Statistcally its more valid to compare percentages per population or amount.... Of course the us has more but it has more people and therefore more non immigrants. Canada and Australia have more immigrants per capita.... I'm baffled to explain this. With all do respect have you taken a statistics class? Its not valid to compare sheer numbers with different sample sizes without looking at porportion. Its like saying the US is the best ski country in the world based on how many athletes they produce. Meanwhile austria has a smaller population but a much higher per capita rate of world cup racers. Therefore, one would assume they have a strong program if not more so tham the us.
No offense taken... Yes, I have taken statistic courses. I majored in Special Ed and minored in math, both of which required different stat courses.
I only figured out your percentages to make the point that using just percentages does not tell the whole story in any situation. But I am not understanding your rational - "Of course the US has more people so it has more non-immigrants." I was not comparing citizens, I was comparing immigrants. Having more citizens does not explain why a country has more immigrants than other countries. The per capita percentages can only be used to show the ratios of citizens to immigrants. It is not an indication of immigration trends between countries.
Take smaller numbers. one country has 100 total population with an immigration rate of 20% and another has 1000 with 10%. Which is more successful in pulling people to their country? Well, you can't really know from these figures because you don't know how many actually come in on a yearly basis. But you can make an educated guess that seeing as though you have only 20 immigrants living in the first and 100 living in the second, then the second has been more successful. Again, it makes no difference that the second has more citizens, only that it has more people who have immigrated in...
So, it is completely valid to compare sheer numbers in this case because we are trying to figure out which country has had the most success in pulling people in. It doesn't matter how many people are in the country to which they are immigrating. The ski analogy is not correct. What would be correct would be "which country has the best ski locations in the world?" Would you use a per-capita figure of the individual countries to figure that out or would you use the actual numbers of people going to each country to ski?
The figures I gave are actual numbers of people entering each country each year - that is much more valid than per capita immigration "in this situation". But even that doesn't tell the whole story, because like I noted, BG has a high emigration rate, which affects immigration numbers. I am sure other countries have emigration factors too.