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What I see in comment sections of articles like this is a perfect example of why EU is set to lose in the coming decades: mindset. I’d say most Americans under

What I see in comment sections of articles like this is a perfect example of why EU is set to lose in the coming decades: mindset. I’d say most Americans understand the value of highly skilled migration. It’s how America stays #1, it’s how they have the best companies, and bring the most value to their nation. Meanwhile in EU, any move to attract talent is seen as net-negative, unfair and detrimental to the culture and livability. Their negativity is a self fulfilling prophecy, but it will be a very costly and hard pill to swallow, just like the UK is seeing after Brexit.

rr808 2y ago
No I think most countries value high skilled migrants. In most countries its the only way you can migrate. The difference is whether they should get tax breaks. In fact the USA is probably the hardest country in the world to work as a digital nomad - you can only work legally here if an employer sponsors you. And you definitely wont get a tax break.
diggan 2y ago
> It’s how America stays #1, it’s how they have the best companies, and bring the most value to their nation. As always, it's relative. Granted, I'm one of these loser EU residents who has a different mindset, that chasing #1 position in terms of GDP generated per resident isn't the be all end all. Instead, people's happiness is on the top of my mind, and taking care of as many people as possible. And with that mindset, the US is very far from the top, and there are so many countries that are better for "living", but maybe not the best if your entire life revolves around finding the best place for "working". We all have different focuses in life, and that's OK. But to say that some places are "better" on a absolute scale feels like a mindtrap if anything.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > I'm one of these loser EU residents who has a different mindset, that chasing #1 position in terms of GDP generated per resident isn't the be all end all. Instead, people's happiness is on the top of my mind, and taking care of as many people as possible. It's not an all or nothing dichotomy. Social services get dramatically more expensive if you don't have as robust a local economy. All governments borrow money and need to service debts in order to pay for their social safety net, and that's much more expensive now due to higher interest rates and economic convergence. And it's not like Eastern European EU member states are poor chumps anymore - they're fairly business friendly and some like Czechia have already caught up to Western European (Italy/France) level living standards. This means you can't play wage arbitrage anymore by getting an underpaid janitor or nurse from Croatia or Poland to work at your local hospital like you could 10 years ago.
FrenchDevRemote 2y ago
It's a complex issue. When so many "skilled workers" move to your neighborhood that your rent doubles and that you can't afford to do grocery shopping in your neighborhood, it makes sense to be angry. The US top 1% are number 1, the US bottom 10% have it worse than most or even almost all people from western Europe.
- piker 2y ago
  Do you have a metric to support that theory? It’s good for the European story for that to be true, but hard to quantify.
  - FrenchDevRemote 2y ago
    I don't have the exact metrics, but free healthcare, free education, and enough benefits to not be homeless and hungry seems like more than what poor Americans get.
    - lotsoweiners 2y ago
      Poor Americans have essentially free healthcare. It is called Medicaid. https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/eligibility/index.html https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/eligibility/index.html Over 82,000,000 people are enrolled in Medicaid. https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/program-information/medicaid-and-chip-enrollment-data/report-highlights/index.html https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/program-information/medica... America has lots of programs that assist poor and/or disabled people: SNAP, Unemployment, VA, SSI, SSDI, TANF, Section 8, Childcare Assistance etc. Some people don’t want to bother to apply/jump through hoops to get them but they exist.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > the US bottom 10% have it worse than most or even almost all people from western Europe America’s bottom 10% are absolutely comparable to Europe’s bottom 10% when one considers actual access to services and material standards of living. (I’m assuming you mean EU’s, not Europe’s, because as terrible as being homeless in America may be, it sure beats being bombed.)
anonzzzies 2y ago
I agree with you on that one; I am still in favour of the EU and one of the last countries I would want to live is the US (it's a nice country (parts of it) to vacation in though), but yes, the EU has issues (in my opinion) that would be good and positive for 'the people' IF there would be an abundance of money coming from somewhere (there isn't); a) language (let's ffs speak english everywhere; I'm dutch, i speak dutch, german, french, portuguese and spanish, but it's just easier to have english as the first language, as as the common high value business language in the world) b) regulatory; small companies should be exempt from regulations and that should change per milestone the company reaches c) make it easy, cheap and attractive to start a company; as point b), start getting annoying when it grows beyond certain milestones, but not too annoying so it will leave d) make taxation so that it's attractive to invest in here e) boost our electronics, military and space faring research/development/manufacturing across the board; that brings jobs, money, investment and innovation. But it's hard to balance with culture and liveability; I would never live in the US for fear of dropping from the few top % by some accident getting into extreme poverty. Here i'm not really scared of that (and i've been there in the distant past).
