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Indian census 2001 has recorded that more than 5 million persons have migrated to India from other countries. As far as emigration from India is concerned it is estimated that there are around 20 million people of Indian diaspora across 110 countries.
Emigration: A major benefit for the source region is the remittance sent by migrants. Remittances from the international migrants are one of the major sources of foreign exchange. Punjab, Kerala and Tamil Nadu receive veiy significant amount from their international migrants. If remittances are the major benefits of migration from the point of view of the source region, the loss of human resources particularly highly skilled people is the most serious cost. Consequently, the existing underdevelopment in the source region gets reinforced.
When people move from one country to another they act as agents of social change, they carry the ideas related to new technology, etc. Migration leads to intermixing of people from diverse cultures. It has positive contribution such as evolution of composite global culture and widens up mental horizon of people. On the other hand when people move out of their own countries to other countries due to differing social and cultural values, they feel alienated and leads a loss of identity and sense of dejection among individuals. Continued feeling of dejection may motivate people to fall in the trap of anti-social activities like crime and drug abuse.
Immigration: The heavy influx of migrants from neighbouring countries, mostly being illegal gives rise to many socio-economic problems. They lead to increase in population, which causes overcrowding, development of unregulated colonies and slums. Also it leads to increase in pressure on infrastructure, which is unable to cope with increasing population, increased unemployment, pressure on government exchequers on social security schemes leads to over exploitation of resources. It also leads to increase in crime rates, especially against women as most of the migrants are male which disturbs the age-sex ratio of recipient cities in India. It also leads to tensions between immigrants and native inhabitants,