I don’t think the US is as bad (in this respect) as media would have you believe. Having grown up in a relatively large dwindling industrial city in the Midwest, visited Chicago very regularly for a time, lived in the southeast, and now in one of the cities often cited as ‘crime ridden’, I know one person who was mugged and they knew their assailants and it was in my hometown which no one would recognize.
I have friends from St. Louis and Detroit, some of the percieved ‘most dangerous’ cities here. While they recommend caution or street sense when I visit, I haven’t experienced anything but kindness or indifference from strangers. On the other hand, one of my friends was hit and killed by a car in Detroit, and when I left town in the southeast once, saw a bunch of white power banners on someone’s house, which is kinda a promise of crime.
None of this is to say I think the US is better than Brazil or Estonia or anywhere else, I’ve got endless criticism for this country. I mean that the crime reported on is usually exaggerated, and the likelyhood of experiencing the crime that does happen increases as the money you have decreases.
And not to make this even longer, but the people with the means to move to another state much less another country are the wealthy. The poor, who are the ones who might benefit most from moving, are unable to, trapped in the cycle here.
I think there’s an argument to be made that with the way it was going we may have ended up in this ballpark either way. For Biden’s time in office Democrats were flying rightward on immigration, just accepting the rightwing narrative and saying “yeah but we are hard on immigration too”.
Ideally Democrats would learn from this election that it was the incorrect move, then shift more progressive accordingly, and I imagine some folks voted/didn’t vote based on this hope. In truth I don’t think they learned that and instead will continue to adopt ever more conservative positions, chasing the Republicans to the bottom.
I also don’t think it’s people who care about immigrants fault that trump won, nor is it productive to dunk on various demographics for holding to their morals or for being duped by poor education and siloed media. When/if we have another election and when/if we have to fight for one, we are going to need everyone who cares to be on board.