Bangladesh 6th among top 20 countries of origin for migrants

With a total of 7.5 million Bangladeshis living abroad, the country has ranked sixth among top 20 countries of origin for international migrants. 

India continues to be the largest country of origin for international migrants, with 17.5 million Indians living abroad, followed by Mexico (11.8 million), China (10.7 million), Russia (10.6 million) and Syria (5.6 million), according to International Organisation for Migration's (IOM) World Migration Report 2020.

The report, published on Wednesday, said international remittance sent by migrants increased to $689 billion in 2018, with the top beneficiaries being India ($78.6 billion), China ($67.4 billion), Mexico ($35.7 billion) and the Philippines ($34 billion). 

However, Bangladesh is not among the top 10 remittance-receiving countries. But in 2015, Bangladesh was one of the top 10 remittance-receiving nations, the report said.

According to Bangladesh Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET) data, Bangladesh's remittance inflow has been more or less stable in the last five years. 

"Remittance inflow to Bangladesh in the last few years has been almost stable, but we have lost our position among top remittance-receiving countries. It indicates that our migrant workers are not skilled enough," said Dr Mohammed Tanzim Uddin Khan, professor of International Relations at Dhaka University.

"The data of other top migrant origin countries show that they have more highly skilled workers than Bangladesh," he explained.
    
General Secretary of Welfare Association for the Rights of Bangladeshi Emigrants (Warbe) Development Foundation Faruk Ahmed said, "The migrant workers from Bangladesh need to spend a lot of money to go abroad. But a major portion of that money is going to foreign recruiting agencies or employers via local recruiting agencies. But many workers cannot even earn back the money they spend on going abroad.

"Besides, most of them are getting low-grade jobs abroad," he added. 

A BMET senior official, preferring anonymity, said most of Bangladesh's migrant workers go abroad without the required skillset and fail to get highly-paid jobs. 

But BMET has set up technical training centres in all districts of the country and plans to set up centres in all the upazilas as well, he informed.

The US remained the top source of remittance, at $68 billion, followed by the UAE ($44.4 billion) and Saudi Arabia ($36.1 billion).

The number of international migrants in 2019 is now estimated at 272 million and the top destination remains the United States, at nearly 51 million, followed by Germany and Saudi Arabia at 13 million each, according to IOM data.

The remaining seven countries are Russia, the UK, the UAE, France, Canada, Australia and Italy.

The IOM report noted that the overall figure represents just a tiny fraction of the world's population, although it is a 0.1 percent increase from the amount indicated in its last report published two years ago.

"This figure remains a very small percentage of the world's population [at 3.5 percent], meaning that the vast majority of people in the world [96.5 percent] are estimated to be residing in the country in which they were born," said the report.

More than half of all international migrants (141 million) live in Europe and North America, and over 40 percent of all international migrants were born in Asia (112 million).

An estimated 52 percent of the migrants are males, and nearly two-thirds (164 million) are looking for work. 

Internal displacement

Highlighting how ongoing conflicts and violence in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen have led to massive internal displacement in the last two years, the IOM's Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre said a total of 41.3 million people were forced to flee their homes at the end of 2018.
 
This is a record figure since monitoring began in 1998.

The report also said the IOM will continue to provide life-saving and sustaining assistance to over 900,000 Rohingya refugees currently residing at the 34 camps in Cox's Bazar.

IOM's overarching priorities include respecting and upholding the protection needs of the Rohingya, improving the quality of and access to services for them, and focusing on sustainable solutions.