There is an American exceptionalism embedded in the idea that y'all think you can just pick up and leave and go wherever you want. It's cute you think you'd be welcomed. Americans aren't exactly popular in the world.
I will be straight up, considering the United States’ behavior towards refugees fleeing persecution, I’m not sure that Americans who try to do the same shouldn’t have their passports flagged and be asked to leave.
But ESPECIALLY if you try to flee to a country USA has interfered with.
Dear privileged white people choosing to be offended: I am the Jewish descendant of Holocaust survivors whose entire family was massacred. I only exist because 2 people managed to flee. I was taught to be prepared to leave since I was born. I'm speaking from *experience*. I want you to see reality.
yea a good chunk of my family including my grandparents fled the holocaust's leadup. They did not get to go 'hmmm I think Italy sounds nice' or whatever, it was 'fuck we gotta go get on the boat we'll figure it out'.
and hell even then I'll fully admit my grandparents were 'privileged' among that group, they were moderately well off with friends in America that helped them a lot and got my grandpa a pretty cushy and safe job! It was still 'hey those guys keep breaking our windows we gotta get the fuck out'!
An old ex of mine had a mother who grew up in Trinidad and Tobago, the only place that would let her German Jewish family in. They eventually ended up in Israel, but my ex's mother stayed up to watch the Olympics ceremony when Trinidad y Tobago got a medal. She wanted to hear the national anthem.
I am too old to be welcome anywhere else, and if I weren't I would be too mentally ill. Regardless, I would never leave. I'm not ceding a goddamn inch. ❤️
Husbands grandpa, R. Goldberg, made it out hiding on the underside of a train… all the way to Palestine, where he joined the British forces
he was the only survivor 💔
Yes. Tho with the caveat that while this /is/ the case, it also /shouldn't/ be. All refugees should always be welcome in every nation, even if here on Earth 1.0 we regularly fall short of that ideal.
It's wild how many Americans think they can just pick up and leave when you basically have to be INCREDIBLY wealthy and/or have a specialized skill for another country to take you. People really have no concept of how much the rest of the world fucking hates us.
I have trans friends that left over a year ago and they only got out because they had half way decent careers and one of them already had a claim to citizenship in another country. If you don't have that, good fucking luck.
also it's exhausting to see people constantly going "oh i'll just move to nz".
Cool did you know we had an election last year? And we very much don't have the government you probably think we have?
our asylum claim to NZ was denied because they were “too old & likely to use welfare” in their early 40’s. we got lucky in the US: my dad worked as a professor of electrical engineering, my mom made hundreds of millions as a biochemist for Unilever. but they didn’t cost the NZ taxpayers a dime!
A fun exercise is to use the immigration score calculator for a place like Canada or New Zealand and see how low you actually score. As someone older than 45, I’m basically disqualified right there.
Most of the world is as hostile to immigrants as we are, or more so. If these people try to flee elsewhere, they are going to be unpleasantly surprised. Especially if they're disabled or medically interesting in any way, or not quite exactly like the local majority, or... 🧐
I would guess few Disabled people—at least those who spend time in online communities of Disabled people—would be surprised about this at this point. This is common knowledge by now.
It's common knowledge in online communities, but I added "medically interesting" because you don't have to be sufficiently disabled for a government to recognize it to be unwelcome. Diabetes can be enough. And there are many people who don't yet know this.
Sorry, I was trying to find a way to differentiate between people who are more disabled, and more aware of these things, and people who have medical conditions or histories that would disqualify them from immigration but are not part of a disability community or don't consider themselves disabled.
And just in case my migraine is messing with me even more than I think, the "sorry" was genuine. I'm operating with zero snark or sarcasm here, and if I'm not communicating clearly, I do apologize.
i get the sentiment in the OP & agree with your own—especially based on folks i’ve heard say, “i’m leaving” since 2004. but some part of it feels like collective punishment. like turning away individuals in need based to pay america’s karmic debt doesn’t teach the right people the lesson.
lest anyone be agreeing with me here for the worst possible reason: some people need to flee. rich, abled, cis het white dudes who find the mere existence of trump to be “too stressy” & who are “thinking of getting out & always wanted to spend a few years abroad” can stay & fight. you owe that.
it's absolutely collective punishment. "passports flagged and asked to leave." "hi, you're An Oppressor, sorry, gtfo." like, okay. much justice, very liberatory
I often tell them to try and see how it plays out.
Because, shit, I actually tried emigrating to Canada for work about a decade ago - I didn't make the cut, because my field wasn't in demand (to be fair, coders are a dime a dozen)
Took six months of paperwork and interviews to get a polite decline
More folks have been asking me about Japan recently.
I tell everyone the same thing:
Getting a job and visa is all about having the skills desired and a college degree (in most cases), but the pay isn’t great.
Getting citizenship is way more difficult and you have to be fluent in Japanese.
As a note, work visas last from 6 months to 5 years (at most), then you have to reapply. And if you don’t have a job/company, then you have to go back to your home nation.
There’s “permanent residence”, but you can’t just try for off the bat. In many cases, you need to live here 10 years first.
Isn't Japanese culture also mostly hostile to immigrants? (I have only one example of a friend who was half Japanese and grew up in Okinawa and was treated *horrifically* so my knowledge could be biased.)
Yes and no. Times have changed, and so has the culture.
That said, it’s not something I can distill in a single post. If you don’t mind waiting a bit (it’s 1:30 here), I can give a more detailed answer based on my own experiences (Korean-American, lived here in 96, 2000-02, and now) in the morning.
Not a problem, I’ll post once I’m awake and such. ^_^
I will say that despite the issues folks here might have with non-Japanese people, the threat of racial violence is much, much lower than in the U.S.
I didn't know citizenship was even an option, though it's been a couple decades since I was very engaged with the notion (I remember reading an incredibly good book called Japan: The Land of the Broken-Hearted, about various immigrant experiences).
I was in my 30s before I realized my Christian friends put zero thought or research into how they'd leave the country in a pinch, whereas I was raised to do my homework. 4th grade Sunday School curricula involved watching movies about families trading their jewelry for passage across a border.
And also, and I cannot stress this enough, fucking stay and fight, however you can.
If one actually has the means to flee and does so, they are abandoning their more vulnerable neighbors and family who cannot, making it that much easier for them to be ridden over roughshod.
It's a really strange position to be in considering emigrating. Spouse and I both have recent enough immigrant ancestors and careers such that we could leave, not easily or cheaply, but it's possible.
But even for us it's on the table as a near worst-case scenario.
But people talk about it like it's moving from Texas to New York - which is STILL something that costs thousands of dollars and upends your life.
It drives me up the wall that I have seriously considered what we do in case of dire emergency and people are like "Oh I'll just move to NZ. Easy."
And before someone comes after me for this - I wouldn't even be considering it at all if I didn't have young children who are disabled and are not Christian and are increasingly at risk in our society.
I'm 40 years old and white and apparently male. I can grumble my way thru this. They can't.
Start the process now. Even with parents who were born in the country you want to move to, it's a long, arduous process with more paperwork than seems possible. If you can, start applying for citizenship now based on your family history.
My husband met all the criterion for citizenship of the country we were then living in, we had all the documentation and it still took a long time and a lot of visits to various officials.
