means The act of moving permanently into a country that is not your own, in order to live and settle there.

from From Latin immigrare, 'to move into,' built from in- ('into') and migrare ('to move, to change one's dwelling') — the same migrare that gives us migrate, migration, and the seasonal flights of birds. So at root, immigration simply means moving inward, into a place: the prefix marks the direction, the destination chosen rather than the homeland left. English borrowed the word in the 17th century, and from the start it carried that one-way charge — not just movement, but arrival to stay.