Trust me, EU countries have their own immigration demand problems. Especially a place like Germany which has one of the few functioning economies in the block lately. People flock there looking for work. Other countries with huge immigration demand include England and Spain. There are simply better ways of dealing with high immigration demand than "dump everyone into a pot regardless of education/experience/viability/urgency and randomly select a few".

> Other countries with huge immigration demand include England and Spain

Spain is just wanted due to the proximity to Africa and a lot of African immigrants/refugees using this vector.

> There are simply better ways of dealing with high immigration demand than "dump everyone into a pot regardless of education/experience/viability/urgency and randomly select a few".

We Germans deal with asylum seekers by putting > 2.500 people in camps designed for 1.500 MAXIMUM occupants (Munich, "Bayernkaserne" camp), blocking them from work and giving them free food and 140€ per month as pocket money.

Needlessly to say, that ain't fucking enough for non-food expenses in bigger cities, and what happens if the only thing they do is drink, smoke and fight (as asylum seekers you must not travel around the country, you have to stay in your processing city!) is basically a fucking violation of human dignity.

Of course it also leads to vast criminality - not just the fighting between asylum seekers themselves, but also massive amounts of theft, pot dealing (hello Berlin Görlitzer Park) and other criminality. In order, Nazi-parties and other right-wing extremists gain excellent popularity with "Kick em out" messages.

> Spain is just wanted due to the proximity to Africa and a lot of African immigrants/refugees using this vector.

I hear this from time to time, but data paints a radically different picture. What you describe is only the case for sub-Saharan immigrants who are just a tiny, tiny minority of the inmigrants coming to Spain. Most inmigrants come from:

1-Romania (for which Spain is obviously not in the path to any other country)

2-Morocco (the vast majority of whom arrive legally since the late 90s)

3-UK (and contrary to popular belief, only 21% of them are over 65 years old)

Then, the largest component of immigration is from the former colonies, due to the shared language (so, again, not being used as a vector)

All of this data is available online on the INE (national institute of statistics)

Ah, y'see that's why we, in Australia, stick our asylum seekers in camps in different countries like Nauru and Papua New Guinea, where whatever problems they cause are safely out of sight.

My opinion is that the world seriously needs a new refugee convention to prevent economic migrants from abusing the refugee system. The governing idea should be that you can't use refugee status to move from a poorer country to a significantly richer one. If you're a genuine refugee then moving to a safer country with similar per-capita-GDP is something you should be happy with.

Great idea but hard to enforce, unless the country is Israel or an island. It's amazing how many migrants are trying to get illegally across the English Channel from France to the UK because of better benefits and jobs.

Meanwhile, Yazidi and Syrian refugees will have to pay thousands to smugglers or scale barbed wire fences to enter a safe country.

To say non-American countries have easier immigration systems on the basis that it is demand related is in my opinion, absurd. Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada and many European countries have massive demand.

However you'll find most of these countries have opted to sell residency, albeit through business and job investments. Generally skilled workers have to be sought for locally before they get someone over.

Using a "lottery" system just sounds crazy. It's still possible to buy citizenship, yet everyone else has to sit on the side-lines and take a number. Sounds like a weird plan created on a whim..

A recent gallup survey says 150M people would move to the US if they could, the UK was a distant second at 45M [1].

As for the lottery, how else could it be done? There is a cap on H1-B visa each year. The USCIS receives more applications than spots the first day you can apply.

[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/153992/150-million-adults-worldwi...

> A recent gallup survey says 150M people would move to the US if they could, the UK was a distant second at 45M

Now adjust those numbers to the population of those countries... oh look, the UK all of a sudden came out ahead.

All of these studies comparing numbers usually just boils down to "The US is big". It has been brought up elsewhere that Canada, for example, has more immigrants as a percentage of population. But of course when comparing absolute numbers to the US, it will look like peanuts.

If the reason is the US is big, why would you look at it on a per-capita basis? Maybe adjust for land size? Then the UK would really come out ahead!

Only if immigrants are merely settling empty land. As long as they want to start out as part of society, they'll need jobs, housing and regular infrastructure. My own region is growing nearly as fast as housing can be built. More than 50% of everyone in some cities like Toronto have been in the country for less than 5 years, at any given moment. (Often starting out there, and moving to other parts of Canada later. Still limited by the population capacity of Toronto)

Uh, I guess? It looks like you're making fun of your own original argument at this point. In this case, if you use these numbers as an indicator of demand the UK clearly has greater demand per capita. And per capita is a much better measure since a country with a bigger population can assimilate and/or integrate a larger number of immigrants, thus it can comfortably have a larger immigration demand than a smaller country.

Why does a per-capita number make any sense here?

Because a large country is able to absorb more immigrants than a small country. 150M is 2x the population of the UK, but less than 50% of the US. So it would make sense that the US would have a higher quota than the UK.

Because it is a better proxy for how it will affect society in terms of ability to absorb more people, ranging from tax payer base to things like cost of infrastructure projects to handle the population growth.

I'm not sure about the "demand" angle here. Demand is sorted out at the interview stage on a company-level. Once the position has been filled up, it shouldn't be counted towards demand. Hence it should not be subject to lottery. The fact that US has more job opportunities for foreigners compared to, say, Germany in high-tech only means that industry is more thriving in the former. I doubt jobs are created BECAUSE more people wanna move to the US. And by the way, the job search process itself is partly a lottery - it's never 100% about merits.