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More Than 750M Worldwide Would Migrate If They Could
- avocado4 7y ago- Desire to migrate in Northern America up for the first time - U.S. still No. 1 desired destination for potential migrants - 18 countries attract two-thirds of all potential migrants worldwide
- turk73 7y agoI'm ok with it as long as you come here and integrate, don't take welfare, and understand our Bill of Rights isn't a suggestion. We're done making "accommodations" on that stuff.
- atemerev 7y agoGood. World cultures need more diversity and exposure to each other. I am Russian who lived in Switzerland, Spain, Denmark, US and Italy. I’ve got tons of experience and emotions from each of these countries, and I am thankful that they welcomed me.
- fxtentacle 7y agoYou might be the exception here because you can read, write, communicate in English, and handle computers. A farmer from rural Malawi who cannot write and doesn't speak English would not be able to integrate into a European countries' economy and, accordingly, would be a lot less welcome.
- 1996 7y agoPeople act in their own selfish interest. This farmer from rural Malawi who can't communicate in English may not want to move to Europe, because he would have a bad time there.
- evancox100 7y agoOld, from 2018
- fehyjn 7y agoStill don’t understand why I can’t just move to another country... I have a degree, no criminal records. But I need visas, permits, etc. Why all this difficulties?
- stabbles 7y agoIn Europe it is rather easy :)
- fxtentacle 7y agoWithin Europe. Moving from Africa to any EU country will be very challenging, just like it would be to move to the US
- mrits 7y agoHow does anyone know you have a degree and no criminal records?
- scarejunba 7y agoIn order to obtain global mobility, I will embed into my body a microchip of your choice that reports current location and biometric information continuously, and pay up to $10k into a yearly program that will report my per-country statistics into a global database.
- fehyjn 7y agoI can prove it in embassy or whatever. Take a paper from police and a diploma from my university.
- mrits 7y agoBucketing all North America together made this less interesting. I can't help but think the reasons of migrating from Mexico would not be the same as US or Canadian citizens.
- foogazi 7y agoThere’s an entry for Latin America & Caribbean which Mexico is a part of An instead of North America it says ‘Northern America’ which makes me believe this refers to just the US & Canada
- jcpsimmons 7y agoI wonder if this correlates to the resolution and frequency of social media use globally. I might be completely happy with my apartment and job in the EU, but seeing 'ads' for the US on social media every day may begin to chip away at my contentment through the introduction of a comparison.
- tluyben2 7y agoI have the reverse; those ‘ads’ (people talking about the US) make me happier about living in the EU. But you probably have a point that it makes people compare and then it is all down to situation and taste I guess.
- pkaye 7y ago> seeing 'ads' for the US on social media every day What ads are you talking about?
- mcantelon 7y agoWhat some call "American cultural imperialism" is what he/she is likely talking about.
- youcantthrow 7y agoi don't believe in borders and if you believe in the free market then you shouldn't either. of course this is heretical and people will immediately jump down your throat about culture and patriotism and etc as a diversion from the material fact that it's only about profits. right now globalization is very profitable for the west because manufacturers can arbitrage the differences in cost of living. it's not technical innovation in anyway shape or form that you can pay people to assemble iphones in a low cost of living area and then sell them in a high cost of living area. let people move freely and let wages equilibrate.
- mrits 7y agoVery few people believe in a true free market. We have plenty of legit regulations around it and probably could use a few more to level things out.
- youcantthrow 7y ago>Very few people believe in a true free market great then let's introduce the free market* and retire the unadorned unqualified free market as an ideological and rhetorical tool. *subject to constraints that maintain status quo wealth and power
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y agoWhich political parties believe in free market in 2020? You have one laying tariffs on everybody, and you have the other advocating for a strong federal government role in the markets. Nobody cares about free markets in 2020 and their politics are consistent with that.
- slg 7y agoThe irony is that the people who tend to believe in freer markets are generally not the people who believe in freer immigration and the people who want increased regulation in one seldom want increased regulation in the other.
- devmunchies 7y ago
- orf 7y agoLooking at those numbers, isn’t the EU the most desired place to migrate to? Feels odd to not split the USA into its member states while splitting Europe up. How many of those potential migrants want to move to Texas vs Spain?