- JojoFatsani 2y ago
  There’s a long way to drop between the 90% and the 10% in America. If you’re starting from a position of privilege with a personal savings safety net, you’d have to really F things up for yourself (drugs, gambling, over leveraging) to find yourself in extreme poverty.
- BobbyTables2 2y ago
  What I find odd, is that moving between states in the US is relatively easy. Find a job and go. But if a skilled English speaker wants to move to the Netherlands (whose population is smaller than Florida) or virtually any other European country, they’d have to be fluent in the local language. That’s a really high bar. Seems like even for multi-lingual Europeans in the EU, this would still be challenging, especially for families. (Asking kids to suddenly attend school in a different language???) Seems like Europe is the modern day Tower of Babel story.
  - 2y ago
duegreg 2y ago
What? All of EU software engineers want to work in the US but we cannot.
- ghaff 2y ago
  I highly doubt all or even most.
FredPret 2y ago
I agree with you but I will also add that the “new world” is much more geared towards turning those immigrants into actual Americans, Canadians, and Australians than the EU is turning the nomads into Europeans. But that’s just one more contributing factor to what you described.
anovikov 2y ago
Almost sounds as if someone can actually come to the US as a digital nomad, work and live there, and get tax breaks.
Leherenn 2y ago
There's a difference though between importing talent to work for the local economy and having people who work for foreign companies. Maybe some digital nomads transition from the latter to the former, but given local wages it must be rare. Then it's a tradeoff between whether the extra tax revenue/spending is worth the potential social issues those rich foreigners can bring.
stratocumulus0 2y ago
Maybe this approach would have made sense if the area were an established hub in whatever craft those immigrants are specializing in, but in case of Portugal what I can see is a country with (formerly?) cheap CoL trying to attract immigrants who keep working remotely, paying taxes elsewhere and contributing whatever little consumption tax they pay into the local economy. There's no established competitive IT industry or academia. This isn't how you build high-tech economy, it's how you become a suburban wasteland for rich people.
GoToRO 2y ago
When the americans will be displaced by the skilled migrants, it will be an even harder pill to swallow. And it will be too late too. This movie it's not done yet. Any kind of forced population relocation, it's bad. Before, it was done with guns, now it's done with money. The results are the same. Current day skilled migration is popular today, because companies get fully educated people, without having to pay taxes for education, day care, health. You get only the best, whithout having to paying anything. Not even parental leave for their parents. The question is, should the people let companies, aka the rich, decide how the country will look like in 50, 100 years? Also skilled migration is very bad for origin countries too. They loose all the best while having to suport all the liabilities. Like the pensions of the parents of the skilled labor that left and now it's not contributing anything.
- eastbound 2y ago
  Population displacement is a crime against humanity.
satvikpendem 2y ago
It's not just that but also the mindset of entrepreneurship and growth versus stagnation and la dolce vita, which, while nice in the short term, is untenable in the long term. Pieter Levels of NomadList fame talks about this often [0][1][2], he is Dutch, not American, so it's not like he's biased for America but he notes that it is disheartening for him to see Europe slip into mediocrity over time. [0] https://x.com/search?lang=en&q=Europe%20(from%3Alevelsio)&src=typed_query https://x.com/search?lang=en&q=Europe%20(from%3Alevelsio)&sr... [1] https://x.com/levelsio/status/1784943280171467260 https://x.com/levelsio/status/1784943280171467260 [2] https://x.com/BolognaFishMD/status/1771695080862085211 https://x.com/BolognaFishMD/status/1771695080862085211
- tchalla 2y ago
  And yet he continues to live in Europe despite having other choices.
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    He doesn't live in Europe.
    - tchalla 2y ago
      He literally said he lives in Europe on Twitter. https://x.com/levelsio/status/1809779394719654257?s=12 https://x.com/levelsio/status/1809779394719654257?s=12
      - satvikpendem 2y ago
        Ah I didn't see his latest reply, he normally lives in Asia, I thought he was still there. Regardless, he can live there and still want to improve his continent, as he mentions. Your comments remind me of this meme. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-somewhat https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...
        2y ago
127 2y ago
