> U.S. still top destination as desire to migrate falls worldwide
So the US is still the top destination by a wide margin. Part of the decline is attributable to a global drop in desire to migrate at all.
Recent politics is undoubtedly part of it, but if you assumed the US had fallen behind other countries you should probably read the article.
The average worldwide is down but that downward trend is largely due to the US. Canada and Japan are up and most other countries are about the same. UK is the only other own with a notable downward trend
US market share of global desire to migrate
2007 - 24%
2016 - 20%
2017 - 18%
2025 - 15%
Canada is #2 and moved up from 7% to 9%
2025 per capita, Est. Would-Be Migrants / Country Population, top 4 + US and UK:
Canada: 2.18
Australia: 1.47
Saudi Arabia: 1.17
Spain: 0.82
UK: 0.58
USA: 0.44
2025 per GDP, Est. Would-Be Migrants / Nominal GDP, top 5:
USA: $85.4k
Australia: $65.8k
Germany: $55.7k
Canada: $54.2k
UK: $52.6k
Most other countries on the chart didn’t change much because going from 4% to 5% is in the noise.
The US started at a whopping 24% and ended at a number that’s still significantly higher than other countries.
As I said, politics played a role for sure, but when I read the comments before the article I expected to read about the US falling out of favor relative to other countries, which it has not.
Because every H1B who planned to migrate to the US but got locked out by Trump is choosing Canada as the next best thing. That makes Canada sloppy seconds after the US, not more desirable than the US, assuming everything else being equal.
If you look at the chart most of the decline happened before the Brexit vote, let alone Brexit. Since the brexit vote it has dropped from 5% to 4% which is not precipitous.
My niece was thinking of working in Ireland for a while and I told her that if she happened to stay for 5 years she could get an EU passport. It's a valuable thing.
As a first generation (just - I was six years old!) immigrant I am quite happy my parents (my dad's employer gave him a choice) picked the UK over the US, and I cannot think of anywhere that would be better for me.
Moving countries has hard - having done it a few times. Even going to places where you known people and know the system.
Looking at the rise of parties like AfD, National Rally, PVV etc. the EU is far more hostile to non-white immigrants.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/24/nearly-quar...
EU nations accepted millions of non-white migrants, especially post 2015 open border policy.
When living in a country that had a very high per capita emigration rate, I realised a lot of people had a very rosy tinted view of the rest of the world and their prospects there.
1. Legal immigrants - mostly need skills or money (sometimes family ties or ancestry). They are mostly better off building a better life where they are.
2. Illegal immigrants - still need money (for people smugglers), get the worst jobs once they get there, and its a huge risk. They are also usually better off building a better life where they are.
Unless fleeing war or severe persecution most people are better off where they are these days.
Also, as someone in another comment said, the world is wealthier as a whole and there are more opportunities in many places.
I did the math on the latter. Higher numbers mean more migration per km² of land, I made US 100% to allow easy relative comparison:
United Kingdom 1076
Germany 918
Japan 694
Italy 653
Spain 519
France 407
United States 100
Saudi Arabia 91
Canada 59
Australia 34
Canada 494
Australia 333
Saudi Arabia 193
Spain 186
Germany 136
France 132
United Kingdom 131
Italy 115
United States 100
Japan 73
Now if we wanted to make that even fairer it would probably be good to have a metric of migrants per km of built-on or habitable land or something to avoid skewing results for countries with a whole lot of inhabitable nothing in some areas. Canada and Australia are on the bottom in the first list (big countries with little population in comparison to their size) while they are on top in the per capita list.
As you can see it isn't as easy as it seems at first. What do we want to look at? Is it about land use? Is it about how big of a fraction is migrants? Or do we want to look at migrant per USD of GDP to see who would have the best/worst capacity to support migrants? Maybe we want to look at job markets?
All of that changes as you want to change the story, but what does not make sense is to just use absolute numbers based on national borders.
That's not what the article suggests at all.
The drop is calculated only from those who want to move.
Yes, it's still #1, but the drop that isn't a result of people not wanting to move. Instead, people that want to move are picking the US as the destination a lot less.
A drop in the desire to emigrate might have had a higher impact on groups who would have preferred the US, for example.
The concern is that smart, productive, capable people now have better alternatives.
You are clearly trying to suggest a much more specific, scurrilous interpretation.
