When it comes to immigration, there are two ways through which you can immigrate to a country. These are through legal and illegal immigration means.
Legal immigration has to do with legally getting into a foreign country. On this blog, we’ve talked about some of the ways you can legally immigrate to another country. We’ve also talked on ways you can temporarily move to another country, and permanently immigrate to another country.
In this post, we will be talking on which developed country has the most illegal immigrants.
Countries With The Most Illegal Immigrants
The number of illegal immigrants by normal standards, cannot be easily counted. This is as a result of the fact that only a few illegal immigrants are counted during census or other legal estimation techniques.
This number is equally hard as different countries tend to have different measures through which they estimate its number of illegal immigrants.
However, despite all of these, in 2008, an estimated 1.9 to 3.8 million illegal immigrants was calculated in Europe. In Spain alone, in 2016, about 2.8 to 3.5 million illegal immigrants were counted. USA had the most as about 11.3 million illegal immigrants were counted in USA around the same year. As weird as it sounds, illegal immigrants accounted for about 3.5% of the total population in USA.
Now, let’s put this information in a tabular form.
| Country Name | Estimate Number of Illegal Immigrants |
|---|---|
| USA | 11.3 million |
| UK | 0.42-0.86 million |
| Italy | 0.28-0.46 million |
| Germany | 0.2-0.46 million |
| Spain | 2.8-3.5 million |
| France | 0.18-0.35 million |
| Greece | 0.17-0.21 million |
| Korea | 0.21 million |
What Are The Most Popular Professionals For Immigrants In The USA?
While we’ve talked about illegal immigration in USA and a few other countries, let’s discuss what these people tend to do.
Again, as weird as it may sound, illegal immigrants make a significant contribution to a country’s economy. According to a study in 2014, immigrants are occupied in many different fields. The kinda jobs they take, often has to do with Leisure and hospitality, construction and manufacturing amongst others.
For legal immigrants, the top 3 occupational areas were wholesale and retail services, business services and manufacturing.
| Industry | Legal Immigrants | Illegal Immigrants | US Citizens |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agriculture | 1.6 | 4.6 | 1.2 |
| Mining | 0.4 | 0.5 | 0.7 |
| Construction | 6.2 | 16.3 | 5.9 |
| Manufacturing | 11.1 | 12.5 | 10 |
| Wholesale/Retail | 12.8 | 11.7 | 14.8 |
| Transportation/Utilities | 5.5 | 3.3 | 4.9 |
| Information | 1.9 | 1.3 | 2.3 |
| Financial Activities | 5.9 | 3.3 | 6.6 |
| Business Services | 12.5 | 14 | 11 |
| Educational/ Health Services | 23 | 7.2 | 23.3 |
| Leisure/ Hospitality | 10.1 | 17.6 | 9.8 |
| Public Administration | 3.1 | 0 | 4.6 |
| Other Services | 6.1 | 7.7 | 5 |
For some of these jobs, work permits are needed. For others, work permits ain’t needed. BTW, here are some of the jobs that do not need work permit in Canada. You should also check out some of the highly demanded jobs.
