Migration to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations has recorded a 10 per cent increase between 2004-05 and Indians have been assessed as the most qualified immigrants.
Four million new immigrants entered the OECD countries on a permanent basis in 2005
and more than half of the Indian immigrants were assessed as having at least tertiary education, says the OECD annual report titled, ‘International Migration Outlook 2007’.
As highlighted in the report, Indians were the first nationality of applications approved among the “highly skilled migrant programme” in the United Kingdom and accounted for 40 per cent of all approvals during the year under survey. In Australia, Chinese and Indians accounted for 30 per cent of the General Skilled Migration Programme in 2005.
Chinese and Indians also account for an important part of foreign students studying abroad. China is the top origin country of foreign students in the OECD countries (more than 15 per cent of the total), followed by India (6 per cent). Chinese and Indian students are particularly present in countries including Australia, United States, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
Eleven percent of nurses and 18 per cent of doctors in the OECD countries in the year 2000 were foreign born.
This, the report says, is approximately the same percentage as that of all highly skilled migrants in the work force, while pointing out that African and Caribbean nations are disproportionately affected by the out-migration of health professionals.