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Comment by baybal2 | Hacker News Reader

Does immigration to South America is still a thing at all? For people besides Latinos.

South American countries seem to have had so many false starts. The moment they have a few decades good run, and it seem the country is finally starting to take off they either have a revolution, putsch, junta, or a communist government.

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I don't think you should get downvoted, it's a good question. I live in Buenos Aires, and there is definitely a general perception that the country is hopeless. But for some reason we do get a fair share of immigrants from more prosperous countries such as South Korea and China. There's also a lot of people coming in from Africa, mainly Senegal from what I've heard.

China still has huge wealth disparity. So, while China might seem overall more prosperous than Argentina, Chinese emigrants are often from parts of the country with a standard of living below Argentina's.

Yeah. Even with massive infrastructure investment you still hear stories like children climbing 800m on vines to go to school.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2016/05/27/europe/china-children-edu...

And there are other reasons to move too, like air quality, a pressure cooker educational system, extremely high housing cost as a multiple of salary...

Sure, but there's plenty of starving people in Argentina as well, not all the country is as wealthy as Buenos Aires. So the question is, why do they come here instead of going to a bigger chinese city? My guess is that they already have a support network here. That's why many of them end up working in the same businesses, such as running small supermarkets.

What do you think on Buenos Aires vs Sao Paulo?

I've never been to Sao Paulo, but it has a reputation for being very violent and controlled by gangs. Buenos Aires is actually pretty safe (at least the city itself, the suburbs are worse, but still nowhere near the number of murders that Sao Paulo had at its worst).

Uruguay and Chile have been surprisingly solid for a few decades (not withstanding Chile's recent riots, which are resulting a new constitution). Argentina can usefully be thought of as a country with first world commerce and third world government. Southern Argentina though is more reliable.

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