Unless "plenty" is ~100 million, then yes, they are. E.g. Italy has only 4.6% immigrants from outside Europe, and Ukraine has only 1.7% of non-European-origin ethnic groups.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy#Immigrat...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ukraine#Ethnic...

And yet in most European countries there's a clear path to citizenship.

US is a popular destination because people are after money, not because it's good for immigration. Ask for all the H1Bs that risk being deported for being laid off, even after living many years over there.

Legal clarity and strict limits are not mutually exclusive. Nor do many European politicians pepper their speeches with "nation of immigrants" and "diversity is our strength", and when a mere million refugees came from the Middle East (to be fair, that is on top of all the non-European migrants already in Europe), that was a "crisis", and caused a significant rightward shift in EU politics.

For comparison, the US takes in almost 2 million legal immigrants per year (on a population of 333 million vs. EUs 446 million), plus however many illegal ones, and there is nothing like a "sanctuary city" in Europe.

> Nor do many European politicians pepper their speeches with "nation of immigrants" and "diversity is our strength"

It will be a chilly snowy day in the hellhole I hail from when I give credence to the platitudes a politician uses to pepper their speech.

I know why I picked the EU and not the US as a destination, at least.

Taking in a refugees is quite different to taking in a migrant who passes all your immigrations tests. Refugees need more social services, housing, healthcare etc.

Also, that number of refugees was on top of normal migration, making comparisons difficult.

The EU takes around 2 million immigrants from outside the EU per year as far as I can tell. I don’t know hot many move with the EU, it’s a lot.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

Is the measure of restrictive immigration the number of immigrants that made it?

You could remove any rules on immigration to the US and I won’t be moving there. Some destinations will be popular and some unpopular whatever the rules.

Also, why are you not counting immigration within Europe when looking at European immigration?

> why are you not counting immigration within Europe when looking at European immigration?

That would make about as much sense as counting immigration between different US states. I know it's fashionable to pretend someone immigrating from a neighboring country is the same as from half-way across the world, but it's just not so.

Romanians moving to Germany (as an example) should definitely be counted as immigration. They are still foreign nationals for Germany, with the caveat that due to agreements within the EU they are free to live and work in Germany without any extra bureaucracy.

That said it makes EU countries actually a lot less restrictive in terms of immigration than the US. EU member countries are not in anyway way equivalent to US states.

Have you been to any many EU countries?

I have only been to a few, and the differences between them are massive, comparing them to US states isn’t even vaguely close to accurate.

It would be interesting to compare the two most similar EU countries to the two most different US states.

> Have you been to any many EU countries?

I was born and live in one of them, and have been to eleven others.

And you seriously think that US states are more different than EU countries?

realistically no one would move to italy from a career prospective. Specialized work is paid peanuts, more often than less of juniors of same trade in France or Germany while dead end jobs pay less than peanuts bcs unionized contracts ( every job contract is modeled after union ones) arent renogatiated seriously from 30 years ago.

Ukraine instead has like 5K$ GDP/capita, making it less attractive than say Germany

Source: i'm italian