cplanas

Or people for who English is not their first language. In Spanish at least, an "americano" is anyone from the Americas. People from the US are "estadounidenses".

> In another comment section (Reddit, I believe) there was anecdotal evidence that visitors from Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania regularly outstayed their visas and were notorious for violating a tourist visa, hence the additional checks the US wanted to put them through.

I guess it was anecdotal evidence, because the data shows the contrary:

- Bulgaria: 1.74% - Croatia: 1.08% - Cyprus: 1.35% - Poland: 1.49% - Romania: 2.06%

There are a few countries on the VWP that have higher overstaying ratios (Hungary, Chile, Slovakia). Croatia in particular has an overstaying ratio lower than Austria's and Netherlands'. Source: https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/FY%2015...

The reason they don't get VWP is the visa refusal rate, aka "US embassy in your country does not want to give you visa".

There will be a hit in tourism, but I doubt that it will happen on those three countries. When Americans go to Europe they tend to focus on France/Italy; Spain is more popular for Europeans. Think about tourists in Miami (searching for sun) compared to tourists in New York (searching for "history").

There is no "EU nation", and therefore, no EU nationalists. Moreover, most of European federalists are internationalists.

ACLU defends the American civil liberties, not only the American civil liberties of American citizens. You seem to assume that the American civil rights apply only to citizens. That's a peculiar interpretation, and openly against Supreme Court doctrine. The Supreme Court, on the 14th amendment (Plyler v. Doe (1982)):

> "The last two clauses of the first section of the amendment disable a State from depriving not merely a citizen of the United States, but any person, whoever he may be, of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or from denying to him the equal protection of the laws of the State."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...

In that particular case the court was referring to illegal aliens, not permanent residents, who logically would be at least as protected.

If you feel like the article is too long, you can watch this 11 minutes presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc. It summarizes their methodology.

I took the presentation link from the article.

> Temporary ban on immigration [...] I have never been more hopeful about the future!

I was curious about you -there are not many that support your positions in HN- and I checked your past comments. You seem to be an immigrant too, as you define yourself as a "Valley startup expat". If that's the case, how can you support a ban on immigration -even if it's temporary- being an immigrant yourself? Don't get offended, I'm genuinely curious.

Europe is much, much stabler, at least right now. I follow the political polls in Europe and what you say is... mostly not true.

> AFD in Germany in the 15-20% range

According Wikipedia, no poll ever has given AFD more than a 15%, with the vast majority giving it around a 12.5% (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_German...). Even if AfD would get to 20% (which it's very far away from their predicted results) it's very unlikely they would get to the government.

> Le Pen might win in France

She might, but right now is very unlikely, much more than a Trump victory or Brexit. The problem is that she is losing in the polls by... a lot. For the French presidential election, all polls predict Fillon v. Le Pen. The only two polls conducted since Fillon was chosen candidate give him +34 and +42 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_French...). 42 points was the distance between President-elect Trump and Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, in the last election.

I'm not saying it's impossible. Just very unlikely. The errors in the polling for the US Presidential Election and the Brexit referendum were much smaller.

> A regular employee/salaried dev is looking at at least 90k euro/year in nl

According Payscale, the average salary for a developer in Netherlands is 41k Euro/Year (http://www.payscale.com/research/NL/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa...), and in Amsterdam, the capital, 53k (http://www.payscale.com/research/NL/Job=Senior_Software_Engi...).

In Copenhagen and Barcelona (the two Euro cities where I have worked) 90k is totally off the market.

> Many countries (Italy, Spain) don't have functioning stock markets at all.

Is there some kind of irony in this comment that I am not getting? I mean, both countries have fully functioning stock markets. The main index for the Spanish stock market is IBEX35 and the Italian is the FTSE MIB.

This. We are headed to a slow-growth society, in which existing wealth is much more important than new income (yeah, I like Piketty). It's not only in the US, also in Europe.

Nate Silver commented (debunked, I would say) this issue on Twitter. It seems that the "abnormality" detected or does not make sense (Pennsylvania, Michigan) or disappears when controlling for race and educations levels (Wisconsin).

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/801220813890277376

> if you're a US citizen

That's something you can opt out of. In fact, some do: http://fortune.com/2016/08/11/us-citizens-renounce/

As you say, this happens with many videogames and other kind of stuff: I remember the case of a child that started to interact with other children after watching Jurassic Park. He totally wanted to play and talk about dinosaurs.

The article just tries to go aboard the Pokémon GO hype, in a particularly wrong way, IMO.

Pokémon Go cures autism, apparently.

Well, maybe the one caused by vaccines.

> It's obviously not accurate to begin with: Romanians aren't all going to the best European schools and they do not have access to such.

