Want to start a new life abroad? From education to healthcare and quality of life, the best countries for immigrants to move to in 2025 (and Britain only just ranks inside the top 20)
A new leaderboard has revealed the top countries for immigrants to move to in 2025 – with Iceland coming out on top.
The Nordic nation triumphed with a score of 58.4 out of 100 based on 24 key criteria, including economic strength, living costs and the quality of healthcare and public transport.
But while the top 10 were dominated by other European nations, including Switzerland, Luxembourg, Norway, Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands, the UK came a less impressive 19th – behind the USA in seventh place.
The UK received a score of 46.5, putting it just ahead of New Zealand, Spain and France but behind Australia on 51.7.
Researchers for Remitly, a remittance service, also drilled down into a series of areas considered of importance to prospective immigrants.
South Korea scored top for healthcare, followed by Australia, while Sri Lanka was considered top in the education category thanks to its incredibly low annual childcare costs of just $354.60 (£274.13) per year.
Meanwhile, Luxembourg led the way for public transport and the UAE was ranked safest.
The UK only made the top ten for the category rating nations for their environmental credentials.
A separate study ranking countries on the happiness of their citizens saw Finland take the top spot once again for the eighth successive year in a row.
Nordic countries dominate the top of the World Happiness Report, with Denmark in second, Iceland in third and Sweden in fourth.
The UK came 23rd while the USA falls to its lowest ever position in 24th place. Both countries were behind Israel (8th) despite the ongoing conflict in the region.
Afghanistan was once against the unhappiest happiest country in the world, with Sierra Leone, Lebanon, Malawi and Zimbabwe rounding off the bottom five.
Iceland, which is ranked the best country for migrants to move to, is known for its beautiful landscapes
Despite its relatively low ranking in the Remitly study, the UK is experiencing a historically high level of immigration, with 906,000 people now thought to have been added to the population in a single year.
Huge revisions to official data showed the extraordinary mark was hit in the year to June 2023 – and the figures remain at unprecedented levels.
Official data covering the 12 months to June this year revealed long-term immigration was 728,000 higher than those leaving the country. In itself that was almost as much as the previous record.
But the bar was dramatically shifted upwards by the Office for National Statistics, with net migration for the year to June 2023 now thought to have been 166,000 above the initial estimate of 740,000.
A similar revision was made for net migration in the year to December 2023, which was initially believed to be 685,000 and is now put at 866,000, an increase of 181,000.
The ONS attributed the radical shift to more complete data and improvements in how it estimates the behaviour of people arriving in the UK from outside the EU.
