Last Updated on March 5, 2021 by Filip Poutintsev

If you live in country ‘A’ and are willing to move to another country ‘B’ or ‘C’ of which you are not the native of and do not possess the citizenship to be eligible to live there as a permanent resident, you’d have to look for temporary job as a migrant worker unless you get all the formalities sorted out to be called a citizen. This entire process is called Immigration. Pros and Cons of Immigration

Pros and Cons of Immigration

Reasons for migration could be many but there are a lot of good and bad side of migrating to another country. In the recent past, millions of people from the middle east and central America fled to Europe and the US in search of a better future and good life. They obviously didn’t feel safe in their countries or were not able to find the best thing for themselves to prosper. But there can be many other reasons as well for migrating.

We will look into both sides (Good and Bad) and you can make the best decision for your good about migrating to another country.

Pros of Immigration

For migration to be advantageous either the country you are planning to go to should have a better lifestyle, good opportunities and need to be safer than your native country. OR, you need to feel that you’ve lived enough of a comfortable and luxurious life and seeking new challenges to face a whole new dimension to live the rest of your life. Following are the good things about migrating.

1. Better Life

Migrating to another country is always intended to make one’s life better. A good income helps spend life in a much comfortable way than it has been for the aspiring migrators. For someone who is trying to migrate to a country with much comfortable life and livability index, a safe and comfortable life is certain.

2. Better Growth Opportunity

Moving to a better country helps you grow much faster towards a progressive lifestyle. Countries with good business and working environment helps people learn, grow and prosper.

Most people dream to migrate to European countries and the United States because of the quality of life, the working culture, the respect for work they do and the freedom to live your life the way you want to.

3. Better Health

Not all countries have a good health standard maintained. There are some places in the world where there is no access even to the medical emergency facilities. People are forced to walk miles for days even today before they could find a proper health care services.

Economically good countries have good infrastructures and human resources to avail the locals and thus better health is one of the major factors that influences or makes people migrate to another country.

4. Host Country Benefits

Immigration cannot be good only for the immigrants. With the inflow of the people from another country, the host country also end up benefitting a lot. Some of the benefits for the host country are:

1. Diversified Community

People coming from different parts of the world bring in a lot of different perspectives of life and a new brain with a mixture of different cultures and backgrounds some always a good thing to have for a country that encourages diversity and harmony.

With new ideas, new businesses grow and it ultimately helps the local economy. This gives strength to the local community and helps the national GDP.

2. Increases Working Population

Immigration in a sense for western countries is actually a blessing in disguise. There is a significant less amount of birth rate in these countries as compared to African and Asian countries. This has made them to deal with the huge number of aging population who have already retired.

Immigration has worked as a solution to address this concern for these countries. For the last decade or so the USA has come up with programs like the Diversified Visa (A lottery for the American Green Card) that let the working-age people from other countries to get the citizenship and be called an American. This has mostly attracted the Asians and are now living their American dreams.

Cons of Immigration

Every rose has its thorn. Immigration has its own disadvantages as well. It’s not always the good things that happen because of the people coming in from different parts of the world. Here are some of the most prominent disadvantages of immigration.

1. Over Population

There is not always a space available for whoever decides to come in irrespective of the demand or capacity of the host country. Recent migration of people to the European shores have created an alarming concern for the governments because most of the migrants were war fleed and the country they were migrating to had no plans for them.

The Iraqi and Syrian refugees have ended up in borders of different countries in the past few years seeking asylum. This indeed is problematic because the incoming people, in this case, would have to start a new life, starting everything from scratch and the government would have to spend a lot of money and resources to recognize them as legal migrants.

2. Social Distortion

Migration, in a way, disturbs the existing social setting which, at times can turn out to be unwanted. People coming into a new community cannot always fit in well. Some of them might want to do things the way they have been doing which can understandably be uncomfortable to the existing community. Hence there will a social retaliation that distorts the existing social harmony.

3. Criminal Activities

There have been cases in the history where criminals in the process of escaping the punishment, flee their country to end up in different one to avoid the penalty of their crime. This has affected many countries in Europe and America.

4. Cultural Mismatch

Culture is connected to people’s sentiment and if not interpreted properly, might take a nasty turn. People joining a new community should either be ready to adopt and respect all the cultures or the native should be welcoming enough and let the new people blend well in the name of cultural harmony.

Cultural disputes may arise between two groups of people from different background which is not favorable for either group and the country as a whole.

5. Separation and Splits

Immigration often happens with separation between families. Many kids often grow up without being able to see their father around. It’s normally the men who migrate to other countries in search of better opportunities and income.

This separation of father (or mother) with their kids and husband with their wives have created a lot of family disputes.