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Which country has the highest number of diplomatic missions (embassies, high commissions, consulates general or consulates, but not honorary consuls) in a single other country? The mission must be to that country, so, for example, the German mission to the United Nations in the US wouldn't be considered.

For example, the UK has 9 diplomatic missions in the US: Embassy in Washington DC, and Consulates General in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, LA, Miami, NY and SF. This is the highest I have found so far. What other country pairs have very high numbers?

Using more formal notation

I define a list of tuples as follows: The tuple (n, countryA, countryB) exists in the list if countryA has n diplomatic missions in countryB.

For example, one such tuple is (9, UK, US) (see above). Based on this, if we sort this list by n, what country pairs would figure at the top of this list?

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Based on the 2021 data from the Lowy Institute, the answer appears to be Mexico's fifty-two diplomatic missions within the USA, consisting of:

  • One embassy in Washington, D.C.;
  • Twenty-two consulates-general in Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, El Paso, Houston, Laredo, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Nogales, Phoenix, Raleigh, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, San Juan, as well as Washington, D.C.;
  • Twenty-nine consulates in Albuquerque, Boise, Brownsville, Calexico, Del Rio, Detroit, Douglas, Eagle Pass, Fresno, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Little Rock, McAllen, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Omaha, Orlando, Oxnard, Philadelphia, Portland, Presidio, Saint Paul, Salt Lake City, San Bernardino, Santa Ana, Seattle, Tucson and Yuma.

The runners-up are Canada-USA (15), Japan-USA (14, plus one in Guam), Chile-Argentina (14), and Turkey-Germany (14).

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    oh wow, that's a lot.
    – whoisit
    Feb 6 at 10:41
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    I didn't have the list ready, but this was the first idea that came to mind. The answer "should" be a pair A, B where there are a lot of citizens of A resident in country B. I found a report from the UN (2015) saying there are 12 million migrants from Mexico living in the US; the next highest pairs (India -> UAE, Russia -> Ukraine, Ukraine -> Russia, Bangladesh -> India, Kazakhstan -> Russia) are at 3 million. (un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/publications/…)
    – Michael Lugo
    Feb 6 at 15:07
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    @MichaelLugo the geographic extent of the receiving nation is also a factor. It's hard to imagine any country having 52 missions in the UAE no matter how many of its citizens live there.
    – phoog
    Feb 6 at 16:01
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    @gerrit that article says at the end that "The Consulate of Mexico has 50 offices nationwide and is largest consulate presence in the world" - which supports the idea that Mexico-USA is the winner (or at least was as of 2015)
    – Michael Lugo
    Feb 6 at 16:21
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    @MichaelLugo I believe those are all honorary consulates - despite your website referring to some of the staff as consuls, all other sources I can see refer to the staff as honorary consuls, and they appear to be Norwegian citizens.
    – CDJB ♦
    Feb 7 at 16:26

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