Are immigrants' previous hometowns any less urban than their new homes nowadays?

[Capsicum]

Not talking about internal migration, for which this is well known and has been well documented (eg. the trend of young people leaving rural America or small towns losing population towards American cities, or the movement of rural Indian or Chinese or African countries' farmers to their metropolises, like Mumbai, Shenzhen, Lagos etc.), but international ones.

Back in the day, many immigrants arrived from small towns in the "old country" and likely found their new home in the US to be much larger, more bustling and crowded than their old home -- eg. Coming from the Italian or Irish countryside to NYC, for instance. This was true because most of the world was far less urbanized than the US in past generations. Europe, to say nothing of Asia or Africa, was much more rural.

Nowadays, a lot more people immigrate from bigger cities. For instance, going from Moscow or Kiev instead of a small shtetl in Eastern Europe to Brookyln. Going from bustling Guangzhou or Shenzhen, instead of rice paddies in the rural Pearl River delta, to the Bay Area or LA instead.

Some immigrants now even find their "new home" less urban than their old place they left behind.

I used to meet international students studying in college towns that were shocked that the places they landed in were much more sparse than their big bustling hometowns back home. They often weren't expecting some place with the population of only a small town to be their new home.

Is it still common for immigrants to go from more rural areas in the old country any more, straight to urban areas in their new home? Is it common now for immigrants to find their new home in the new country surprisingly urban any more?

[Muji]

I suspect that that overall trend is correct, and it seems to have a fairly straightforward cause. The proportion of the world's population living in urbanized areas has only increased over time, with most gains coming from the developing world. While I'm sure there's still case-by-case variation, overall it means that immigrants will be more likely to be coming from large cities in their home countries.