what has changed that would make you less likely to immigrate today?

A lot. Pandemic accelerated globalization. Availability of VC money used to be exclusively American but is now global.

the key part is 'knowing what I know now'

I migrated, not to US, and my brother stayed. We work in the same industry, and has 2x my quality of life with 60% of the income.

Peope who immigrate on these visas are typically not lower class in their home societies, they are usually upper-middle class. And usually you wnd up just in the middle class in the west. And standarss of living for middle class have beeen declining for the past 10 years or so, while developing nations are developing.

There is also cost to immigration - losijg contact with family, expense and stress of applying for visas, etc. You wouldn't make the jump for like 10% improvement, the QoL improvement has to be at least 50% for it to be worthwhile.

Giving up comforts of home is not easy and there has to be a 2X improvement in QoL for the move to be justified. And I’m not sure there is any improvement in QoL honestly. You get some you lose some. It’s more or less an even trade at this point.