You are comparing two things that are not actually the same. America is the top destination by far for actually skilled migrants who can pump up the economic engine and build highly profitable businesses. America has fine-tuned its entire system to integrate and take advantage of skilled migrants, its tech/research industry being built on this, and its reputation, physical and logistical infrastructure helps to take the cream from the crop. It's easy to talk about highly skilled immigration when you are the one taking all the best part of it. Those highly skilled productive individuals who can move to America will. Mass import of unskilled migrants, especially young military aged men, is indeed net-negative, unfair and detrimental to the culture and livability.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  >Mass import of unskilled migrants, especially young military aged men, is indeed net-negative And yet this is what EU keeps doing to its own detriment.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  > Mass import of unskilled migrants, especially young military aged men, is indeed net-negative, unfair and detrimental to the culture and livability. Yet studies show the opposite of what you so confidently assert.
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    Both you and 127 "so confidently assert". Neither of you provide citations or other evidence.
    - bryanlarsen 2y ago
      It's an easily falsifiable statement, it's easy to prove me wrong if I am wrong.
  - 127 2y ago
    Evidence defeats conjecture. There are plenty of examples of immigration gone wrong in Europe if you just open your eyes.
switch007 2y ago
Politicians love changing the definition of skilled migration (eg UK recently with cooks being on the list. So obvious what they're doing) So we have to be careful when discussing "skilled migration"
igor_akhmetov 2y ago
You got it backwards. US makes it impossible for skilled migrants to come and settle down. EU countries make it much easier.
- pyb 2y ago
  This. Americans value high skilled migration less than Europeans do. The proof is in the pudding (ie immigration policies)
dathinab 2y ago
Portugal fully understands that. That is why they did make that law in the first place. The problem is what they expected was something like "highly skilled migration contributing directly or indirectly to Portugal". But that isn't exactly how it played out, which is why they removed tax brakes. I mean think about it. Just attracting talented people to be in your country and paying some tax isn't enough. You also need to be able to capitalize on them. E.g. by them working for your companies, them creating companies in your country, them settling in your country, etc. But AFIK that didn't really happen in case of Portugal. > any move to attract talent is seen as net-negative, not really moves to attract talent are very common, through often focused with different dynamic then the US through you might confuse the sentiment with the negative sentiment wrt. people coming as refuges instead of immigrants which are often perceived as not being skilled and just taking advantage of social systems etc., the same way it's commonly the case in the US (e.g. wrt. people from Mexico). Just to be clear I say perceived, because enough refuges are quite skilled/qualified just their qualifications are often not recognized due to bureaucratic reasons --- As a side not IMHO/AFIK the huge raise on apartment rent/buy cost in Lisbon is likely _not_ majorly related to the previous tax break programs. Mainly such raises can be observed in most relevant western (and beyond) Capitals around the world, driven by the most wealthy of mainly the western world (but also beyond, e.g. Saudi Arabia) using them as money banks and very term investments. The moment many do it will (did) also drive speculative investment. Which can lead to somewhat of a looping effect. Or in other words it's a side effect of the past ~10 years of (especially western) world economics.
kranke155 2y ago
Ridiculous. This is not a "friendly to migration" policy but a welcome mat to wealthy nomads to move to Portugal and pay less tax than the locals. That's not even being welcoming, it's throwing your own population under the bus. Most EU countries have no issue with skilled migration when needed. Denmark has a solid migration policy and thus relative consensus on keeping it as it is. Other EU countries have passed policies that ruined their own local population in favor of low skill migration or in this case, high skill migrants hoping to avoid high taxes. This not attracting "the best", it's attracted a lot of amoral individuals who just want to move to Lisbon to party and enjoy the weather.
snowpid 2y ago
You mean the country where 48 % voted for Trump. Did you know that more Americans move to Germany than Germans move to America despite lower wages. Maybe life quality attracts talents more. (To be honest my comment is very cheeky but so this is the comment above . EU is big . Germany is big and even cities have considerable differences. )
39896880 2y ago
The EU does not have the cultural means to adapt to immigration the way the US does. The US removed the native population, so all cultural in the US is adaptation; adding more into the mix isn't such a problem.
belter 2y ago
There are many things were America is not number one. Provide living wages and Universal Health care and you will be at the baseline at least 80% of European countries achieved 50 years ago...
Ekaros 2y ago
So are you saying what USA and states should do is to give very large tax breaks for H-1B visa holders to make them more competitive against native and allow them higher living standards?
braiamp 2y ago
> any move to attract talent is seen as net-negative, unfair and detrimental to the culture and livability The biggest barrier to attract talent in the EU is language. It's not culture, it's not incentives, it's not tax breaks... it's language. The US only needs to learn a single language, english. For Europe you would need at least 3 languages to be marketable since EU citizens are learning multiple languages since born in most cases.

