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Comment by Clubber | Hacker News Reader

>Ask all the people who move here, they generally will be a lot more optimistic about the US.

Here's the top 10 countries of origin for immigration to the US in 2018 (before COVID). We can assume people who immigrate to the US do it for a better life than the country they came from. Notice there aren't any "developed" countries in this list. Care to guess what that says about the US?

Mexico - 161,858, Cuba - 76,486, China - 65,214, India - 59,821, Dominican Republic - 57,413, Philippines - 47,238, Vietnam - 33,834, El Salvador - 28,326, Haiti - 21,360, Jamaica - 20,347

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/us-immigr...

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The US has a positive net migration rate with every other major developed country. More people move to the US from Australia, France Germany, Finland, Canada, etc than go the other way. Care to guess what that says about the US?

https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/...

Tell me what you think it says. I can think a lot of reasons why that would be the case, including unwillingness to learn a foreign language, requirement to pay US taxes as an expatriate, immigration level differences between countries as well as population difference.

> Notice there aren't any "developed" countries in this list. Care to guess what that says about the US?

Well, it says that there aren’t many “developed” countries where emigrants can walk to the US.

Good luck walking from Cuba, China, India, Dominican Republic, Philippines, Vietnam, Haiti, and Jamaica

People from those other countries frequently travel to Mexico first, then illegally cross the US border from there.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/immigration/sd-me-...

https://www.dw.com/en/entering-us-via-mexico-why-are-so-many...

Four in those countries are newly industrialized. They may be not "developed" yet, but they are getting there. I hate this **king division of countries into first world, third world, etc. There are certain cities in a "shithole" country that are far richer and better in certain neighborhoods in a "first-world" country around the world. Anyway, people don't immigrate to the U.S. to be happy - they get there to get better money for their skills, and then come back to visit their home countries on vacation to be "happy"

>I hate this *king division of countries into first world, third world, etc.

You're getting your nomenclature discombobulated. During the Cold War, first world was US and her allies. Second world was the USSR and her allies. Third world was all the others. Third world got branded as "shitholes," because they didn't have support from the superpowers and the superpowers tended to intervene in their local politics, or steal resources, etc.

>There are certain cities in a "shithole" country that are far richer and better in certain neighborhoods in a "first-world" country around the world.

Yes, most of the US by land mass would be considered a "shithole," by many people including myself, that was my original point. People in non "shithole" countries come here far less than countries who are worse off than us. That puts us in a pretty low point on the "great countries to live" scale. Somewhere slightly above Cuba and China. In most of the US, the economic prospects are grim and the federal support is near non-existent. The US is ok if you are the top 20-30% of earners, otherwise, it's pretty crappy. It wasn't always like this.

https://www.google.com/search?q=boarded+up+small+town+usa&tb...

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