Gallup: More than 100 Mio. migrants around the globe want to move to the US

[memphis]

Fun fact: median household income in New York City is $51k/year. That's slightly less than for the USA as a whole. Even in Manhattan, it's $67k/year, which is less than the median in the state of New Jersey. The "everybody in New York is rich" meme needs to DIAF.

[dead0man]

Why would anyone want to move to the U.S., let alone over 100 million people?

Because America doesn't suck as much as you think it sucks.

Makes sence that most of them are from China or a 3rd world country. But why would someone from the two 1st world countries (UK and Japan) want to move to the US?

same as above.

I'm not saying America has no faults, I'm not saying it's "better" than the UK or Japan.  But for certain types of people it certainly is.  It's kind of hard for me to understand how a level headed person couldn't see that.

[Franzl]

Have to agree with Deadman here. Different people have different preferences. The US isn't really a long-term place for me, but whatever floats your boat.

The good thing is that people have the freedom to pack up and leave if they don't like it.

[Brittain33]

I read a report that said that Canada should and could easily manage a population of 100 million. Looks like if every single person who wanted to move here did, we would still fall well shot of that target, but still it's quite nice to see us as high as we are, and per capita ahead of the US. I wonder why that is? People think we have all the benefits of the US without the shortcomings?

Perhaps people are aware of how much more open to immigration the government is as opposed to the notorious difficulty in the U.S.?

[pbrower2a]

4 million Japanese. Why don't more immigrate to the U.S.?

Few would want to relocate to crowded, expensive Japan with its fiendishly-difficult language and especially its writing system. (I could never understand why the Japanese did not adopt a Roman alphabet unless it is to keep foreigners from fitting in). That said, if one grew up in Japan one has a huge personal investment in schooling just to learn the writing system. Japan has one of the lowest crime rates in the world in part because of the harshness of the legal and penal system on violent offenders and drug users. 

The economy has stagnated, but it has stagnated at one of the highest levels of economic development in the world. (European countries and the US may have hit that). Japan has a culture inimitable anywhere else, and assimilation of people from anywhere else into it is difficult.

Want growth? Go to a poor country in the early stages of industrialization -- but know that poverty comes as a norm at that level of growth. 

[pbrower2a]

While most of the talk regarding immigration reform is about fences and 'pathways to citizenship' for 'illegals' already here, the bigger issue is actually improving the process for legal immigration. One solution to the issues of Medicare and Social Security funding is to bring in more young workers to fund the olds who are going to retire in the 2020s , 2030s and beyond.

This.  Why are we essentially discouraging people from moving into the US?  Most of the first world will be suffering a population crash, but the US seems to be in position to avoid it by attracting immigrants. 

Latin-American immigrants may not face the culture shock in America that Middle Eastern, Asian, and African immigrants would find in Europe. Latin America is undeniably Western in culture. It's not race.    

[Citizen (The) Doctor]

Maybe we should just let other countries start joining the US. It certainly would help solve the space problem.

[opebo]

I read a report that said that Canada should and could easily manage a population of 100 million.

Wow, neat!

[Sbane]

I read a report that said that Canada should and could easily manage a population of 100 million. Looks like if every single person who wanted to move here did, we would still fall well shot of that target, but still it's quite nice to see us as high as we are, and per capita ahead of the US. I wonder why that is? People think we have all the benefits of the US without the shortcomings?

That's not the right way to think about it. People don't take population into account when saying what country they would want to move to. The per capita numbers really don't matter. The absolute numbers are what count.

[Indy Texas 🇺🇦🇵🇸]

(I could never understand why the Japanese did not adopt a Roman alphabet unless it is to keep foreigners from fitting in). That said, if one grew up in Japan one has a huge personal investment in schooling just to learn the writing system.

Well, nothing screams "selling out" quite like ditching your writing system for one invented on the other side of the world for a language totally different from your own. The only time countries adopt other alphabets, it's because they're forced to at gunpoint (when the Soviet Union forced its Central Asian republics to write their native languages in Cyrillic script in order to "Russify" them), or because they've adopted a self-hating, if-you-can't-beat-'em-join-'em mentality, as Turkey did after World War I.

[dead0man]

I read a report that said that Canada should and could easily manage a population of 100 million. Looks like if every single person who wanted to move here did, we would still fall well shot of that target, but still it's quite nice to see us as high as we are, and per capita ahead of the US. I wonder why that is? People think we have all the benefits of the US without the shortcomings?

Perhaps people are aware of how much more open to immigration the government is as opposed to the notorious difficulty in the U.S.?

I'm pretty sure it's rather difficult to move to Canada if you don't have a job lined up already, just like the US.