rr808 2y ago

No I think most countries value high skilled migrants. In most countries its the only way you can migrate. The difference is whether they should get tax breaks. In fact the USA is probably the hardest country in the world to work as a digital nomad - you can only work legally here if an employer sponsors you. And you definitely wont get a tax break.

diggan 2y ago

> It’s how America stays #1, it’s how they have the best companies, and bring the most value to their nation. As always, it's relative. Granted, I'm one of these loser EU residents who has a different mindset, that chasing #1 position in terms of GDP generated per resident isn't the be all end all. Instead, people's happiness is on the top of my mind, and taking care of as many people as possible. And with that mindset, the US is very far from the top, and there are so many countries that are better for "living", but maybe not the best if your entire life revolves around finding the best place for "working". We all have different focuses in life, and that's OK. But to say that some places are "better" on a absolute scale feels like a mindtrap if anything.

alephnerd 2y ago
> I'm one of these loser EU residents who has a different mindset, that chasing #1 position in terms of GDP generated per resident isn't the be all end all. Instead, people's happiness is on the top of my mind, and taking care of as many people as possible. It's not an all or nothing dichotomy. Social services get dramatically more expensive if you don't have as robust a local economy. All governments borrow money and need to service debts in order to pay for their social safety net, and that's much more expensive now due to higher interest rates and economic convergence. And it's not like Eastern European EU member states are poor chumps anymore - they're fairly business friendly and some like Czechia have already caught up to Western European (Italy/France) level living standards. This means you can't play wage arbitrage anymore by getting an underpaid janitor or nurse from Croatia or Poland to work at your local hospital like you could 10 years ago.

FrenchDevRemote 2y ago

It's a complex issue. When so many "skilled workers" move to your neighborhood that your rent doubles and that you can't afford to do grocery shopping in your neighborhood, it makes sense to be angry. The US top 1% are number 1, the US bottom 10% have it worse than most or even almost all people from western Europe.

piker 2y ago
Do you have a metric to support that theory? It’s good for the European story for that to be true, but hard to quantify.
- FrenchDevRemote 2y ago
  I don't have the exact metrics, but free healthcare, free education, and enough benefits to not be homeless and hungry seems like more than what poor Americans get.
  - lotsoweiners 2y ago
    Poor Americans have essentially free healthcare. It is called Medicaid. https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/eligibility/index.html https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/eligibility/index.html Over 82,000,000 people are enrolled in Medicaid. https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/program-information/medicaid-and-chip-enrollment-data/report-highlights/index.html https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/program-information/medica... America has lots of programs that assist poor and/or disabled people: SNAP, Unemployment, VA, SSI, SSDI, TANF, Section 8, Childcare Assistance etc. Some people don’t want to bother to apply/jump through hoops to get them but they exist.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> the US bottom 10% have it worse than most or even almost all people from western Europe America’s bottom 10% are absolutely comparable to Europe’s bottom 10% when one considers actual access to services and material standards of living. (I’m assuming you mean EU’s, not Europe’s, because as terrible as being homeless in America may be, it sure beats being bombed.)

anonzzzies 2y ago

I agree with you on that one; I am still in favour of the EU and one of the last countries I would want to live is the US (it's a nice country (parts of it) to vacation in though), but yes, the EU has issues (in my opinion) that would be good and positive for 'the people' IF there would be an abundance of money coming from somewhere (there isn't); a) language (let's ffs speak english everywhere; I'm dutch, i speak dutch, german, french, portuguese and spanish, but it's just easier to have english as the first language, as as the common high value business language in the world) b) regulatory; small companies should be exempt from regulations and that should change per milestone the company reaches c) make it easy, cheap and attractive to start a company; as point b), start getting annoying when it grows beyond certain milestones, but not too annoying so it will leave d) make taxation so that it's attractive to invest in here e) boost our electronics, military and space faring research/development/manufacturing across the board; that brings jobs, money, investment and innovation. But it's hard to balance with culture and liveability; I would never live in the US for fear of dropping from the few top % by some accident getting into extreme poverty. Here i'm not really scared of that (and i've been there in the distant past).

