Not per capita, which is the only sensible metric to use. Germany, Canada, Australia are all higher on that.

In this case, the net metric is the sensible one to use.

why is the net metric more sensible in this case?

Not the GP but a larger total number means you have a higher likelihood of being one of the people to be granted entry. A country of 1000 people may accept 10 people and that be a very large per-capita rate, but odds of you being one of 10 people accepted out of billions of possible immigrants is very low. It's not like it's one visa application for all countries in the world.

Per capita it seems Saudi Arabia is #1? (for any country with a population higher than 10 million)

Surprised to see it higher than Canada, U.S., and any major country in Europe...

Do middle eastern despotic regimes count the bodies the bury under their construction sites as "Immigrants"?

They shouldn't, just like Russia shouldn't be counted (because it has a very peculiar situation with shared citizenship with the other former Soviet Republics.)

"as a percentage of people who would like to immigrate there" would also be interesting to see :-x

Wow 38% of Saudi Arabia's population are immigrants? Never imagined that one. Always seemed like a closed off country which people couldn't even travel to for tourism (unless making a pilgrimage to Mecca as a Muslim) until recently (2019).

Dubai has almost 90% of population as immigrants! TIL.

Almost as if the US is the third-biggest country in the world!