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Comment by FredPret | Hacker News Reader

Ambitious, capitalistic emigrants are going to choose the US over anywhere else.

In addition, for immigrants from Europe/Asia/Africa, the US has almost complete power to pick and choose candidates whereas Europe is physically attached.

One last factor I noticed as an immigrant is that newer societies, like the US and Canada, are easier to fit into. For older ones like in Europe, it's just harder to change your identity and gain acceptance. This isn't a fault on Europe's part, it's probably just natural progression.

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Fully agree. Even as second generation immigrant, meaning being born in the EU, I feel less accepted in the EU than when I lived in the US for two years.

I felt that doing things “differently” or having unique background is more often perceived positively in the US than in the EU. In the EU, the norms force you to fit in, whereas in the US, you are allowed to pave your own way, whether that means success or failure.

>This isn't a fault on Europe's part, it's probably just natural progression.

I'd say it is, considering they/we have decades of data on what makes immigrants successful and what not.

I wouldn't say that a society has a moral duty to even accept immigrants. I am one and am eternally grateful that I get to live in Canada.

But take a country like Japan - they have near zero immigrants and they seem to like that.

If you have an open society with a flexible identity like the US, Canada, Australia, and maybe others, then you get the benefit of ambitious immigrants coming to grow your economy. But this isn't doable by or desirable to every other nation.

The enterprising Indian and Chinese citizen should know that it could be basically decades to immigrate to the US, so they're choosing anywhere else as a better substitute (or finding loopholes like gaining citizenship in other nations that don't have as long a waiting list?). Based on the current economic regime, it could be decades before candidates are granted permanent citizenship.

that is a bureaucratic hurdle that has little to do with the actual desirability of the USA as an immigration destination. The fact that so many Indians and Chinese nationals continue to move to the USA despite the immigration challenge is testament to this.

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