JojoFatsani 2y ago
There’s a long way to drop between the 90% and the 10% in America. If you’re starting from a position of privilege with a personal savings safety net, you’d have to really F things up for yourself (drugs, gambling, over leveraging) to find yourself in extreme poverty.
BobbyTables2 2y ago
What I find odd, is that moving between states in the US is relatively easy. Find a job and go. But if a skilled English speaker wants to move to the Netherlands (whose population is smaller than Florida) or virtually any other European country, they’d have to be fluent in the local language. That’s a really high bar. Seems like even for multi-lingual Europeans in the EU, this would still be challenging, especially for families. (Asking kids to suddenly attend school in a different language???) Seems like Europe is the modern day Tower of Babel story.
- 2y ago

duegreg 2y ago

What? All of EU software engineers want to work in the US but we cannot.

ghaff 2y ago
I highly doubt all or even most.

FredPret 2y ago

I agree with you but I will also add that the “new world” is much more geared towards turning those immigrants into actual Americans, Canadians, and Australians than the EU is turning the nomads into Europeans. But that’s just one more contributing factor to what you described.

anovikov 2y ago

Almost sounds as if someone can actually come to the US as a digital nomad, work and live there, and get tax breaks.

Leherenn 2y ago

There's a difference though between importing talent to work for the local economy and having people who work for foreign companies. Maybe some digital nomads transition from the latter to the former, but given local wages it must be rare. Then it's a tradeoff between whether the extra tax revenue/spending is worth the potential social issues those rich foreigners can bring.

stratocumulus0 2y ago

Maybe this approach would have made sense if the area were an established hub in whatever craft those immigrants are specializing in, but in case of Portugal what I can see is a country with (formerly?) cheap CoL trying to attract immigrants who keep working remotely, paying taxes elsewhere and contributing whatever little consumption tax they pay into the local economy. There's no established competitive IT industry or academia. This isn't how you build high-tech economy, it's how you become a suburban wasteland for rich people.

GoToRO 2y ago

When the americans will be displaced by the skilled migrants, it will be an even harder pill to swallow. And it will be too late too. This movie it's not done yet. Any kind of forced population relocation, it's bad. Before, it was done with guns, now it's done with money. The results are the same. Current day skilled migration is popular today, because companies get fully educated people, without having to pay taxes for education, day care, health. You get only the best, whithout having to paying anything. Not even parental leave for their parents. The question is, should the people let companies, aka the rich, decide how the country will look like in 50, 100 years? Also skilled migration is very bad for origin countries too. They loose all the best while having to suport all the liabilities. Like the pensions of the parents of the skilled labor that left and now it's not contributing anything.

eastbound 2y ago
Population displacement is a crime against humanity.

satvikpendem 2y ago

It's not just that but also the mindset of entrepreneurship and growth versus stagnation and la dolce vita, which, while nice in the short term, is untenable in the long term. Pieter Levels of NomadList fame talks about this often [0][1][2], he is Dutch, not American, so it's not like he's biased for America but he notes that it is disheartening for him to see Europe slip into mediocrity over time. [0] https://x.com/search?lang=en&q=Europe%20(from%3Alevelsio)&src=typed_query https://x.com/search?lang=en&q=Europe%20(from%3Alevelsio)&sr... [1] https://x.com/levelsio/status/1784943280171467260 https://x.com/levelsio/status/1784943280171467260 [2] https://x.com/BolognaFishMD/status/1771695080862085211 https://x.com/BolognaFishMD/status/1771695080862085211

tchalla 2y ago
And yet he continues to live in Europe despite having other choices.
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  He doesn't live in Europe.
  - tchalla 2y ago
    He literally said he lives in Europe on Twitter. https://x.com/levelsio/status/1809779394719654257?s=12 https://x.com/levelsio/status/1809779394719654257?s=12
    - satvikpendem 2y ago
      Ah I didn't see his latest reply, he normally lives in Asia, I thought he was still there. Regardless, he can live there and still want to improve his continent, as he mentions. Your comments remind me of this meme. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-somewhat https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...
      - 2y ago

127 2y ago

You are comparing two things that are not actually the same. America is the top destination by far for actually skilled migrants who can pump up the economic engine and build highly profitable businesses. America has fine-tuned its entire system to integrate and take advantage of skilled migrants, its tech/research industry being built on this, and its reputation, physical and logistical infrastructure helps to take the cream from the crop. It's easy to talk about highly skilled immigration when you are the one taking all the best part of it. Those highly skilled productive individuals who can move to America will. Mass import of unskilled migrants, especially young military aged men, is indeed net-negative, unfair and detrimental to the culture and livability.

