There are lots of countries in the world that are less well off than the U.S. I have not made any claims about living conditions in those countries being worse or better than the U.S. I've not made any claims about people coming from poorer countries being dumb or even people coming from richer countries to the U.S. being dumb.

I made the claim that the U.S. is not as nice a place to live as many other rich countries. Objectively speaking this is a true statement. The U.S. ranks lower on many measurements of living standards. Of course there are counterexamples in that some people have a better standard of living in the U.S. than they did in another country but we need to be mindful that the plural of anecdote is not data.

Nope - nothing objective about it. I moved to the US from a European country with a supposedly higher standard of living. I worked longer hours here, experienced workplace bullying, and a whole host of things that would be illegal in my original country.

However I also experienced more freedom and diversity and was able to find a much more heterogenous community, as well as do things that were simply not allowed in my home country.

My life is much richer here and so the US is much nicer for me to live in.

The US has one major thing going for it when it comes to immigration. Being a melting pot, it is much easier for someone to come in and find a community of people from their own country to make the transition much easier. That, and English is more common as a second language.

> I guess those people are just too stupid to know how bad it is in the US?

US marketing is the best in the world, no doubt; maybe "mistaken" or "deceived" is more accurate than "stupid".

A few observations:

- people trying to immigrate to the USA come predominantly from desperately poor countries that are, indeed, not as nice a place to live. (People from those countries are also frequently denied tourist visa to the USA, btw.)

- among my fellow students at a good university in California that came from first world countries, only about a quarter decided to stay for longer than a few years.

- among Chinese that go to study in the USA, increasing numbers apparently choose to return to China.

> it's all a personal preference

To a large part it is.

Among expats that have options and have seen different continents, the US is more of middling choice, I'd think, but for some people it just clicks and they love it. (And NY is in a different category, anyway.)

Is the waiting list of people wanting to immigrate from other rich countries really decades long?

It's not. Immigrants from first-world nations get fast tracked through their green card and naturalization process because the quotas aren't exhausted as rapidly as those for poorer nations.

Yes, they should all switch their applications to Switzerland and reach for the swiss dream.