India is the hardest countries to emigrate to as it tops the list of nations where obtaining an employment visa is difficult, finds a new study.

This is followed by Australia, which demands the highest visa-related fees at £1,570 (approximately Rs 1.65 lakh), and Finland, which also has stringent requirements. It offers the EU Blue Card, but has a high earnings threshold of €62,508 (approximately Rs 56 lakh) for applicants.

Experts at William Russell – an expat insurance provider – analysed 30 countries and factors such as expat population, visa data, required vaccines and language requirements to determine the hardest countries to emigrate to. They gave each factor a normalised score out of ten, before taking an average of these scores.

They found that India has a low expat population percentage of 0.4%, the visa demands significant fees, and at least three vaccinations are required to emigrate to the country.

“Looking at the number of expats currently residing in a country gives us a general idea of how easy it is for people to move there and how appealing it is to expats. It also provides an idea of how easy it will be to adapt to a new country, which is always easier if there’s already a significant expat community. Remarkably, just 0.4% of India’s population were born outside the country,” said the report.

“On top of routine vaccinations such as measles-mumps-rubella (MMR), most travellers to India require vaccinations for hepatitis A, tetanus and typhoid. On top of these, some travellers may also need to be vaccinated against cholera, hepatitis B, Japanese encephalitis, rabies and tuberculosis,” said the report.

Canada has the lengthiest processing time, taking between 10 to 11 months (or 41 weeks), whereas India processes applications in approximately 10 to 15 working days. Australia typically takes four to eight months, while Finland’s processing time is 90 days.

In contrast, the countries that are easier to emigrate to are Hungary, Malta and Austria.