Comparing Naturalization Rates

The OECD recently updated its data breaking down the number of naturalizations that occur in the countries of the world, and pointed out the top countries that do it.

Most people don't think of Japan as a country where many people obtain nationality through naturalization, but considering there are hundreds of countries (193) in the world, it's surprising to see Japan in the top fifteen. Japan handily beats out countries such as Ireland, Denmark, and Austria when it comes to annual naturalization. What's surprising to me is generally Japanese, the language, is less commonly known by non-Japanese compared to the European languages (including English) spoken by some other countries in Europe. The size of the economy and thus the perceived availability of jobs may be a factor in this.

Probably coming as no surprise to anybody is the fact that United States naturalizations beat the rest of the world, dwarfing the second place Russia. Making up most of the top ten are other G7 countries, which is not surprising given their relative wealth compared to other countries of the world and the fact that many use English.

Of course, most people that naturalize to Japanese, until recently, have been raised-or-born-in-Japan Koreans with 特別永住者 {tokubetsu eijūsha} (special permanent resident) status. However, the trend is now showing Chinese and non-SPRs comprising most Japanese naturalizations these days.

The reason why Russia has so many naturalizations is because of the ex-Soviet Union countries. Many citizens from these countries seek out and acquire Russian citizenship. Germany gets most of its naturalizations from its Turkish immigrant population.

Year-by-year raw numbers for all the countries are available

Note that the number of naturalizations does not necessary correspond proportionally to the percentage of foreign population in a country. For example, America is king when it comes to naturalizations, but actually many other countries, such as Australia, Switzerland, New Zealand, Canada, Spain, and Sweden, have a very high percentage of foreign-born people — often higher than that of the United States.