Setting up a farm in New Zealand? Start up a business in Tasmania or do you like to cash in on British Columbia’s construction boom?

All these options were presented at a real ‘Emigration Fair’ in Amsterdam earlier this month which drew record crowds. Whatever pessimism there is in and about Europe and no matter how commentators try to figure out if this exodus is real, the market has smelled the opportunity and knows how to respond.

As opposed to “Give me your tired, your poor” many jurisdictions in the new world have discovered that the disgruntled Dutch are anything but tired and poor. They’re young, affluent, well-educated, entrepreneurial, fluent in English and smart enough to have figured that the time has come to get out as the future can no longer be found at home.

The numbers corroborate this trend. In the first nine months of last year a record number of Dutch packed their bags with some 100,000 leaving the country, an increase of 12% on the previous year. For this year another increase is expected and, according to some research bureaus the overall attitudes about leaving are changing as well.

This year some 32% are seriously considering a move as opposed to 26% last year according to the ‘Emigration Monitor’. What is even more revealing is that the 20 to 30 age group constitutes the largest group of leavers, a trend that got further momentum when one polling group figured out that about half of the nation’s adolescents would, given the chance, prefer to pack up and go...