Your "obviously" is certainly not obvious. I live in Denmark, and my experience is exactly the opposite: there are MANY Eastern European students in the top Danish universities. Ironically, a degree in Denmark (0 cost) is cheaper than a degree in Eastern Europe: and yes, education in Denmark -and other European countries- is for free for EU citizens. Damn, my own girlfriend is from Lithuania and got her Master from Aalborg University.

I will try to give you an example with data: the best university in Scandinavia for Engineering is DTU (http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/faculty-r...). In 2014, it admitted 1403 MsC students; of those, 538 (38%) were "international" (http://www.dtu.dk/english/About/FACTS-AND-FIGURES/Education). DTU doesn't offer data about the particular region of origin of the international students, but I do suspect that most of them are Europeans, particularly Eastern Europeans. It's like this for Aalborg University (3rd best in Eng. in Scandinavia): 79% of its international students are Europeans, with 40% of the total being from Eastern Europe (http://www.en.aau.dk/about-aau/figures-facts/students/intern...). Going back to my personal anecdote: when my girlfriend finished her Master degree in Denmark, we went to celebrate with her colleagues: a Pole and two Latvians. No, Eastern Europeans studying in good universities in Scandinavia are not uncommon, by any means.

> Let's see the results: half of Europe is so impoverished, the median incomes in those nations wouldn't come close to reaching the poverty level in the US in terms of standard of living. The poverty levels in countries like Moldova, Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, Belarus, Ukraine, Hungary etc. are nearly third world they're so bad.

If you are going to define "Europe" as the continent, I shall be able to define "America" as the continent too. How is the poverty level in Paraguay? Criminality in Ciudad Juárez? Life expectancy in Bolivia? Violence in Caracas?

I thought we were being serious and comparing US with EU; it's already a very favourable comparison for you.

> What results has the supposed free amazing education produced? None that can't be easily bested or matched by the worst economic zones in the US.

The results are multiple. I think I can group many of them under one word: social peace. Spain's homicide rate is 0.7; Italy's is 0.8. US is 3.3. The most peaceful state in the US, New Hampshire, is still more dangerous than Spain or Italy: 0.9. The highest homicide rate in the whole EU is for Lithuania, with 5.5. In the States it would be slightly worse than average in between Michigan and Alaska, very far from the 10.3 of Louisiana.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_homicid...

IMO, the States is an amazing place if you are a highly-skilled professional or an entrepreneur. If you are poor, not so much: no free healthcare, much higher crime, very high imprisonment rate.

I think those common cultural elements form the American culture. Having fairly distinct regional cultures, and even languages, is not uncommon.

If the US would not share a culture, intra-US migration would be a big issue, as it is in the EU.

Diversity, as understood as a possible problem for social cohesion, is not about race: it's about culture. And the vast majority of Americans in the US have only one culture: the American one. The exception for this is first (and sometimes second) generation immigrants. That's why I use the native vs foreign born statistic.

> homogeneous society [...] Scandinavian fetish

Foreign-born population of Sweden: 16% Foreign-born population of Norway: 13.9% Foreign-born population of USA: 13.1%

https://data.oecd.org/migration/foreign-born-population.htm

> Nordic countries [...] owe large part of their success to colonization in the past.

The Nordic countries had no (or negligible) colonies. The Nordic countries are Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Norway.

The fact that you are putting Spain, Greece and Italy as example of poor EU countries already shows you have an alarming lack of knowledge about the EU at least. Spain and Italy are average countries in the EU, GDP per capita-wise. Greece is lower than average, but far away from the poorest ones (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/3/3...)

In Europe anyone can go to a top school. In my case, my mother is a cleaner and my family is low-middle class: I was able to go to the best university of my country anyway. Most of people in my university were like me. In most of countries of Europe the money just doesn't matter for education purposes: if you are good enough for that university, you go there.

And for a Spaniard is quite possible to rise higher than the European upper middle class. I know many, many cases.

Just finished with the first two volumes of Cixin Liu's trilogy. Really good stuff. :)

Or they leave.

I'm from Barcelona, living in Denmark and moving to SF soon. I have a couple of friends working in 3scale, and they seem happy. It looks like a good company to work for.

My plan is going back to BCN at some point, so if you are still searching for backends then, I will give you a call. ;)

Ironically, that's one of the offers with highest salary brackets I have ever seen in Barcelona.

Getting a similar position in a US company is not easy. The US visa system is sheer madness, starting with the H1B lottery.

Barcelona feels like Spain? Frankfurt and Berlin feeling generally like the same country?

I can agree that London is the most international city of Europe -at least right now, probably not in the close future-, but your descriptions of the other cities feel very off.

Spain has a history with Latin American countries, that's true. It's something that all former colonial empires share. UK has also a history with the Commonwealth members.

Said this... do you seriously think that UK is closer culturally to India than to Germany?

I can remember at least 9 different cities that have been called "the startup capital of Europe".

There is nothing in Europe that can compete with Silicon Valley, but the closest ones would be London and Berlin. London feels a bit more corporate, while Berlin seems younger and wilder.