Protip: learn the language of your future homeland, don’t be an asshole expat.
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… spoken at home, still use it with Mom.
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As someone who immigrated to Canada when the US went to war in Iraq (not for that specific reason, but it certainly helped clarify my feelings), and feels very prescient about that decision, let me encourage you to look hard at the more traditional forms of immigration.
Being stateless is not a good choice. Although emigrating to another country is not super easy, it is an option that is more possible than many seem to think. Japan, like Switzerland, is not known for its enthusiasm for immigrants – but there are a lot of other countries that depend upon skilled immigrants (Canada included).
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A fair number of people moved d to Canafabecause of the Vietnam war. Not just draft age, but apparently a good number of women came on their own accord. And of clurse famikies, because they were worried about their teenage sons. Svend Robinsom, the NDP politician, came up that way, though it was long after he became known that I heard that.
A friend was here for twenty years, came up after getting out of the draft. He could have become Canadian, but he never did, and finally returned to the US. Of course, he was deemed unfit for service, so there was never a time when he couldn’t return to the US.
And people did stay, I assume because they’d made a life here. Canada wanted immigrants at the time, and there were jobs they could fit into.
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Nice! Bon voyage, fellow traveler!
GOP = get outtahere party
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My mom was originally from Canada, dad from US. My dad avoided the draft via medical exemption, but when Reagan got elected they decided to make the move. Nothing to do with Vietnam, we moved in '83.
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This. I’m relatively privileged, and even I don’t think I have any realistic way to just take my family and bolt to somewhere better.
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I’m definitely privileged, and this, a thousand times this.
My wife and I are old, and she has some chronic medical issues. There’s nowhere that would take us unless we had at least a few million to plow into the local economy. (The very existence of those issues would have us labeled as 'economic migrants.) Twenty years ago, maybe, when I’d have been only middle-aged, with an engineering PhD, and multilingual. (Things like that count toward immigration preference. As I said, I’m privileged.)
Besides, my White ancestors have been living in North America for several centuries (literally; all my ancestors were in the US at the 1820 census. Some were in Virginia in the 16-teens), and my non-White ancestors met them at the boat. I’m not going anywhere. This is my place, for weal or woe. I love it, even as I hate what it has become.
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I’d love to go myself, but the only Kelly clan member not born in the USA that I know of moved to the Louisiana Territory in 1775. A little too separated by generations. I’d have to marry an Irish citizen, I think.
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It’s only back to grandparents there. So - barring a family vampiric curse…
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I know this isn’t the main thrust of your post but I don’t think pre-existing conditions are a barrier to immigration in most developed nations.
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Let’s see… where to begin:
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The freedom to not go bankrupt if you have a serious medical condition.
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Multi party elections that allow smaller parties to be part of parliament to keep the two main parties in check
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And… let’s see… Oh yeah! free to participate fully in a society while the rest of the world is dealing with a pandemic of viral pneumonia.
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And yes, yes… we’re a capitalist, free market economy
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Well, I just found out last Thursday I lose my job at the end of this week. COVID destroyed my shop’s orders, and 13 of us were laid off- me among them.
I’m already seething with white hot rage at the last 4 years in the US, and desperately tired of working as a machinist. I’m sick of working with conservatives in windowless buildings for idiots that make more than me.
Quite desperate for a new reality, new country, new career. I can’t do this anymore and stand to wake up in this country. Very open to any real ideas right now, quite serious.
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I’m not renouncing quite yet. The tax situation is annoying (the U.S. is one of the few countries that taxes its citizens wherever they live, although this can be mitigated by treaty) but until the U.S. goes full-on fascist and starts keeping its citizens (or their financial assets) locked inside its borders it’s better for me to have two passports than to have one.
It’s very difficult and traumatic for most people to first uproot their lives and then lay down new roots somewhere else. I’ve done it to a certain extent, but I’m operating under a unique set of circumstances and I still have to consider the presence of an elderly parent and other family in the U.S. who won’t be leaving there anytime soon (if ever).
If you are then you really shouldn’t be considering it. It’s not a status most people would accept voluntarily unless they were part of a class under direct and imminent threat of violence by their home country’s regime, not just because they feel uncomfortable due to the regime’s stupidity.
The best-case scenario is having enough money to sit around Casablanca waiting for your transit papers – a pretty dire and stressful situation as it is (a lot of the people in that movie were actual refugees). The options quickly go to “awful” from there and, yeah, it will matter to you when you’re stuck in a refugee camp or endless detention in another country.
If you’re looking for real options, you should check if you have fairly recent ancestors in an EU country (except the UK of course, though Scotland might work). Or maybe find someone in another country to marry. But don’t screw around with stateless status.
If you’re not sarcastic and are going by rankings, most “Freedom Indices” don’t rank the U.S. at the top these days. Even the Libertarian nuts at Cato Institute put the U.S at number 15 on their list.
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Shit, man. Being made redundant right now is very unwelcome, to put it mildly, even given that you were stuck in a place with so many Trumpian fuckwits. I hope things work out for you.
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I have immediate living relatives that are British. And secondary family In Spain.
I am well aware all too well of what it means to be stateless. It is being absolutely fucked.
I wasn’t joking when I said I was considering it.
I won’t go into why but when I say I understand what it involves and the fact that I am still considering it that should really tell you how desperately I want to leave and it’s not just Trump.
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Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. You are British, unless you were born in Northern Ireland in which case you can get an Irish passport. Maybe it also works if your parents or grand parents were from Northern Ireland, but I’m not sure about that.
If it didn’t work that way then there would be around 30 million new Northern Irish people trying to claim their Irish EU passport, including myself.
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I probably wouldn’t give up my citizenship - I to really like the US and don’t want to give it up to the assholes. But I did recently find out that I have the option of becoming a dual citizen with Canada. And I feel like that could be a good idea just in case Pence get’s his chance to start a Handmaids Tale situation and we need to leave asap.
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