If you look at the charts, it seems that if the US is a shithole, then Canada is twice the shit hole, and France and Germany are twice that.
In fact, it doesn’t appear that there are any non-shitholes using this metric.
I think the US should facilitate immigration by probably expanding the H1B 10x and reducing the period for a green card and also overturn Euclid v Amber and NEPA (with state level CEQA style to follow) but the reality is that even an immigration-resistant US administration is far more popular than any other country as a destination; and that’s probably simply due to the fact that it’s the one Western economy that is still dynamic despite everything.
How are people with that mentality--here for the money, but don't buy into the underlying concepts--going to affect the civic structure of the U.S.?
Here in Canada, before all this went down, the "work as a professional in the US, earn $$$$$, retire back in Canada or go back to a Canadian job with your pockets bursting with cash" was a fairly popular strategy in tech. I don't know how many people pulled it off in reality, but workers from either of our countries have/had some of the easiest pathways to working in the other one. I don't think either one is going to be very outraged at their neighbors coming over to work here.
The countries most immigrants come from have both liberals and conservatives. Immigration can’t change the long-term political balance. What it does instead is change what kind of left or right wing candidate is viable. The Bush/Romney GOP would have been wiped out in a landslide under 2024’s demographics. But Trump was able to win Nevada and rack up the margin in diverse states like Texas and Florida with stupid policies like “no taxes on tips.” Theatrics, handouts, and patronage is how politics works in most countries immigrants come from. Trump can play that game, the old Anglo GOP couldn’t.
Over time, American politics will more begin to resemble the politics of the places the immigrants are coming from, with guys like Mamdani instead of Carter and Trump instead of Reagan.
As someone who worked in US and left it long time back, last year was the first time I could hear ambivalent views on US from my friends who work there. They are still in US as they make a lot of money but have started to consider the alternatives.
For reference, I've for many years (35) lived in and around NYC/Brooklyn/New Jersey, LA, Las Vegas and Miami proper. Europe, I've been to Berlin, London, Paris, Strasbourg, Munich, and some I forget. It's a night and day difference and it baffles me that someone from there would want to live here. Cheers.
Or at least that's how I am interpreting the parent post...
From the graphs, it seems that knowledge of our non-dairy pavement is filtering through to other countries. But a longer term graph would be nice; I'd like to see how the indicator reacted over more economic cycles, but I know some visa categories that had been oversubscribed on opening day for years started staying open for most of the year when the mortgage crisis hit, and I'd love to see data from previous downturns, too.
I remember when I went to Australia, I could stay a year but American backpackers only 6 months because that's what Australians got in the US.
"Accepting" is different from "tolerating with a few instances of hate crimes and likelihood of incarceration". You have to include non-white people in the acceptance criteria.
And which of those are as desirable for foreigners to come work in, as the US?
It's easy to be super open to migration when you have little migration to begin with and the one you get is mostly wealthy foreigners coming to invest/buy properties and vacation/retire/remote-work there.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/canada-adding-new-ex...
While this administration is in place I don't even want to visit, even for work purposes I refuse. Especially the toxic manosphere culture at the moment.
I've lived in 4 countries but the US is not one that appeals to me. They pay the most but cost of living is also huge and besides that money isn't the most important to me. I'm making about 60% of what I would make in the same role in my home country. But that's ok because I enjoy living here a lot more.
What matters to me is quality of life, and a good social welfare system so I don't have to worry.
The experience of living/traveling in the US is very different from what can be seen on social medias and forums. At least in big cities in blue states.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/03/ice-german-t...
In fact I think it would have worked out better if he hadn't been a US Citizen because they would have just sent him back and given him a lifetime entry ban or something.
Why do you think that doesn't apply to the situation he was in? He was suddenly arrested (detained anyway, so his freedom was taken from him) and he, as an activist, had contacts on his phone of other activists who would have been criminally charged, killed, or disappeared.
His own constitutionally protected activism already got him marked as a terrorist in the US. That's why he was detained. His name was on a terrorist watchlist. The Customs and Border Patrol tactical terrorism response team and an FBI Atlanta joint-terrorism taskforce officer were informed he was coming. The government has been actively working to prosecute and silence him and his fellow activists. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/26/trump-admini...
> Giving a duress PIN is a big choice and you have to be reasonably informed about the legal consequences of doing so in whatever jurisdiction you're in.
