I think there’s at least a couple of folks here who are or have lived as expats. What have your experiences with it been like? What advice would you offer to those considering it? Pros, cons, locations, logistics, practicalities, etc?
Couple of my buddies left the US when they were discharged, c. 1972 for reference. One of them lives on an island in lake somewhere near Great Slave Lake. (We flew in so I have no idea where.) He’s my hermit model. Very peaceful and seems happy. He picks up his mail once a month and leaves with the items that he might be interested in.
On the other extreme another friend from back in the day lives just off Carnaby St. Gregarious, raucous, and makes the Bobbies nervous when he’s had a pint more than is good for him.
So, those two are bookends for my expat friends. Most of the rest have passed on. All of them chose carefully, they found the place that worked for them. One of them herded cattle on the Argentine pampas. He’d wanted to be a cowboy from childhood but it was my hint that got him into the saddle for real. Happy man.
Some spectacular failures, of course. Some as bad as it can get with a combat veteran. C’est la vie.
I have thought seriously about moving to Canada, especially when Shitler was re-elected. After some discussion, my family agreed that it’s not a good reason to make such a move because the whole world is caught in the same madness. Canada is in some crisis of its own … probably just a decade behind the US at most. Their version of Trump is Polievre, who hails from “the Florida of Canada”, Alberta. Alberta, Manitoba, and the maritime provinces are roughly analagous to our own Bible Belt, and takes inspiration from MAGA. Canada has the same tensions, and now with Ford as premier of Ontario, Polievre has a real shot at power. The only structural protection they have that we lack is their multiparty / parliamentary system.
That’s of course the political side of things, but the other part of our calculus wasn’t much better. Even in Canada, where English is (mostly) spoken, there are cultural differences, temperamental differences, historical differences that would be a lot for us in our late 60s with a disabled adult child to adjust to. We have a lot of medical stuff that would be hard to reproduce and would cost a lot of time. It seems like even apart from my intense desire to escape being imprisoned here in the 'Murica with all the crazies, it’s just something we should have done twenty-plus years ago.
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Correction.
It’s the “Texas of the North” - thank you very much.
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I’ve lived outside of the United Snakes for a total of about 5 years. I permanently fled in 2021. I’ve lived in Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Argentina, Peru, and Thailand.
My advice to people would be based on their economic class and culture. If you’re rich/“middle class” then you’re most likely going to want to stick to tourist areas. Tourist areas in non-imperialist countries offer much the same as life inside an imperialist country, except with the great moral relief of knowing that everything you buy there isn’t going to support imperialist interests and buying weapons for their terrorist militaries. The tourist areas are usually heavily policed, and thus you trade some safety from non-state criminal elements for dealing with corrupt police who’re always looking to get money out of you somehow and rob you of your possessions. These police also work with non-state criminal elements, hotel and other business owners to set people for robberies/theft/rip-offs. Virtually everyone, big smile on or not, will view you as a walking ATM. The vast majority hate tourists and (justifiably) US culture in general, but they put a big smile on to get your money.
If you’re cultured “poor”, are physically fit, street/ghetto/barrio hardened, and can speak the local language like me, then there’s a whole new world outside of tourist areas in non-imperialist countries. People here are still largely a social species who retain the social bonds that humanity grew up with that leads us to rely on and thus value each other. In short, people here are generally friendly, and they see you as a human being. You will deal with extremely desperate people who can be unpredictable at times, but they’re almost always too small and weak to cause you any real harm. You deal with much less police in non-tourist areas, so it is definitely much safer for someone like me to live away from tourist areas.
I think something that a lot of people don’t know is that you can’t just go to another country and work legally. I’ve not been able to get any type of visa that will allow me to legally work, or to even legally rent an apartment without going through a big expensive mess. There are some places that even getting married will not afford you the right to legally work in that country.
I’m happy to answer more specific questions and to do what I can to help anyone who seeks to divest their labor and buying power from imperialist economies.
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