Immigration in Arab countries The UN Population Division database delivers an overall picture of immigration in the Arab World. Aggregating all Arab countries gives a number of 20.9 million immigrants (thus including intra-regional migrants from one Arab country to another). An alternative source could be national data of the countries of destination. The resulting figure is lower than that of the UN. In the 14 Arab countries that have published immigration data, the aggregated number of immigrants 13 million. For the same 14 countries, the UN estimate is 18.8 million immigrants, i.e. 1.45 times higher. If the Palestinian Territories and Jordan where the discrepancy is explained by UNRWA refugees being counted as immigrants by the UN are excluded from the comparison, 12 countries give an aggregated number of immigrants of 12,288 million to be compared with 14,983 provided by the UN (22% higher than national figures). The gap between the
