The chart above is from the Economist's special report on immigration. Canada ranks third in both percentage of immigrants and total number in millions, just beating out Britain by 100,000 people. Incidentally, 5.9 million is more than the entire population of Finland.
The CIC also anticipates admitting an average 250,000 new immigrants a year over the next few years, which might drive Canada up in the ratings.
1 comment:
The thing I'd like to add to this is, though, that the high number or percentage of foreign-born population in a country _in_and_of_itself_ isn't necessary a positive or a negative achievement.
Canada, USA and Australia have a unique history in the sense that here the indigenous population got largely destroyed relatively recently, and therefore the current population is largely imported. Because of that past, Australia, Canada and the US have always (since their founding) had very different takes on immigration than most European countries, which, until recently, were very densely populated and didn't see the need to import people in large numbers to settle in the country to support the growth of the economy.
I am an immigrant now myself and I have always been very pro-immigrants'-rights, but mass immigration is, of course, a much more complex issue than just the debate around tolerance, diversity, multi-culturalism, etc. Mass immigration also puts a lot of stress on the country's (public) infrastructure, and, in some ways, even political stability and social life. The reason why North America started importing people was originally just economic growth - not values like tolerance - which in some cases has led and leads to exploitation here and elsewhere.
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