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Sunday, August 22, 2010

Singapore would swell if...

SINGAPORE, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia would see their populations triple if everyone who wants to move there were allowed to, a poll released on Friday by Gallup shows.

At the opposite end of the scale, the populations of Sierra Leone, Haiti and Zimbabwe would fall by more than half if migrants were allowed to leave at will, the poll found.

Gallup researchers interviewed nearly 350,000 adults in 148 countries between 2007 and 2010 to calculate each country's potential net migration score - the number of adults who would like to leave a country minus the number who would like to move in - seen as a proportion of the total adult population.

They found that Singapore's population of 4.8 million would increase by 219 per cent, New Zealand's population of four million would rise by 184 per cent and Saudi Arabia's population of 26 million would soar by 176 per cent if everyone who wants to come in and wants to leave, could.

Switzerland made it onto the list, which was first compiled in 2009, for the first time this year. Some 800,000 of Switzerland's six million citizens said they would like to permanently leave the country, while some 10 million foreigners said they would move there, given the chance.

The hefty influx of migrants to Switzerland versus the scant outflow from the Alpine country would mean its population would more than double, according to the Gallup poll.

The preferred destination of most would-be migrants is still the United States, although the already large US population - 300 million inhabitants - means that the impact is less acutely felt, Gallup said. The United States is number 14 on the net migration list. If everyone could come into the United States that wanted to, and all those who wished to leave did, the US population would rise by around 60 per cen

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