Where are they headed to that’s doing substantially better government-wise than USA?
That said, you’re implying a point that’s valid: much of the world is in an oppressive state right now. South America’s always a mix, but most of its states are seemingly less stable now than a few years back; Mexico’s narcoviolence is spiking; Central Europe is trending right-authoritarian, India’s under Modi, and Africa and Central Asia aren’t typically on USian’s radar.
That basically leaves Canada, the nordics, and Western Europe.
Somewhere like Singapore is a stable option as well. Australia and New Zealand.
China might be authoritarian, and the language is hard, but if someone is willing to conform and defer to the Party they can do well there. And if a person's thesis is "I am leaving the US because it is losing its status as a world power", China is the logical country which will be stepping into that vacuum.
In the past, the languages that "everyone spoke" to do business were first Latin, then French, now English. In the future it will be Spanish and Chinese.
The current president is governing for the 3rd time already. I understand this is allowed by Brazil's constitution and he was technically elected democratically but doesn't inspire a lot of confidence regarding Brazil's democracy. I believe he also had a woman president (Dilma?) as his proxy for 8 years. Sounds too similar to the kind of thing you see in Russia.
This is just my take when looking at it from the outside.
I don't understand why this doesn't inspire confidence for you. Angela Merkel was Chancellor of Germany for four terms, do you feel similarly about Germany's democracy?
I'm not saying Brazil's government is perfect or corruption free by any means, but when I ask for examples of what's wrong with it, "the president has served a number of terms less than or equal to the maximum permitted by law" doesn't seem like a good primary criticism...
Granted, Lula's approval rating is not great.
They may be staring down the barrel of a demographic crisis and a real estate collapse. Will those happen, at sufficient magnitude and proper timing to prevent their global economic dominance? Hard to say. We'll have to wait and see.
I think for more people it is “I am leaving the US because it is becoming a much worse place and the government is self-destructing, and it is sabotaging all of its allegiances.”
AU/NZ? JP?
Possible metrics:
* Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices
YMMV.
* Edit2: Some lists at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_life
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Ranking
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_quality_of_life_indices
What?
(we hold permanent residency in Mexico, as well as a residency visa in Spain)
Implies people are applying for dual citizenship of Ireland and Mexico, but without any concrete data.