He was illegally denied access to a lawyer or he would have been reasonable informed.
Because he knew in advance that he would be crossing the border. If your threat model includes ensuring that US border control does not view the contents of your phone, and you're returning to the US after an international flight, then you need to take appropriate precautions (i.e. wiping your phone beforehand rather than after they've taken it). It's not like the police suddenly raided his house in the middle of the night. Obviously I feel bad for the guy, but if he had acted differently he would not have been criminally charged.
The Trump administration is perfectly happy to violate the rights of American citizens too. Nobody is safe right now.
Thinks they want (where "think" is doing some massive heavy lifting because it's simply factual that wide swaths of voters have demonstrably exercised very little "thinking".)
Opinions among actual Americans vary. Some blue states even issue driver licenses to unauthorized immigrants on the basis that it's better for them to pass the driving test than to drive without taking the test.
undocumented and here temporarily (most people oppose this),
undocumented and here permanently (the left is split on this, the right is mostly against it),
documented and here temporarily (most people are fine with this, especially tourists),
documented and here temporarily with an option to become permanently (many oppose this because it's impacting employment, especially with H-1B abuse),
documented and here permanently with no intention of becoming citizens (many people on the right don't like this for assimilation reasons),
documented and here permanently an a path to citizenship (most people support this except the extreme right),
former immigrants who are now citizens (nearly everyone supports these people).
The problem is that all of this is put under a single umbrella called "immigration," but it includes so many sub-issue like rule of law and assimilation preferences that you can't have a serious debate on it.
https://www.project2025.observer/
They want a Autocratic Theocracy AKA God's Chosen One-ocracy (and take a wild guess at which demographic gets to decide who the chosen one is...)
This is also the most important political question in the US right now. Are the people still sovereign?
"Deporting all immigrants who are here illegally" was polling at 55% approve/45% disapprove as recently as July.
There was opposition to Noem’s theatrics. But it seems like Mullen’s quieter approach has taken the heat off and most of the focus now is on the shit inflation and Iran war.
You'd be surprised to learn that ICE is quite popular. For example 73% of Republicans approve of the job ICE is doing --- see page 14 of this NPR/PBS/Marist poll: https://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/NPR...
The only ethical way to do it is better security at the border and making legal immigration and visits much easier. You can’t just snatch people who are established in communities and put them into camps without leading to a thoroughly justified moral outrage.
Our current president has intentionally created a system designed to be cruel, brutal, and unfair because his supporters get off on it and because every abuse of power makes his next abuse easier, but even though some people will inevitability be upset when the illegal immigrants in their lives are removed from the country, it doesn't have to be a complete moral atrocity to enforce immigration law. The way it's being done today is a choice.
So far getting green cards is almost closed for software engineers. Because to get it from H1B/L1 visas, you need to pass a market test, but it isn't possible right now. So, the only available option is EB2-NIW, but it is a lottery. I only hope that companies will start to hire more outside the US
We are however in very different times. In the 2010s, they couldn't employ enough software engineers. Now? There's permanent layoffs. Every year all these companies now lay off 5-10% of their employees. It's become the "up or out" culture of Corporate America.
The only reason they do this is to suppress wages. They want to claw back the gains of the 2010s. Every sufficiently sized company reaches a point where the only way they can continue to grow profits is to cut costs and raise prices. Labor is a huge cost.
Despite supposed protections, it's clear that people on work visas get paid less. There's an inherent lack of mobility and the consequences of getting fired or laid off and not being able to find a job are extreme: depending on what type of visa you have you may have to leave the country within as little as 10 days (but typically 60).
So I think companies should lose their ability to not only sponsor green cards but also hire nonresidents if they engage in layoffs for a certain period. I'm thinking 2-3 years.
The employment situation for software engineers is now dire, unlike a decade ago, so it actually makes sense to curtail foreign employment.
X.1 2024 2025 Change
% % (pct. pts.)
Southeast Asia 18% 12% -6
Latin America and the Caribbean 33% 28% -5
Australia-New Zealand 11% 7% -4
Sub-Saharan Africa 27% 24% -3
Northern America 4% 2% -2
European Union 7% 6% -1
Former Soviet States 13 12 -1
South Asia 7 7 0 <---- NO CHANGE
Middle East and North Africa 9% 9% 0 <---- NO CHANGE
East Asia 13% 15% 2 <---- INCREASE
Most people from developing to developed probably still are interested. Their interests may have shifted to better visa opportunities.
