The US is successful, but in terms of GDP per capita countries like Denmark and Sweden have kept pace with the U.S. since the 1980s: https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/denmark/usa?sc=...; https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/sweden/usa?sc=X.... Having a market economy seems much more important than immigration.
New York’s GDP per capita is double that of Japan and significantly higher than the Tokyo region. I doubt most Japanese would be happy living in New York. Indeed, if Americans could even conceive that a city could be like Tokyo—clean, orderly, polite, with effective transit and public services—most wouldn’t want to live in New York either.
Japan is considering more immigration to deal with its population problems, but the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.
Your neighbors might be great as individuals as well. That’s irrelevant to my point. Chicago might be the poster child of a city that could’ve been orderly and well run. Except for the last century it’s been riven by ethnic conflict and immigration-fueled machine politics that has sapped the government’s ability to actually serve its people.
Contrast New England. A large number of people from New England retire in the Annapolis area because of the sailing and warmer weather. The cultural difference is undeniable. Many have said to me that, growing up, they learned food was for surviving, not enjoying. They cut donuts in half at events so people aren’t tempted to eat too much, and regularly run out of food (because better to run out of food than to waste it). As a Bangladeshi, I find them totally unrelatable and frankly kind of scary in how little they seem to care about having grandchildren. But it’s impossible to deny that the little New England towns they created are extremely orderly places.