The moving of people or animals and settling down in another different region or country to which they are not native is referred to as immigration. The purpose of immigration include; breeding, temperature, political, economic, family re-unification, poverty, natural disaster or even voluntary desire to change one’s environment.
One of the immigration theories differentiate between Push as well as Pull. The push factors are the most important motives for emigration from your home country. Differentials in wage rates are however usual in the case of economic migration – labor migration in most cases. In a situation where the wage value in your new country is far above that of your home country, you may decide to migrate; in as much the costs are not too high for you to bear.
In the 19th century, the immigrant flow of the U.S. economic expansion was increased and in effect, about 20 percent of the US population was foreign born against today’s value of 10 percent that makes up a considerable amount of the entire labor force. People that were considered poor from under-developed nations can enjoy far higher standards of living in developed that that of their country of origin.
Costs of immigration include; the implicit costs, price of ticket, loss of community ties and lost work time. All these costs play key role in the pull of emigrants away from their home country. However, travel time and costs decreased dramatically between 18th and early 20th century as transport technology improved. In the 18th century, travel across the Atlantic used to take up to 5 weeks, but it took a mere 8 days around the time of the 20th century. In immigration theory, the immigration rates tend to be higher when the opportunity cost is lower.
In a contract of employment, immigration and emigration are sometimes mandatory. Therefore, workers of transactional corporations as well as religious missionaries, the diplomatic service and international non-governmental organizations – who are frequently called ‘expatriates” are expected to work overseas by definitions and their conditions for employment are quite the same or better than those applying in the host country for the same work.
You can migrate for personal reasons depending on relationship such as going to stay with a partner or family, but in a few instances, you may desire to immigrate to a new country as a transferred patriotism. The avoidance of criminal justice like arrest is a personal motivation. Nevertheless, if a crime is internationally recognized, this type of immigration and emigration is not normally legal, although criminals may disguise their identities of finding other loopholes to evade detection.
Barriers to Immigration
There can be barriers to immigration and they come in legal, natural and social forms. Immigrants leave everything familiar such as their family, culture, friends and support network when leaving their country. They not only liquidate their assets at a large loss, but also incur high expenses of moving abroad. As if that is not enough, they are also confronted with many uncertainties like where to live, searching for work, new laws, language or accent issues, new culture norms, likely racism as well as other exclusionary behavior towards them and their family. These barriers will limit international migration to a great extent.