbean with Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia leading (11.8, 2.5, and 1.9 million, respectively). Africa added another 32.8 million with the most from Egypt, Morocco, and South Sudan (3.5, 3.1, and 2.6 million, respectively).