Immigration is the movement of people into one place from another. While human migration has existed throughout human history, immigration implies long-term permanent or forced indefinite residence and often eventual citizenship, by the immigrants.

The modern idea of immigration is related to the development of nation-states and nationality law. Citizenship of a nation-state confers an inalienable right of residence in that country, but residence of immigrants is subject to conditions set by immigration law.

Some, although relatively few, immigrants justify their drive to be in a different country for cultural or health related reasons and very seldom, again in relative quantitative terms compared to the actual number of international migrants world-wide, choose to migrate as a form of self-expression towards the establishment or to satisfy their need to directly perceive other cultural environments because economics is almost always the primary motivator for constant, long-term, or permanent migration, but especially for that type of inter-regional or inter-continental migration; that holds true even for people from developed countries.