What is/are the largest current rich country-to-other-rich country immigration waves?

[Capsicum]

Most examples of immigration are from developing countries to developed ones. With the immigration subsiding once the developing becomes developed. Most of the famous examples of the recent past, if not still in living memory or contemporary are like this (e.g. Mexicans/Asians to US/Canada, Caribbean/Indian subcontinent/Poles to UK, Asia/Africa to Gulf States).

Within-rich-country migration streams are less talked about even though they technically count as immigration too.

What would you say are the largest developed nation-to-developed nation waves (probably none qualify as "mass" immigration, but I'm curious as to which ones qualify)?

E.g. Canadian "immigrants" to the US (brain drain). Probably a non-trivial one. Lots of Canadians still seek better jobs in the US, be it tech, finance, medicine, entertainment, fashion, academia or whatever. With relatively weak cultural barriers.

Brit "immigrants" to Australia (is that still a thing)?

Probably some major EU country to EU country migration counts though I don't know if it counts as immigration?

If you were to pick a candidate for the largest single (or few examples) of "mass" stream or wave of rich country to other rich country immigrant going on right now, which would it be?

[Crawford]

Germans, French and Italians move to Switzerland. Not sure I'd call it "mass" immigration, but Swiss salaries are higher and taxes are lower. Many leave for a few decades, and then return home for their retirement. Switzerland has a pretty bad safety net for European standards, so it's best for prime working years and not earlier or later.

[iheartthed]

Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece, to the UK, Germany, Netherlands, and France?

[Capsicum]

My guess is "other rich country to US" numbers are probably the most large in absolute terms still (e.g. tech, other job, or lifestyle-related immigrants) in raw numbers because the US is just so large with so many cities for rich foreigners to move to.

But maybe by % of people from a country moving, the EU country to other EU country examples would be most proportionally influential (a relative small number of people moving away from or to a country with under 10 million like Switzerland or even tens of millions like many European countries would proportionally influence the country more than rich-country to US migration since the US can absorb so much before people even notice there's lots of non-American European/Anglophones living in the city. In the US, it's still rare to think about other rich countries sending their immigrants but in the EU I'm sure lots of rich people moving around from country to country is more noticeable).

[bnk]

someone with more time needs to break down the "other"

Other seems rather high to me.

[Quixote]

I will say that Australia still receives a remarkable amount of U.K. immigrants for a country that is its antipode (okay, technically New Zealand but close enough). From 2006 to 2016, about 225K Brits migrated to the Australia, compared to a smidgeon over 300K of Chinese and about 315K Indians.

And the country’s English-born population (just England, not including Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) didn’t decrease by much from 2011 to 2021 — still numbering over 1.1 million. So, I always have to laugh at the common question, “Is Australia culturally more like the U.S. or U.K.?”

[xzmattzx]

There seem to be a lot of Polish people in places like Ireland and Iceland

[Nite]

For Canada these are the biggest Immigration sources for 2022

India (118, 095 immigrants) – 27%
China (31,815 immigrants) – 7.2%
Afghanistan (23,735 immigrants) – 5.4%
Nigeria (22,085 immigrants) – 5.05%
Philippines (22,070 immigrants) – 5.04%
France (14,145 immigrants) – 3.2%
Pakistan (11,585 immigrants) – 2.6%
Iran (11,105 immigrants) – 2.5%
United States of America (10,400 immigrants) – 2.3%
Syria (8,500 immigrants) – 1.9%

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

There seem to be a lot of Polish people in places like Ireland and Iceland

Poland is not high income, and the people it sends abroad are decidedly not their upper income class, so I would think it doesn’t belong in the discussion.

Just surface level, I would expect that pairwise personal income (clustered by country of origin) and the median income in their country of origin are negatively correlated with respect to the country of destination because all of the following tend to be true:

A. Upper income individuals in poor countries of origin migrate to rich destination countries (seeking elite business opportunities).
B. Lower income individuals in rich countries of origin migrate to poor destination countries (seeking elite social opportunities).
C. Upper income individuals in rich countries of origin stay put (out of lack of desire).
D. Lower income individuals in poor countries of origin stay put (out of lack of ability).

Exceptions exist, of course, and hegemony definitely allowed the United States to have pull among elite classes from elsewhere for a long while.