Voting with your feet

I'm a big fan of looking at immigration and emigration statistics to help evaluate how a country is doing. If lots of people are clamoring to get in that's usually a good sign. In contrast if people are risking their lives to leave, like in Cuba or North Korea, that would seem to undermine their claim as worker paradises.

With that in mind I was able to find a UN study on emigration patterns from the U.S. -- people packing up and leaving for elsewhere. The data, which the authors admit is far from perfect, concluded that each year during the 1990s:

• An average of 5,700 packed up and left for France
• An average of 19,300 headed for the great white north of Canada
• An average of 9,500 shipped out to Italy
• An average of 21,400 staked their claim in the UK

Our immigration stats, however, are much more reliable. They indicate the following average number of immigrants from those four countries during the 1990s:

• France: 3,600
  
• Canada: 19,500
  
• Italy: 7,600
  
• UK: 15,600

Now, let's adjust those numbers for what they would be if those countries had populations the size of the U.S. in 1995 (261,638,000):

• France: 261,638,000/ 57,840,445 = 4.52344376 * 3,600 = 16,284
• Canada: 261,638,000/ 29,302,091 = 8.92898735 * 19,500 = 174,115
• Italy: 261,638,000/ 58,261,971 = 4.49071659 * 7,600 = 34,129
• UK: 261,638,000/ 58,025,000 = 4.50905644 * 15,600 = 70,341

Lastly, here is the net difference:

• France: 16,284-5,700=10,584
• Canada: 174,115-19,300=154,815
• Italy: 34,129-9,500=24,629
• UK: 70,341-21,400=48,941

Admittedly, this is an imperfect science so make of the data what you will. But I have a feeling that if 174,000 Americans were leaving for Canada every year -- the equivalent to the number of Canadians that move to the U.S. -- we would hear ad nauseum about how it was a sign of their advanced civilization and the virtue of their more socialist policies (although we're catching up!)