I know a lot of poor immigrants in my home town in NJ (my family for example when we got here). I know there are countries in Europe/Asia that are much harder than the US to get into.

IMHO the US is more about making money than it is about where you come from or your ethnicity or your nationality. We just want to get paid. I know in the news you see a lot of parts of the US that makes it seem like they do not want immigrants, but I think the truth is that the US welcomes immigrants more than other countries.

> Migrating to US is much higher effort than migrating practically anywhere else in the world.

This is a surprising statement to me. Maybe it's true. But my understanding (which might be wrong) is that it's considerably more difficult to receive legal status in most other OECD nations.

As American living abroad, I assure you that the US has an almost absurdly burdensome immigration system.

As someone whoo immigrated to the US, most of the difficulty is due to demand - i.e. H1B lottery, visa country caps, etc. Otherwise it's not that different than other countries.

I studied mathematics. It wasn't hard to get there at all. The only problem was there were seventeen applicants for every single one that got in, otherwise it wasn't more difficult than if I wanted to get admitted to geology.

What's you definition of "legal status"? It's not like this article talks about people coming to the US illegally.

Do you mean settled status? Regardless, that is easier as well (see for instance the guy posting about the Blue Card a few comments up).