[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_...

[snowpid]

More people move from US to Europe https://stateofeuropeantech.com/talent

And this proofs the point that income isnt the only metric for emigration.

[alephnerd]

And most skilled (for the sake of this convo STEM) immigrants immigrate to North America and have done so for decades [0]

[0] - https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/7938614756940962...

[snowpid]

The state of European Tech is about STEM. Do you think they talk about American uneducated refuguess stranding on the European shore?

[alephnerd]

1. I don't appreciate that tone.

2. I have literally provided a peer reviewed paper proving my point, and I can provide a second one as well [0].

It's a well documented trend, and I myself can confirm this within my family, and multiple others in a similar boat.

I'm not saying Western Europe is bad, but the kind of pipeline that exists in much of North America isn't as robust in Western Europe.

Plus the absolute number in the trade paper you provided is ~10k arrivals and ~6k departures from Europe, which is a drop in the bucket in absolute terms compared to North America. Just with EB-2s alone (one of the multiple types of visas for STEM talent) you are seeing 90k approvals a year.

[0] - https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/22-047_b5373e6a-...

[snowpid]

I really like to read my provided source instead complaining about the tone. Your first provided source is outdated (ca. 2016), your personal view has a bias and selection effect ("US is the best country in the world", you are surrounded by people preferring US and money), I couldnt find the data, you argue for, in the second source (you can give a page number), and my thesis was: It is not only about money. If so, Europe would have an outflow to US. It does not despite lower income. So other factors in migration matter. What is your problem about this statement?

[alephnerd]

The State of Europe report only further validates my core thesis:

> 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

The rate of inflows and outflows of European and American tech workers being constant proves this very point.

Pre-tax TC is only 2-3x more in the US than much of Europe, and QoL doesn't change drastically, so there's no reason for Europeans techies to immigrate to the US or vice versa based on salary alone.

This is a similar story for techies in other markets like China, SK, Taiwan, and India preferring to stay put instead of immigrating to much of Western Europe, because it's a 1-3x TC bump compared to a 3-6x TC bump going to North America.

As tech salaries in those countries rise, then increasingly techies won't leave those countries either unless a drastic TC change is provided.

And it's not just salary, the xenophobia and microaggressions in much of Europe are definitely in your face if you don't look "European" (and even then some idiots will target other Europeans as lesser) compared to much of North America.

And no, pointing out Varadkar, Sunak, and Costa are of South Asian origin; Yeşilgöz and Özdemir being of Turkish origin; etc doesn't fly.