Are there any countries where the immigration system is not "broken" in this way?
I have seen some in the past with "entrepreneur" or "retirement" visas: you are allowed to stay in the country if you promise to spend a lot of money, but that doesn't seem optimal for this kind of case. I've also heard of places desperately seeking workers, but that also doesn't seem to fit the current American situation.
Canada (and I believe some other countries, like Australia) has a points based system. You can fill in a PR (equivalent to US Green Card) application from the comfort of your home country. When you are filling up the application, you can tally the points and know for sure whether you meet the cut-off to have your application be granted - i.e. you don't need to submit if you aren't going to make it. Points are given for your age (younger is better), education (masters is better than just bachelors) and your language proficiency (in English and French), among others.
Then, you wait a while and once the application is granted, you directly get PR. You have a period of time - say 1 yr - to move to Canada, and another period within which you should find a job.
i.e. - when you apply for a job, you are already a permanent resident.
Now that's what I would call a humane immigration system that also manages to attract 'desirable' immigrants. If Canada had America's weather, I would have never moved to the US.
The Canadian immigration system is one of the most generous around.
It's easy to be "generous" when you have fewer people trying to immigrate to your country. I can remember maybe a decade ago Canada had an immigration target of 1% of population (~250K) and that many people didn't even apply.
Compare that to the US where there are 20 year waiting lists for some visa categories. The US has lower, but not that lower, immigration targets compared to Canada.
Some are not as lucky. One time CIC was so overwhelmed with a backlog of PR applications, they literally simply said, "screw it" and cancelled 300K (?) applications that have been sitting on their shelves waiting to be processed for years already.
http://canadianimmigrant.ca/slider/300000-skilled-worker-app...
For you. I know people that have been in Canada decades that still don't have their permanent residency. If it was fair across the board it would be 'first in first out'.
> Are there any countries where the immigration system is not "broken" in this way?
It's interesting because you'll often see people complaining about how immigrating to Japan is hard. It usually gets brought up when news about their declining population hits the front page. "Well maybe if they made it easier to immigrate they wouldn't have a problem!" is a common comment to see.
Only, that's wrong. Their immigration is pretty standard. It has nearly identical requirements as the U.S and Canada. In fact, it's actually easier to become a Japanese citizen than it is to become a U.S citizen. Japan allows immigration from more countries than the U.S.
Another thing is that if you're married or have a job in Japan, they'll let you stay with a green card indefinitely. No need to become a naturalized citizen. It's incredibly rare for them to "change their minds" and revoke a green card. It's practically unheard of unless you commit a crime of some sort. Even then, there's still a good chance they won't unless your crime is severe.
My point is that most countries have similar requirements for immigration. If you've only tried immigrating to a single country, you have nothing to compare too. Immigration isn't supposed to be easy and you should expect tedious and head banging bureaucracy.
I have seen some in the past with "entrepreneur" or "retirement" visas: you are allowed to stay in the country if you promise to spend a lot of money, but that doesn't seem optimal for this kind of case. I've also heard of places desperately seeking workers, but that also doesn't seem to fit the current American situation.