America a great place to live. And as i have traveled around the world from both directions and seen countries of five of the seven continents, there is no other place as spectacular as the United States. And as it remains the country with the largest immigration and tourist influx it only confirms that. Lastly, people will overcome any obstacle and pay any price to get here, further demonstrates the truth that the United States is the premier nation and national way of life.

So in your estimation America already was great and immigration both legal and illegal are evidence of how desireable america is.

It is true that banning immigration is seen as something which makes it less great, so Brad may have a point for once.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/12111108/Mapped-Which-country-has-the-most-immigrants.html

This was last year. It sort of implies immigration has nothing to do with quality of the country they immigrate too it seems its more a measure of convienience.

Not sure where you are getting statistics showing the US ranks #1 in immigration. I dont think we are even close to the top 20 let alone #1

Lice are the only thing that makes America a lousy place to live.

American exceptionalism FTW!

The U.S. ranks as #1 on only 4 out of the 117 different factors that are rated, and each of these 4 factors reflects merely the sheer size, the hugeness, of the U.S. economy. These four factors might thus collectively be identified as the Hugeness components: “GDP,” “GDP as a Share of World GDP,” “Available Airline Seat Kilometers,” and “Domestic Market Size Index.” Other than Hugeness, the results for the U.S. are not at all outstanding.

Health Care shows the U.S. ranking as #34 on “Life Expectancy,” and as #41 on “Infant Mortality.” (And, of course, unlike the “Infant Mortality” rankings from UNICEF, this ranking is among 144 countries. Thus: some underdeveloped countries actually have higher life-expectancy than does the U.S.)

Education in the U.S. is also apparently mediocre. On “Quality of Primary Education,” we are #38. On “Primary Education Enrollment Rate,” we are #58. On “Quality of the Educational System,” we are #28. On “Quality of Math and Science Education,” we are #47. On “Quality of Scientific Research Institutions,” we are #6. On “PCT [Patent Cooperation Treaty] Patent Applications [per-capita],” we are #12. On “Firm-Level Technology Absorption” (which is an indicator of business-acceptance of inventions), we are #14.

Sorry I didnt mean to get awkward and post facts.

Back to joining the crowd.

Fuck ya America. FOOTBALL AND BOOBS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1mlCPMYtPk

We've accepted a lot of poor people in history, as is the beauty of America, and we've accepted many various cultures. It's amazing how well we have done, and how much we've been able to develop.

I think America is a fantastic place to live. It all depends on what you're looking for in a society. Certain personality types may prefer other styles of government and whatnot, but we still have much to offer. Improvement is certainly needed in many areas. Many areas.

Facts Brainbomb? Shesh Really? You know you can use facts to prove anything that is even remotely true!

As a European, I admire Americans for their crazy energy (it's like each of them has a fireball inside) and for their patriotism. Despite any doubts Americans may have, they're very far from questioning their country like Europeans do as a matter of course.

There's two parts to the decision to emigrate.
..the "push factors" & the "pull factors"
The most important are the push factors, most people don't decide to move to go somewhere nicer than where they are because of the attractiveness of the destination, they decide to flee a most unattractive "current situation" ..duh

Mindless patriotism and lacking self awareness on a global stage is... rather unexceptional.

I think the great things about America are its National Parks, its ability to allow states abilities to govern and conduct what works best for themselves in many instances. For example if one state wants no sales-tax they can. If another state wants to have legal weed they can. If a state wants liquor sales to cease at midnight or 1 or 2 they can.

@Zmaj

i don't know, many Americans have nothing BUT questions for their country, but we are pretty patriotic.

I rate countries by how their fans act at the World Cup. Ireland is currently number 1, USA fans are up there though

Russia and England... not so good

If a state objects to the death penalty. Sure. Ban dat shit. Thats a unique government. Our culture is marred and a bit lacking. Were oversaturated with dull movie scripts and repetitive music that is basically about as exciting as shoving a coca cola up your asshole and hoping it rains tomorrow.

For the top 1% America can't be beat. Rule of law to protect property, freedom of speech in the form of money to influence the tax code, docile population that laps up the American flag and guns, identity politics that can be used to split the opposition, etc. Seriously, they can't ask for a better system.

For the "bottom" 99%, America is more of an ideal concealing a fade into mediocrity as illustrated in BB's statistics.

I would never set my foot in the Trump wasteland even if they would pay me plenty for doing so.

I would not be shocked if overall satisfaction with quality of life we get surpassed by even China in my lifetime.

Indeed, per capita in terms of taking in immigrants, we're...

#65
http://www.npr.org/2014/10/29/359963625/dozens-of-countries-take-in-more-immigrants-per-capita-than-the-u-s

In terms of the percent of the population that is foreign born, we have way fewer than Canada or Switzerland, and roughly the same relative immigration asGermany, Sweden, Austria, Ireland, Spain or Norway. We do have more immigrants proportionally than the UK, France or the Netherlands.

Satisfaction with quality of life means nothing. Scandinavians are supposedly the happiest people on Earth. They live in cold, dark lands and their food is lousy (I speak from experience). I have no idea what fuels that level of self-deception.

I think tourism to America is way down actually. With soaring gun violence, fear of being slaughtered kidnapped by pirates; crumbling bridges and roads and excessive racism I think were probably hitting our lowest tourism rates since the great depression.

I know the first thing I look at when figuring out where to travel is the condition of the bridges and roads!

Zmaj, having no idea what makes them happy doesn't mean they haven't found happiness. I've no idea if you're actually trying to make a point..,

There's enough bullshit thrown out around here to make correcting it all a full time job.

"America a lousy place to live"

Ha! Starting out telling jokes, that's always appreciated.

"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/12111108/Mapped-Which-country-has-the-most-immigrants.html

This was last year. It sort of implies immigration has nothing to do with quality of the country they immigrate too it seems its more a measure of convienience."

Immigration has everything to do with quality. It's just that countries only allow so many immigrant into them every year, so as the higher quality countries fill up, people have no choice but to go to the lower quality countries. The waiting list to get into a place like the U.S. is many, many years.

"With soaring gun violence"

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/04/us/gun-violence-graphics/

"fear of being slaughtered kidnapped by pirates"

https://www.statista.com/statistics/266292/number-of-pirate-attacks-worldwide-since-2006/

"I think were probably hitting our lowest tourism rates since the great depression."

http://tinet.ita.doc.gov/outreachpages/inbound.general_information.inbound_overview.html (Click U.S. visits trend line and download the excel file)

"I know the first thing I look at when figuring out where to travel is the condition of the bridges and roads!"
Ok, this one is true.

This is where I'll have to stop, because it would take too long to go through the rest of the false statements/ false characterizations.

You misunderstand. I meant internet pirates. Russians, anonynous, wikileaks, snowden. People are afraid to get their identity stolen or hacked while in america. And dont even get me started on fear of having your gold teeth removed in your sleep by starving hotel workers.

@orathaic, every nation has its favorite lie. My fellow Croats like to think they're very cultured (we're not in the Balkans, no sir!). Our neighbors Serbs think they're great warriors. The French keep lying to themselves they're so very rational. Russians think they're the eternal saviors of Europe.

I might be wrong, but from what I've seen, the favorite Scandinavian lie is that they're very happy.

Bottom line is quality of life in America is even decreasing for millionaires and billionaires. I read a report that showed starvation and malnourishment were becoming common among the upper 1%. Which is hard to believe but food is scarce now.