But those from developed to developed has probably decreased cause of job security problems globally in developed countries. People probably don’t want to leave their current state in this market.
The developing to developing is probably the same.
I have to imagine that their sentiment is not unique.
Trump only made it worse.
> Within the European Union, Spain, at 11%, and Switzerland, at 8%, rank ahead of the U.S., at 6%.
So I think this really shows that EU members don’t have a lot of desire to migrate anywhere. The drop from 7% to 6% is inline with the global decrease in migration desire. I don’t think there’s as much to read into this about sentiment change toward the US.
Although recent US international politics did stain the US image in Europe substantually. Just the most recent betrayal against Ukraine is a good example of why.
In fact, many of us are exactly as hubristic about our nations' popularity as you seem to be about the popularity of the US.
Before I left the UK (for Germany), I encountered people who seemed absolutely convinced that all 8 billion humans would move to the small, moist, sheep-filled rock if not for even stronger enforcement of immigration policies.
The US may be physically larger than the UK, but no, the world doesn't want to move to you. We don't want to regularly share the road with what are, by our standards, monster trucks; nor do we want the 2nd; nor strip malls; nor the nuclear arsenal. Many of us have our own alternatives to Mount Rushmore, to the Statue of Liberty, etc., and don't really care about yours.
Quite a lot don't care for the language as spoken and written in the USA, and for a long time that has even included British people, "two nations divided by a common language".
> In 2025, 15% of adults worldwide who say they would like to move permanently to another country name the U.S. as their preferred destination
and eyeballing the graphs, only about 10% of residents of Asian countries have any desire to move at all.
there is good and bad, i believe we are much more good and it's exactly why there is a wait list for entry longer than anyone's list of political grievances that boil down to mostly hyperbole with a short list of few real concerns
such an interesting perspective.
America's cultured is ingrained in everyone. You have 2-3 more runs of trumpian presidents before it's gg
> But despite these changes, many people worldwide — an estimated 900 million — would like to move, including about 134 million who would prefer to move to the U.S.
Important caveats.
1. The US is still the top desired place to move by a large margin
2. There a variety of evidence to suggest that this also splits by tier of talent. For the best of the best the desire to move to the US remains strong. What has clearly attenuated is the lower tiers, with the crackdown on H1Bs and other areas there’s clearly fewer lower tier talent folks flooding in. That’s impacting tech masters degree mill type folks. but ultimately not a terrible thing as that system has been broken for a while.
imaging what's going down just before/during the Olympics which I am 99% certain will be boycotted by then
You fire ahead and take my spot.
That used to be a joke about the Soviet Union. Perhaps before your time.
It's better for them to lose the fantasy. It's a brain drain on the world, and an excuse for the US not to educate its own properly.
- NY has a great tech scene, it feels slightly healthier than SF but FAR more ambitious and supportive than London does. Also London investors are incredibly flaky.
- Street violence is an issue (in NYC), but phone theft and terrorism are not.
- My gym has a good out-of-the-gym social scene which has made it easy to meet people.
Hopefully people get more informed on how hard it is to apply and don’t waste their lives on it, as a lot of them won’t get legal residency, or it might take several long years.
And this applies in general to most countries, specialized educated professionals are wanted, not poor people.
they got their wish.
and when the world's richest country, that built the very liberal democratic order of The West, turns around and tells all of its friends, "you've been ripping us off!"
Funny that the truth is the opposite. We have a comically massive trade deficit. But we're not actually friends; you just want some of that money. The "friendship" is that we rip off your countries, your elites sell your countries away piece by piece, and then they send their spoiled children to the US to get on the other side of the trade, too.
The US doesn't owe immigrants any more than they owe the people who don't have the means or desire to bail on their own countries. In fact, the emigrants have usually already gotten their share. It's the people left at home who need the help (or need the US to stop "helping.")
How about we focus on dealing with the oligarchy in our country instead of blaming immigrants for everything? It's the elites across both parties and corporations who are doing this to us, and dividing us, the people.
What Happened to Liberal Democracy | The Tyranny of Meritocracy - two books with good ideas for how we start to undo this mess we find ourselves in