'Best countries' report ignores reality

By Rory Ryan
The Highland County Press

There's an old saying about lies, damned lies and statistics. All can be examples of factual distortion.

Consider, if you will, the recent U.S. News & World Report's overall ranking of best countries, which "measure global performance on a variety of metrics."
 
According to the report, Switzerland is the best country in the world for 2023. OK. Fair enough. The report – at https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings – says: "Switzerland, officially called the Swiss Confederation, is a small country in Central Europe made up of 16,000 square miles of glacier-carved Alps, lakes and valleys. It is one of the world’s wealthiest countries and has been well-known for centuries for its neutrality."

So, if you happen to be relatively wealthy and don't mind a few yodels over your morning cocoa, Switzerland might be your Alpine Utopia.

When the report narrows its findings among U.S. participants, our Swiss Miss pals drop to the 9-hole. 

These are the top 10 best countries in the world, according to U.S. Americans:

1. United Kingdom
2. New Zealand
3. United States
4. Australia
5. Sweden
6. Canada
7. Japan
8. France
9. Switzerland
10. Germany

"Instead of the United States, the United Kingdom holds the top spot for U.S. American respondents, who viewed their country’s former colonizer with even more admiration than the global set of respondents, with the U.K.’s overall rank improving by eight positions. Meanwhile, Switzerland – the No. 1 nation according to global respondents for the sixth time in eight years – gets dinged eight spots in the rankings based on survey responses from the U.S."

These are opinions, of course. Reality tells a rather different story.

The population of Switzerland is 8.8 million, according to the latest United Nations' Worldometer.

The Center for Immigration Studies reports (conservatively, one can imagine) that are 11.46 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Obviously, those 11.46 million illegals either haven't read that Switzerland is a much better country than the U.S. or Switzerland has done a much better job of securing its borders.

If there were a popularity contest among immigrants – legal or illegal – it's clear that the United States must be the place to be. (Welcome to the land of "If it's free, it's for me.")

As for any U.S. citizen who prefers jolly old England, hop on a ship, Skip. But remember, we defeated the British in the Revolutionary War and again in the War of 1812. As one of our Alert Readers humorously pointed out this week, if we hadn't won the War of 1812, we'd all be speaking English today...

* * *

Speaking of speaking English, I just returned from my second foreign vacation – at least it felt that way. 

There's this cozy part of the southeastern U.S. known as the "Redneck Riviera." According to lore, the term Redneck Riviera is credited to a writer for the New York Times named Howell Raines. In 1978, he wrote a story entitled: "Living it up on the Redneck Riviera," which was about former Alabama Crimson Tide and NFL quarterbacks Richard Todd and Kenny "Snake" Stabler, who had the money to live wherever they wanted to but chose the shores of Lower Alabama (locals call it LA). Due to its proximity to southern cities, the vast majority of visitors to the Redneck Riviera originally came from the Deep South. 

For most of the last decade that I've visited the area, I would agree with that assessment. Not so much now. There were many folks around us on our recent visit who certainly used Spanish as their primary – and perhaps only – language. If there are attempts at assimilation into U.S. society, I didn't notice any. I hope all went through a proper immigration process, but given the vast numbers, I have my doubts. 

Granted, I could be wrong. Maybe they speak English far better than I speak Spanish. ("Una cerveza, por favor" and "gracias" is about as far as I got in my only Spanish class a million years ago.) 

A friendly suggestion to my fellow pool mates might be to at least make an attempt to say hello or even a buenos dias to your Anglo fellow Americans. Just a thought.

Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville from Alabama has blasted the Biden administration for its response to migrants on the Southern border.

“We’re being invaded,” Tuberville said. “We all know that. The Biden administration has no clue about a border, or how to protect the border and how to protect the American people. You can’t deny the impact that President Biden’s open borders policy is having on our state and country. We need to secure our borders. We need to know who’s coming in. We are losing thousands of young people a day to the drugs and substances coming across our border.”

There's a right way and a wrong way to enter foreign countries. Some are more tolerant than others. I suspect if U.S. News and World surveyed the estimated 10 to 20 million illegals in the U.S., they would agree, this is the greatest nation on earth. Let's act like it – and let's be grateful that it is. If we can keep it.

Rory Ryan is publisher and owner of The Highland County Press.