- notyourwork 7y agoAn American citizen can freely move to any state in the United States. A citizen of European countries may or may not be able to freely move to other European countries without citizenship related changes, visas or other sponsorship.
- petschge 7y agoWithin the EU movement if fairly unrestricted and does not require anything that you listed. Go check http://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/147/free-movement-of-persons http://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/147/free-m...
- sp332 7y agoSchengen includes some non-EU countries and still excludes a bunch of European countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Schengen_Agreement_Labelled_Map_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Schengen_Agreement_La...
- gbrown 7y agoEven within the EU? I thought that was largely the point.
- JohnFen 7y agoI'd migrate if I could, but given that I'm not extremely wealthy, there aren't many countries that I'd want to live in that would also take me. Canada, maybe. I'm looking into that.
- baybal2 7y agoI'd add some background to what fehyjn says below. The entire world was relatively borderess prior to 20th century, and it was completely outside of humanly possible for the state anywhere to keep tap on every individual. If you talk about the period from medieval, to early renaissance. It was very natural for every polity to want to get more subjects. Feudal lords couldn't have been more happy to see more people migrating to their domains. Things started changed with appearance of early nation state model in late renaissance. The more central the role of the nation state got, the further right was the centre of power. All of the above culminated with introduction of the visa system in Europe, shortly prior to WWII, which was later adopted by nearly all nations around the world.
- wpasc 7y agoWasn't travel across great distances commensurately difficult, making such restrictions unnecessary even if they weren't desired?
- harikb 7y agoIt was also common for people to randomly get killed, barbarically, when crossing/migrating to another place uninvited.
- Torches71 7y agoThe word you're looking for is "invaders".
- helen___keller 7y agoIt must not have been that difficult considering how much impoverished labor immigrated to the United States during the 19th century.
- duxup 7y agoHistory is full of folks complaining about migrations / stranges and states / groups taking action to prevent / persiculte newcomers, and travel was not easy. I feel like your comment makes it seem a lot more fluid than it was for a group to simply migrate and enjoy their new country.
- haunter 7y agoAnd they will. I think the current migration crisis in Europe is nothing compared to when the Sahel will be finally total uninhabitable all those people will move to Europe. And with the current speed of the global warming I don't think it's that far away.
- dhruvkar 7y agoTIL. Sahel = Northern Africa
- baybal2 7y agoSahel = Below Northern Africa
- nostromo 7y agoThis seems inevitable at this point. Africa is headed for a population crisis. Places like Somalia and Niger have around 6 or 7 children per woman. These are countries that already import a lot of food to feed rapidly growing populations. If we have another energy shock, it's unclear to me who is going to feed all of these babies.
- 14 7y agoThis is what I am waiting for, anxiously too I will ad. How long before we see the first heat wave kill a million people? Or drought kill several hundred thousand people in a weeks time. Last year South Africa almost ran out of water. I really think it will only be then that we realize the extent of our dire situation and start really acting. What would our government do if there were 5 million people lined up at the border? Would they shoot them down? I don’t like to fear monger but the world is a rough place. It is also unclear to me how we will handle this as it happens. Edit: right after writing this the very next HN article I come across is massive locust swarms threatening crops in Africa. Scary
- itqwertz 7y agoThe burden of responsibility lies with the Africans, whose numbers are artificially inflated due to religious ideology and Western aid. Migrating to Europe will not alleviate the lack of self-sustainability. The same could be said of immigration movements in North and Latin America. Taking advantage of legal loopholes and dubious claims of persecution for asylum does not improve their home countries.
- ailideex 7y agoI would have a 1,000,000,000.00 USD a year salary if I could. Just saying.
- jermaustin1 7y agoFirst World Problem, I know, but: I don't understand why I should not be allowed to take a 2 year vacation in another country without having to leave every 6 months and pray the border agent doesn't find it suspicious that I keep coming back. I don't want to take someone's job, or milk the welfare system, and I would be a net positive to anywhere I decided to vacation (sales tax/VAT, property tax, hotel tax, income tax from the profits off all the crap I bought to live, etc). I'd be happy if I still had to apply for a visa, but the typical 6 month visa prevents me from easily signing a lease.
