Conservatives love to trace Europe’s problems, from culture to economics, to a single source: mass migration. But that explanation leaves out a more critical part of the story, because while everyone focuses on who is coming in, they pay far less attention to who is leaving.
The departure of highly skilled Europeans deserves more than a passing mention. A country’s economic future depends not just on the workers it admits, but on its ability to keep the productive people it already has. Those natives, especially in Western Europe, have the benefit of a Western education and of growing up in some of the most advanced societies in the world. They should be well positioned to drive innovation, build businesses, and address the problems their countries face.
But when economic policy focuses on redistribution, entitlement, welfare programs, and state dependency, you get the very problem Europe now faces: people arriving on your shores looking for benefits rather than work, natives who believe they are entitled to other people’s money, and your ambitious people, perhaps your last, best hope of fixing those problems, leaving for greater opportunity elsewhere.
Everyone talks about mass unskilled immigration to Europe, but the reality is much worse. Skilled Europeans, engineers, researchers, entrepreneurs, are leaving in large numbers. High marginal tax rates that treat additional earnings and business success primarily as a fiscal resource, layered with heavy regulation and a left cultural climate that views high productivity with suspicion, make them emigrate. Countries which reward hard work and entrepreneurship instead of punishing them with obscene taxes, become attractive destinations. At the same time, many European welfare systems offer relatively unconditional lifelong benefits. This creates a huge pull for lower-skilled migration that does not require the same language, credentials, or immediate labor-market contribution. PISA data shows persistent and large achievement gaps between immigrant-background and native students in reading, mathematics, and science in numerous European countries. First-generation students frequently score even below basic proficiency and functional literacy thresholds. High-value industries like advanced manufacturing, software, biotech, precision engineering require a skilled workforce. How can Europe stay competitive and prosperous if the best talent has had enough of the left nonsense and emigrates, replaced by largely illiterate inflows?
— Michael A. Arouet (@MichaelAArouet) November 1, 2026
According to a compilation of official national statistics, including figures from INE, Destatis, ONS, INSEE, and ISTAT, European college graduates are leaving in substantial numbers: roughly 82,000 from Spain, 180,000 from Germany, 145,000 from the United Kingdom, 60,000 from France, and 75,000 from Italy. Many move to other European countries, while others leave Europe altogether for the United States, Canada, or Australia.
Germany and the United Kingdom, in particular, stand out, with those departures representing particularly significant shares of their graduate populations. The proportions are smaller elsewhere, but the broader trend is still moving in the wrong direction.
In the United States, sure, we have bad politicians and bad policy. But the American private sector stands as a sort of Atlas, holding up the country under the weight of its poor politics. Just look at California, which many conservatives assume should have collapsed by now. It hasn’t. Why? Because its robust tech industry carries an enormous amount of that weight, in opportunity, tax revenue, and how much people are willing to put up with to work there. New York City’s financial sector serves much the same purpose.
But Europe has largely neglected the private-sector strength that makes that possible. Spotify, a music-streaming platform, is one of its largest tech companies. The broader problem is an economic model weighed down by environmental restrictions, regulatory burdens, and high taxes on workers and businesses. Those policies make it harder to create the opportunities that keep ambitious people at home. And when those people leave, the welfare state they helped support remains, with fewer people left to carry its weight.
That is what gets lost when the entire argument begins and ends with mass migration. Migration is a downstream effect of bad economic policy, not the root of the problem. Those policies attract people looking for benefits while driving out highly skilled workers and discouraging the ambition needed to innovate.
Mass migration is but a symptom of a broader Western disease: the belief that the economy exists for government to control and its rewards to distribute in the name of the common good. The problem is the socialism Europe has embraced for several decades. American voters should take this as a warning: keep embracing the same policies, and you will bring the same problems here.
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