this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
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Immigration is very possible to a lot of countries via employer sponsored routes, generally for highly developed countries the requirement is "you have to be earning above average for your industry," so essentially if you're in the top 50% by skill/experience you should be allowed in. Others require certain levels of education, etc. but for US citizens those levels should generally be achievable.
Relatively, moving to the US has been so much harder than moving out for a long time now, which is why people are saying "just move out."
This reply has some pretty strong "Git gud, Scrub" Energy. It is not a helpful Thing to suggest, and it's not exactly "generally ... achievable" when the entire society is built around forcing people into Mountains of debt.
Yeah, I agree with that, but if you're really desperate to move and worked in a way where it's you're only goal, it should be possible for around half of people. That may mean living in a shared room in the cheapest part of the bad area of town, getting around on a shitty bike, eating rice and beans while you save up level of frugality, but at that point it's probably worth evaluating if it's worth living like that to be able to leave the country down the line, and in most cases, it's probably not.
Essentially, not "git good," just "it is possible, just probably not worth it."
Also the post was about immigration controls anyway, not having the means to actually move.
Wut? Barring like the past 10 months of the current administration (because you said "for a long time"), the US has consistently been at the top of the charts for gross immigration for decades.
Where do you even get the idea that the average American (poor, monolingual, undereducated/uncredited) has an easier time moving to another (comparable) country than one does to it?
Yes, I was referring to someone in the top 50% of earners, still half of all people in the US.
To get to most countries if you're on that demographic, you just need to have a job.
To get to the US historically, you needed to either get a H1B visa, which last I heard had a 9% chance per year, enter the green card lottery, which has a 0.3% chance per year, or transfer within your company after getting promoted to a managerial role via an L1A visa, which is a slow process and very dependant on who you work for, and on your origin country for acceptance rates.
For people in the bottom 50%, I agree it's historically been easier to go the US with the green card lottery, fairly accessible visas if you have immediate family living in the US, and even for illegal immigration with birthright citizenship, as then you can get a green card through your children.
I was basing my comment on the fact most people on Lemmy are going to be nerds working in IT/Sciences/Engineering, but even then, if you take a mean "ease for a random sample to move" then it's still harder to move to the US than out of it.