Rinzler89 2y ago
>Mass import of unskilled migrants, especially young military aged men, is indeed net-negative And yet this is what EU keeps doing to its own detriment.
bryanlarsen 2y ago
> Mass import of unskilled migrants, especially young military aged men, is indeed net-negative, unfair and detrimental to the culture and livability. Yet studies show the opposite of what you so confidently assert.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  Both you and 127 "so confidently assert". Neither of you provide citations or other evidence.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    It's an easily falsifiable statement, it's easy to prove me wrong if I am wrong.
- 127 2y ago
  Evidence defeats conjecture. There are plenty of examples of immigration gone wrong in Europe if you just open your eyes.

switch007 2y ago

Politicians love changing the definition of skilled migration (eg UK recently with cooks being on the list. So obvious what they're doing) So we have to be careful when discussing "skilled migration"

igor_akhmetov 2y ago

You got it backwards. US makes it impossible for skilled migrants to come and settle down. EU countries make it much easier.

pyb 2y ago
This. Americans value high skilled migration less than Europeans do. The proof is in the pudding (ie immigration policies)

dathinab 2y ago

Portugal fully understands that. That is why they did make that law in the first place. The problem is what they expected was something like "highly skilled migration contributing directly or indirectly to Portugal". But that isn't exactly how it played out, which is why they removed tax brakes. I mean think about it. Just attracting talented people to be in your country and paying some tax isn't enough. You also need to be able to capitalize on them. E.g. by them working for your companies, them creating companies in your country, them settling in your country, etc. But AFIK that didn't really happen in case of Portugal. > any move to attract talent is seen as net-negative, not really moves to attract talent are very common, through often focused with different dynamic then the US through you might confuse the sentiment with the negative sentiment wrt. people coming as refuges instead of immigrants which are often perceived as not being skilled and just taking advantage of social systems etc., the same way it's commonly the case in the US (e.g. wrt. people from Mexico). Just to be clear I say perceived, because enough refuges are quite skilled/qualified just their qualifications are often not recognized due to bureaucratic reasons --- As a side not IMHO/AFIK the huge raise on apartment rent/buy cost in Lisbon is likely _not_ majorly related to the previous tax break programs. Mainly such raises can be observed in most relevant western (and beyond) Capitals around the world, driven by the most wealthy of mainly the western world (but also beyond, e.g. Saudi Arabia) using them as money banks and very term investments. The moment many do it will (did) also drive speculative investment. Which can lead to somewhat of a looping effect. Or in other words it's a side effect of the past ~10 years of (especially western) world economics.

kranke155 2y ago

Ridiculous. This is not a "friendly to migration" policy but a welcome mat to wealthy nomads to move to Portugal and pay less tax than the locals. That's not even being welcoming, it's throwing your own population under the bus. Most EU countries have no issue with skilled migration when needed. Denmark has a solid migration policy and thus relative consensus on keeping it as it is. Other EU countries have passed policies that ruined their own local population in favor of low skill migration or in this case, high skill migrants hoping to avoid high taxes. This not attracting "the best", it's attracted a lot of amoral individuals who just want to move to Lisbon to party and enjoy the weather.

snowpid 2y ago

You mean the country where 48 % voted for Trump. Did you know that more Americans move to Germany than Germans move to America despite lower wages. Maybe life quality attracts talents more. (To be honest my comment is very cheeky but so this is the comment above . EU is big . Germany is big and even cities have considerable differences. )

39896880 2y ago

The EU does not have the cultural means to adapt to immigration the way the US does. The US removed the native population, so all cultural in the US is adaptation; adding more into the mix isn't such a problem.

belter 2y ago

There are many things were America is not number one. Provide living wages and Universal Health care and you will be at the baseline at least 80% of European countries achieved 50 years ago...

Ekaros 2y ago

So are you saying what USA and states should do is to give very large tax breaks for H-1B visa holders to make them more competitive against native and allow them higher living standards?

braiamp 2y ago

> any move to attract talent is seen as net-negative, unfair and detrimental to the culture and livability The biggest barrier to attract talent in the EU is language. It's not culture, it's not incentives, it's not tax breaks... it's language. The US only needs to learn a single language, english. For Europe you would need at least 3 languages to be marketable since EU citizens are learning multiple languages since born in most cases.