I would also mention Switzerland. I met plenty of people in Google's Zurich office who didn't get an American visa or were waiting for an American visa. For an engineer who has a job offer, getting a work permit in Switzerland is a few days process. I don't even remember the names of forms and visas involved, unlike "H-1B" or "L-1B" or "Adjustment Of Status" and the rest of the crap half of the engineers on the planet are still having nightmares about. And, at the risk of stating the obvious, Switzerland doesn't look exactly like a third world country. Way less so then, say, East Palo Alto (just a random example.)
> Canada and Australia have pretty open immigration policies and their standard of living is higher than in the US.
Which direction is net-migration?
I don't know the answer, but I trust that statistic more than any "causal"/"{wherever} is better because of the {factor number}" argument. Why? Because it's easy to find a factor that is better for any destination but feet tell the truth.
My parents were both immigrants who came to Canada on "skilled labour immigration" policies. We enjoy pay that's well above the Canadian average (read: we're not working for pennies), and within my family we have 2 masters degrees, 3 undergrads, and 1 soon-to-be PhD.
Overall I think we have contributed to raising the Canadian standard of living, instead of detracting from it, and I wish that the US has the foresight to implement these policies - as a startup-minded individual I'd rather be there than here.