Version 2.211

I had an interesting exchange on Facebook with a Portuguese man who has lived in the U.S. for 45 years. His argument is that the U.S. is over, that life was easy when he came to the U.S., but now that is not the case. If anything, life in Europe is easier. His comments were in response to a Portuguese young man's question about how to fund his college degree in the U.S., so this older gentleman was not so sure that the U.S. were still the land of opportunity.

That is also the argument of many people, who defend that the social elevator is broken. The truth is a lot more nuanced than that, of course, but there are still plenty of opportunities for people to thrive, but it is true that if you come to the U.S. with nothing, you have to really work hard to get opportunities. Americans like to help people who they see work hard, but they will not make your life easy, if they sense that you don't care.

In many states, access to higher education is more expensive and there is not as much funding for scholarships and on-campus jobs. With the pandemic, things will be even more dire because state governments need to balance the budget. But that young man can still make it in the U.S. and the funny thing is that he's the fourth person that I've seen recently asking about how one can move here.

I suspect that once the pandemic is over and people realize how steep the death toll is, more will come to America.