The desire to come and immigrate to the US has greatly diminished. This use to be a easy decision for foreign students to stay in the US for work opportunities. Nowadays, a US degree isn't considered prestigious outside of a few elite schools and the cost has completely spiraled out of control. I've talked to numerous colleagues who abandoned waiting for a green card because it's no longer a clear cut decision. Opportunities and quality of life in other countries have either caught up or surpassed the US in certain areas. This would of been unthinkable 10-20 years ago.

>The desire to come and immigrate to the US has greatly diminished

Do you have any data to back up that claim?

E.g. the number of diversity lottery applicants (one of the easiest proxies to judge how many people express their interest in moving to the US) went up from 12 million in 2011 to almost 20 million last year.

This thread is largely about college educated folks who represent a small minority of diversity lottery applicants. As to why the DV lottery has grown, I suspect it has a lot to do with it just having become more visible and known, growing hand in hand with increased access to internet and ability to apply.

Sure, if we are talking about the top end we can check the O-visas, the "extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics" ones, both the applications and the issuance of those went up even more than the DV applications:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_visa#Number_of_visas_issued_...

They’re right about 1 and 3, but not 2. Life has gotten much better in a good chunk of the world, that the opportunity loss for not moving to US is getting smaller. You can easily see it by immigration application numbers by country.

> You can easily see it by immigration application numbers by country.

Where are you getting this information? Visa issuance more than doubled between 2020 and 2024.

https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Annual...

Visa issuance doubling and having less applications from improving countries can both be true. I think you want issuance by place of birth to make the comparison OP is pointing out.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...

> I think you want issuance by place of birth to make the comparison OP is pointing out.

I’m not seeing a year to year comparison on the page you linked. It’s calculable from the monthly figures, but I’ll wait and see if the GP responds with his own source.

> But there are reasons people want(ed) to move to the USA

Yes, primarily because its the richest country in the world and it's "easy" to make money.

> But there are reasons people want(ed) to move to the USA, and I don't mean refugees

I think overall you are correct but probably still not safe to generalize. If you're moving to escape persecution then just being "on the other side" achieved this. If you are economically motivated then just leaving doesn't guarantee anything, you can be worse off. This circles back to the idea that the people who are persecuted by a regime paint the public opinion of that regime.

I have friends from Eastern Europe who emigrated to North America (mostly Canada) in the early '90s only to move back shortly after when the reality didn't live up to the hype and their expectations. They had a better life back home. The move was economically motivated, not escaping persecution. Many families under authoritarian regimes had the option to move to a Western country but not being actively persecuted meant they had no hard push and decided for the "comfort of familiarity".

East Berlin slipping into authoritarianism is a good showcase for this. Most people chose to stay in place for long enough to build a wall. We're talking years in which they saw the reality around them but only the ones who actively suffered from persecution chose to leave. Today plenty of East Germans still look back fondly at those times because they didn't feel the objective pain of persecution, only the subjective general suffering of "I could have better but don't".