- jaywalk 7y ago> I don't want to take someone's job, or milk the welfare system How are they supposed to know that? A two year vacation is extraordinarily strange.
- jermaustin1 7y agoProof of self sufficiency.
- fxtentacle 7y agoI'm pretty sure they offer that, but it might cost you lots of money. For example, Singapore requires you to have SG$ 2.5 Mio in assets if you want an unlimited visa.
- chrismeller 7y agoMany countries do. Yeah, it usually requires a TON of liquid cash or assets, though there are even a couple of EU countries that are hard up for investment money and provide easy investment visas for very little. Some (like Estonia) require that you get your business plan validated by a committee or board, but others (like Spain and Portugal and Hungary) really don’t seem to care as long as you claim you can make money and/or employ people (or buy or rent a property for a certain amount and spend 180+ days a year there). There are VERY few people in the world who can take two years off and not worry about needing any income, so it’s incredibly understandable that that’s not a common visa scenario. Americans also forget that the rest of the world doesn’t have to pay income tax on earnings no matter where they live, so the visa ties into tax residency as well.
- fnord77 7y ago21% of people in the EU would migrate? Wish they broke this down by country and where they would go
- mcantelon 7y agoLots of people would move into other people's nicer homes if they could too, but the owners of the homes might take issue with that. Nations are a form of collective property.
- aaron695 7y agoIf you ever want proof HN is not Libertarian, they way it downvotes open borders shows it is not. Libertarians don't have to believe open borders work fully but should be open to talking about it. It's also something in the future people will judge us for. They will live in a world where richness is less border based though, so get rose colored glasses. Like slavery, easy to judge when you don't get to do it.
- turk73 7y agoI consider myself a libertarian, but I have realized that open borders is a bag of dicks idea. Fucking beyond stupid. Private property exists for a reason. Political boundaries exist for a reason. If we got rid of the welfare state and did better at enforcing private property rights (I'm not sure what that would look like or if it is even possible) maybe we could relax on border security. That's not the world we live in, however.
- jstewartmobile 7y agoWhy welcome people who run from problems rather than fixing them--especially when many are of considerable wealth, and are disproportionately responsible for the unsatisfactory condition of their own countries? If we shut the door on wealthy Chinese/Indians/Saudis/Nigerians/etc, I'd bet big money that the condition of those countries would improve rapidly and substantially.
- Blake_Emigro 7y agoI've worked in this industry for a while, helping people immigrate to Canada, and one interesting thing I've experienced are newcomers that don't want their former peers following them. They left for a different way of life and don't want the past recreated in their new home. For myself I tend to agree - I want to help those that believe moving to my home country will improve their lives, while at the same time want them to leave some baggage behind. Multiculturalism is great, until it isn't.
- nestorherre 7y ago"I've worked in this industry for a while, helping people immigrate to Canada" You still working in this? Would like to have a chat if possible.
- heffer 7y agoCanadian immigration is rather straightforward and all avenues are well described on the IRCC website. If you still have questions I'd recommend the ImmigrationCanada and/or IWantOut subreddits. You can get excellent advice there. If you do your homework and work out the possible avenues applicable to your personal situation they are more than happy to help.
- Blake_Emigro 7y agoYou can keep your costs down by doing a lot of your own research, but there are still shortcuts and pitfalls that you can be made aware of by getting some professional advice. My recommendation is having a paid consult at the beginning of your research, and then near the end before submitting an application. The people of forums can typically only talk about their own experience based on their own profile / program / timing, which will not be exactly like yours. I've cleaned up many people's application messes, (I'm not trying to solicit any business for myself.)
- Blake_Emigro 7y agoI'm not operating my consultancy anymore or holding the consulting license, I moved on to making software for the industry but don't have anything to offer at the moment. If you're <=32 look up Express Entry for skilled workers. You can email me and I can answer some general questions. blake@blakesieders.ca
- Proven 7y agoThe EU experiment that attempted to speed this up has failed miserably.