[parentheses]

While you may be right, I feel the dynamic is more about the fact that most expats tend to be more educated than the average. If someone willingly moved to a country where limited opportunity exists, that may not apply to them since they're better equipped for it.

This is especially true if you consider Indians or Chinese in America. Those populations have an even more acute education lead. So many people want to come here, that to commit means accepting you spend the next 15 or so years waiting in line to finally be a permanent resident (rather than an immigrant who can easily be forced to leave if their visa doesn't have a sponsor.)

[sangnoir]

> While you may be right, I feel the dynamic is more about the fact that most expats tend to be more educated than the average

That's my point exactly! It's not that all Americans are particularly entitled, lazy, uncreative, or risk-averse. I specifically chose American investors in their country of origin as a counterpoint to the implication that Americanness infers lack of grit/drive, doubly so when Americans can succeed the countries OP left.

Voluntary migrants (that includes expats) are a self-selected, self-motivated bunch. OP is did not contrasting themself to the appropriate percentile of Americans.

[Generous8030]

> That's my point exactly! It's not that all Americans are particularly lazy, uncreative, risk-averse

And I said the opposite? the problem is not with all Americans, just the ones perpetually complaining that all of their misfortunes were caused by being born here vs some ideal place (which they can't never really point to in a map) where they were going to magically have an easier life.

> Voluntary migrants (that includes expats) are a self-selected, self-motivated bunch. OP is did not contrasting themself to the appropriate percentile of Americans.

I'm not Indian or Chinese (I'm a black latino), came here with not even a bachelors degree, and honestly, with no particular skill that someone from here could not obtain in a relatively short amount of time; I was still able to insert myself into the tech scene and find my place there. I'm still working on improving myself day to day, so I guess maybe you have a point on the motivation aspect, but that is an intrinsic quality, and I don't like how this analysis somehow attributes the lack of motivation on other people to <me>, and suggest that if I don't feel gullible and pay more taxes (which is the subtext of this piece) I somehow failed "Alex".

[int_19h]

Many of them wish it were as short as 15 years! Here are the numbers.

US has a limit of 140k employment-based green cards issued per year, set by law.

Then per-country quotas (no more than 7% of the total number per country) are applied, meaning that the number of green cards issued to Indians per single year can be no more than ~15k/year for employment-based category. This is further broken down by meritocratically-worded categories such that the quota actually available to someone who doesn't fit the EB-1 "Einstein visa" category - i.e. someone with "merely" a master's, say - is ~8k/year.

And the backlog for this category for India is over 1 million. So, given an Indian applying today, and assuming everyone in front of them in the line will remain there, you get something on the order of 125 years wait. Of course, in practice this means that many people in the line will either abandon the wait or literally die of old age before their turn comes up, which moves it that much faster for those behind them. At current rates, this translates to the actual wait of ~50 years.