Latin America: A Land of Migrants

As some of you may remember, a few weeks ago we wrote about migrants making their way north to the United States. However, this forms only part of the story. After all, many Latin American countries themselves form the final destination for people seeking better lives for themselves and their families. In this spirit, this week we’re looking at the percentage of people in each country that was born abroad.

Unsurprisingly, some of the region’s stablest democracies feature the highest international migrant stock. Between 8-11% of the populations of Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, and Chile are foreign-born, reflecting the job opportunities and prime locations of these countries. Meanwhile, Andean countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru have all seen a boost in their numbers owing to the millions of Venezuelans who have arrived to their countries in recent years.

On the flip side, for some of their neighbors the situation is quite different. Brazil’s historically large immigration – which saw people coming from Japan, Europe, and the Middle East – has lessened in recent decades, meaning today a vast majority of people within the country were born there. As for Nicaragua and the countries of the Northern Triangle, socioeconomic and political turbulence has led to the countries serving as sources, rather than destinations, for large-scale migration—leading to all four falling on the lower end of our chart.

Modern Latin America has its roots in the large-scale migration seen from around the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Migration today seems to only make the news when it involves Central Americans heading to the US border, but that ignores the very dynamic intraregional migration trends of the last century, and the significant immigrant populations seen across the region today.

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