I found this site the other day and I thought it was very interesting. We know that the American Diaspora stands at about 6 million right now but what will it look like in the future?
This fellow and his organization (Americawave) think it will grow. He’s done some interesting studies with MPI (Migration Policy Institute). Here are some of his results: Relocation Statistics. He also produced this video that he posted on Youtube:
On his site there is also an article he wrote for Barron’s entitled The Great Escape. It’s less about sheer numbers and more about the kind of person who is considering relocating: young, educated, just starting a career, the adventurers and entrepreneurial types.
I had an email exchange with him and asked him about the impact of citizenship-based taxation on this group of potential migrants and he replied that he didn’t think anything was going to stop these young folks from heading out into the world. I think he’s absolutely right. 🙂
@geeez: “But I wouldn’t mind having EU citizenship as well to be able to travel to the US visa free.”
Meh. EU citizens can use the US “visa waiver program”. But… it’s something you have to apply for in advance of traveling, something you have to pay for, and something the US can deny. Doesn’t that sound just like a visa?
@Don, there’re lots people who immigate to the EU by way of marriage. The rules for Brazil are as hard as Portugal’s. I think it’s “hard” but not impossible in most places. I’m still trying to figure out why these countries make it so difficult to move, and in the US’s case, why they make it so hard to leave!
I heard that the US pressured so many of the Caribbean nations to ditch the passport for cash programs. I wish I had the money; I would have gone that route.
@Watcher, doesn’t sound so good after all. I was living in Europe when the US added those 21 or so countries to the list. They really made it sound like people could just go to the US with their European passports, and that’s it.
The US loves their euphanisms, don’t they? 🙂
@geeez
Marriage isn’t even guaranteed! I have a friend in Germany who is a German citizen and they won’t let him marry his non-resident, non-EU citizen spouse since he earns too little (he earns 1300 Euros a month). The UK requires spouses to be able to speak English, which is meant to combat the number of forced marriages from the sub-continent I think (but nobody will ever admit that that was why they brought it in).
Most EU countries severely limit immigration because that is what the public wants to see. The recent economic crisis has only served to really fuel votes for anti-immigrant parties here. You can see this is almost every EU country. I mean, in the Netherlands Geert Wilders is very popular (wants to ban Muslim immigration and the Koran), and in Switzerlands voters approved in a national referendum to ban the construction of minarets and to automatically deport any immigrant who committed a crime. If you want to get an idea of how immigrants are viewed by a large group of those from the UK, just start reading the Daily Mail! You’ll see maybe every day a story about an immigrant who is somehow a benfits cheat or ‘working the system’.
Dominica and St.Kitts and Nevis still are selling passports…Austria does too, but you’ll have to invest a few million Euro there and its not guaranteed (Oh, and you’ll have to renounce other citizenships as well)! I wonder if we will even have nation states in a hundred years. We’ll probably be just a collection of regional bodies like the EU, African Union, ASEAN, Mercosur, etc. Interesting times.
@Watcher & geeeez
Yeah, but if you look at that list it looks like essentially every “rich country whose citizens are not likely to illegally emigrate here”, except Canada, are on that list? I think that every other country not in the Visa Waiver requires a visa?Looks like only Canadians can travel to the US unannounced or am I missing something?
By the way geeeez, according to Wikipedia Brazil is forecasted to be added to the Visa Waiver in the future. Who knows what their criteria are though and when they’ll move Brazil over:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Waiver_Program
@Don I do see your point but I think ways will be found. The EU can’t make it without immigration and their leaders know it even if the public doesn’t. Yes, things are tightening up even for family reunification (there is a fight brewing over that by the way at the EU level since many of those new rules are contrary to EU law). Admitting people who have a blood link to Europe is not a tough call for the politicians because these people “blend” better. They are, quite frankly, more likely to pass almost unnoticed by the voters. (And yes I think many of the issues EU voters have with immigration are really racial and religious issues.) My .02.
@Victoria
I danced around the issue a bit, but, yeah, you basically hit the nail on the head. The debate about immigration in the EU is all about immigration from Muslim countries and, especially, illegial immigration from North Africa into Italy and Greece, from where migrants tend to then go to France or the UK. Its all about race and religion, which is the real reason why I don’t think that Turkey’s EU accession bid will ever be accepted.
People in the UK tend not to care about immigrants from Canada, New Zealand, USA, etc. When they are talking about immigrants, they really mean “Non white people” or “Eastern Europeans” only.
I think that some countries have realised the need to keep immigrants coming in, and some have played well to the national desire to bar immigrants from permanent residency. Denmark’s “Blue Card’ (separate from the EU one) is very flexible and does allow a large number of people to move to Denmark to work, but only on a temporary basis: It has to be renewed all of the time and still makes access to Danish citizenship (already very hard to get) a very hard feat to accomplish.
I would expect that, in five years’ time, and, assuming that the Euro crisis is well over and that we are all on the road to recovery, for the EU Blue Card to really take off and for all of the anti-immigration rhetoric to die down a bit.