What Does North America Offer for Modern Day Europeans?

From 1892 to 1954, Ellis Island in the New York Harbor was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States. A very significant share of those immigrants were Europeans, and not just because of restrictive laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Quota Laws and the National Origins Act set by American politicians that kept out many Asians and Africans. Europeans were flocking to the "new" continent in hopes of a better future, which many, indeed, found in either the US or Canada, where Halifax served as the Ellis Island of the north of the steam ship era.

About a hundred years or more have passed since those times, and population dynamics in both North America and Europe have greatly changed. In 2005, Europe, not North America, hosted the largest number of immigrants, 70.6 million people, in the world. Regardless, the United States is still the top desired destination country among migrants according to polls, but the majority of people don't come from Europe anymore, but from Asia and Africa. And the top five source countries of immigrants to Canada are China, India, the Philippines, Pakistan, and, yes, the United States.

Americans of Finnish descent currently number about 700,000. Most of their grandparents and great grandparents arrived in the New World in the decades between 1870 and 1930. At the same time, tens of thousands of Finns moved to Canada.

But today, the number of Canadians moving to Finland every year exceeds the number of new Finns in Canada. That's not to say that the number of Canadians moving to little old Finland is so big at all, but that the number of Finns heading to Canada is so very small. When I first landed in Toronto, the local Finnish community newspaper, apparently the last of its kind left in the entire continent, wanted to interview me and my wife. Finns travel a lot, but not very many settle permanently in Canada.

The better life - abundant opportunity, jobs, land, and religious freedom - that North America once offered in Europeans' minds is now perhaps more easily found back home in Europe. European social security systems, healthcare and education are arguably more advanced than in North America and, more importantly, within easier reach to the entire population than in the US and Canada. This is particularly true in Scandinavian countries and Finland, where healthcare and university education are free and the overall quality of life is among the very highest in the world. Newsweek's recent study of health, education, economy, and politics ranked Finland the best country in the world. While Finns themselves may question the value of the ranking and Newsweek may not be the greatest authority in the world, their list echoes the findings of the United Nations, the OECD, the global Quality-of-Life index, and others. Life in Europe, and particularly in the north-western parts of it, isn't bad. People don't leave for the other side of the Atlantic anymore.

While Canadian cities may closely trail places in Scandinavia and Finland in many global surveys, when ranked in terms of safety and overall livability, there's a difference between Canada and North-Western Europe in terms of public services, quality of infrastructure, income equality, and work life benefits such as holidays, maternal and paternal leave.

And, contrary to popular belief, Scandinavians and Finns don't even pay such high taxes for the many public services, standard of education and healthcare they receive in exchange. The 45% of total income tax that wealthier New Yorkers pay exceeds the amount of tax Finns, Swedes, and Norwegians pay for a similar lifestyle without having to work 50-70h work weeks like Americans, and while getting 4-6 weeks of vacation every year. Still, tax rates in Scandinavia certainly aren't the lowest in the world, but people there believe the taxes buy them prosperity and happiness. Denmark, which is known for higher taxes than any of its Nordic neighbors, has the lowest poverty rate in the world and the smallest income disparity between rich and poor. A 2006 study by psychologists at Britain’s University of Leicester ranked Danes the world’s happiest people.

None of this is to say that Nordic countries are a paradise on Earth. On a misty November morning "good o'le" Helsinki with its drunks, sour, pale white faces, small town attitudes and the thick wet snow that the wind blows right in the face may not feel like the most hospitable place for Finns themselves, let alone any visitors or newcomers, but the society, stability, egalitarian values and welfare that the past couple of generations have built beats the North American system a thousand times even on the darkest winter mornings.