How the Arrow Index is built

One entry is one meaningful change to an immigration law or rule: who may enter a country, stay, work, study, or become a citizen. We date it to the day it took effect and assign it to a single country.

A single legal instrument counts once, however many provisions it amends. Routine form updates, filing instructions, and processing notices are left out, so the count tracks substance rather than paperwork.

Each change carries a direction: tightening, easing, or neither. The direction describes what the change does to the people it covers.

We read each country's official gazettes and government publications. An entry joins the index only when a public document supports what we say changed, and that document is linked from the entry.

The record is Arrow's own research. Ongoing monitoring adds new changes as governments publish them. The historical record is built by working through official sources year by year, back to 1975.

The count for a country is a floor, not a total. If a change is missing, that means we have not verified it yet, not that nothing happened.

Be careful when comparing countries. Governments publish in different ways, so a higher count can mean more change or simply more detailed publishing. We do not certify country-to-country comparisons.

Live data and citable data are different products, published from the same record. The monthly release is frozen when it ships, dated, and versioned, so a figure cited against a release number stays true. The live view is the moving surface on the index pages, always labelled as live.

The current citable release is AVI-2026-08. Every release is listed in the changelog, with what changed between releases.

Every country page carries its coverage label, always in the same place. The label states how far back the settled record for that country runs. “Monitoring” means we track new changes as they are published while the historical record is still being researched.

• AustraliaFrom 1975
• AustriaFrom 1975
• BelgiumFrom 1975
• CanadaFrom 2013
• ChileFrom 1978
• ColombiaMonitoring
• Costa RicaMonitoring
• Czech RepublicFrom 1975
• DenmarkFrom 1997
• EstoniaFrom 1990
• FinlandFrom 1988
• FranceMonitoring
• GermanyFrom 1975
• GreeceMonitoring
• HungaryFrom 2010
• IcelandFrom 2001
• IrelandFrom 2000
• IsraelMonitoring
• ItalyFrom 1975
• JapanMonitoring
• Korea, Republic OfFrom 1975
• LatviaFrom 1993
• LithuaniaFrom 1990
• LuxembourgFrom 1975
• MexicoMonitoring
• NetherlandsFrom 1975
• New ZealandMonitoring
• NorwayFrom 1984
• PolandFrom 1975
• PortugalMonitoring
• SlovakiaFrom 1975
• SloveniaFrom 1992
• SpainFrom 1980
• SwedenFrom 2001
• SwitzerlandFrom 1975
• TurkeyFrom 1975
• United KingdomFrom 1975
• United StatesFrom 1997

The index is published under CC BY 4.0. Quote it, reprint the figures, or request the dataset. Name the source and the release number when you do.

Arrow Intelligence. (2026). Arrow Immigration Policy Volatility Index (Release AVI-2026-08) [Data set]. https://witharrow.ai/volatility-index

Every entry carries a “flag this entry” link. Practitioners: if you have filed under a change we haven't recorded, submit it. Accepted corrections ship in the next monthly release and appear in the changelog. The full policy is on the Corrections & Revisions page.