[alephnerd]

> not highly skilled immigrants like doctors, engineers and so on.

If you have the skills for above as an immigrant, you can command way better salaries in the US and Canada, or stay in your home country.

There's no reason to immigrate to Western Europe except as a consolation prize.

[mertbio]

Not everything is about money. You have way more security in Western Europe comparing to the US. Also, people don't want to move too far from their families.

Edit: Also I want to add that it is way easier to get a permanent residence and citizenship, for example in Germany than the US. The only problem is just learning German but for that most of the companies support you by paying your language course and so on.

[alephnerd]

> Not everything is about money. You have way more security in Western Europe comparing to the US

It is as a skilled immigrant like my parents.

A job like a doctor or engineer pays decently well in your home country, so there's no reason to uproot your life unless there is a DRASTIC difference in QoL, because immigrating is expensive. You're looking at $30-50k spent to immigrate.

Germany doesn't provide that drastic enough an economic change compared to the US and Canada, and that's why it's so easy to immigrate to Germany - it isn't as oversubscribed, and those same white collar roles you mentioned end up giving the same if not better benefits in North America via your employer.

For Eastern European or MENA immigrants, Germany makes sense because there is an existing community and it's close to home - not as much for Asians or Central/South Americans.

Furthermore, the xenophobia is real in Germany and across Europe. It's hard to explain to a Gora or Ang Mo, but like you'll never truly become "German" or "French" for a large segment of the population no matter how much you try to assimilate.

> it is way easier to get a permanent residence and citizenship, for example in Germany than the US

Because for a large segment of immigrants (especially from Asia and Central/South America and especially among skilled professionals), Germany and much of Europe simply isn't as attractive a proposition. You end up spending a similar amount immigrating but salaries are much lower and communities aren't as established so it harder to recoup costs

[mertbio]

> A job like a doctor or engineer pays decently well in your home country

It is not in Turkey but again, it is not about money. People want to move to Western Europe for multiple reasons. I met with a brain surgeon from South Korea who moved to Germany, because he just wanted to live in the centre of the Europe so he can travel around easily.

I'm also telling people to move to the US if they only care money but that's not their priority.

> You're looking at $30-50k spent to immigrate.

I've never heard such a number. You spend around €2-3K and most of the cases, you get a relocation budget from your employer.

[alephnerd]

> It is not in Turkey

Hence why I called out Eastern Europe and MENA, though Turks who can afford it do try to target the US instead.

For example, all of Erdogan's kids attended IU Bloomington for undergrad and grad school instead of German programs like LMU or TUM, and the Koç family (the family that controls the Turkish economy) sent most of their kids to Stanford, JHU, and Brown.

> I met with a brain surgeon from South Korea who moved to Germany, because he just wanted to live in the centre of the Europe so he can travel around easily

Ofc, yet the largest Korean diaspora in the West is in America, and the 2nd largest in Canada.

> you get a relocation budget from your employer.

In tech we're lucky we have a market that pays so highly for our skills, but other industries don't pay as much or require a significant amount of retraining, and if you're bringing a family, as plenty of immigrants do, you don't want to live in crummy neighborhood, so you need a lot of money to have a safety net.

[mertbio]

> There's no reason to immigrate to Western Europe

This was your initial argument and I'm trying to tell you that there are many reasons by pointing out to some examples. Why is it so hard to understand?

[alephnerd]

Yes, and I stand by it because this is an extremely common conversation in every single diaspora and I have family and friends who have made this very same decision.

There will ofc be people immigrating to Western Europe, and ofc a decent number are skilled, yet at the end of the day, in absolute numbers immigrants trend towards North America over Western Europe, inspite of the difficulty [0].

Immigration, like every product or service follows the law of supply and demand. It is miles easier to immigrate to much of Western Europe simply because the demand, while significant, is not as close to that for North America

If Western European countries wish to attract skilled immigration, they need to understand what truly makes the North American system click.

Australia followed a similar policy after ending the White Australia program in the 1970s and transformed into a truly multicultural country, and that was due to following a program similar to that in North America.

[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_...