Open country?

• Author: Howley, Kerry
• Position: Research on immigrants from poor countries - Brief article

Rags-to-riches tales of immigrants who make good are part of America's national mythology. But researchers from the Center for Global Development have found that for immigrants from poor countries, the American Dream may be easier to find somewhere else.

Analysts compared 21 countries using six weighted measures of openness, including the number of immigrants from poor countries each admits relative to its population and the net change in unskilled immigrants from poor countries between 1990 and 2000. Ranked on a 12 point scale, the United States finished in the middle, better than Norway and Italy but behind such countries as Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

Why the mediocre score? One major reason is...