Brasília – The flow of legal Brazilian immigrants to developed countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has dropped by nearly half from 2006 to 2009, a year marked by serious recession in wealthy economies.
The flow of Brazilian immigrants into the OECD member countries, which reached 100,000 people in 2005 and 2006, peaked at 101,800 in 2007 and dropped to 81,700 in 2008 and 53,500 in 2009. The figure mostly comprises people who went to OECD countries to study or work.
The OECD economist Jean-Christophe Dumont, who helped elaborate the International Migration Outlook survey, detailed the movements involving the community. “The decline in the number of Brazilians moving temporarily or permanently is most of all due to the reduced immigration to Spain and Japan,” he said.
In Japan, the total number of Brazilians entering the country legally plummeted from 30,000 in 2006 (in 2007, the total had been 25,000) to little over 3,000 in 2009. In April 2009, the Japanese authorities launched a voluntary return program for unemployed Japanese-descendent immigrants, offering financial aid in order for them to return to their countries of origin.
According to the report, the number of South American immigrants entering OECD countries dropped by 36% in 2009 compared with 2007 (from 511,000 to 327,000), as a result of the economic crisis in Spain, the leading destination for South American populations.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
