[1] Second paragraph of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_State...
My uncle immigrated in Spain for instance; entered and worked illegally at first (since a Schengen visa was required of him, and he could find illegal work more easilly anyway), but forward 15 years later, and now he has full citizenship and a perfectly legal driver's license. And he has had a legal job for 10 years already.
For me I have the following difficulty - you can't obtain a visa for work in the US if you don't have a college degree in the domain you want to work in. And then it's extremely difficult to be a startup founder that way, since with that kind of visa you can only work as an employee and have a sponsor. Unless you can obtain a Visa at the lottery or for extraordinary merits.
This is absolutely insane - since I just got out and bought a college degree in CS, waited 3 years to get it of course, but I got it, and now I can get an US Visa.
But then again, why should I? Why wouldn't I go work in Zurich or in London or in Berlin, or just stay where I am, since obviously the US doesn't want me?
Within Europe, yes. It's hard to immigrate into Europe coming from outside.
"Especially as an EU citizen."
Only as an EU citizen. If you're not, it's hard to travel around Europe - you need a lot of papers, for each country you go to, and it's not a matter of filling in a form online and they'll send you the papers; it involves certified translations, several appointments with embassies and the like, etc.
As to the last sentence, there is a reason people flock to the US - because it's simply a better climate there to start a business. Good luck in Zurich (of all places! the Swiss are as close-minded and protective of their nationality and 'independence' as it comes!) or anywhere else in Europe. Of course it can be done, many companies are founded and are successful; but nowhere near the same level as in the US.
(European here)
Immigrating to Europe from outside Shengen space is as hard as getting to US from outside.
http://www.ssab.gov/documents/IMMIG_Issue_Brief_Final_Versio...
High productivity farm land is being destroyed by development at an alarming rate. The US is steadily becoming a food importer in category after category, where once we exported. This puts further pressure on our already abysmal trade deficit. This is also a national security issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_%28Oregon_regional_govern...
the statistics for number of new citizens per capita remove that bias. and then the USA ranks #26. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/imm_net_mig_percap-immigra...
Every country on the planet appears to have restrictions on immigration. Most of the time we don't discuss the policies of countries other than the United States in new submissions to HN, even though HN is an international forum, because most countries are lousy enough to be entrepreneurs in and lousy enough to live in that no one on HN wants to immigrate to those countries. (Instead, most people on HN discuss how to get OUT of dozens of other countries around the world, and in many cases how to immigrate to the United States.) When we consider that the actual number of legally authorized immigrants to the United States each year is one of the highest such numbers in the world (does ANY country have more legal immigrants each year?), it's hard to make a case that the United States is missing out on immigrants by its current policies. Perhaps there are some policy changes to be made on the margins, and on my own part my policy preference would be to make immigration to the United States legally easier and much more commonplace, but the way to make the case for policy reform is to show law-abiding Americans that the policy changes help their lives. The Americans I know, including many law-abiding first-generation immigrants, want policy reform that makes like better in general for all people already in America, as well as for people intending to immigrate here.