There have been many repressive regimes over time that have placed significant barriers over their citizens abilities to emigrate, including the USSR during the Cold War. Indeed, one of the propaganda talking points during the Cold War was that many Russian citizens wanted to move to America but few to no Americans wanted to move to Russia which was given as a sign of American superiority. As a result, I’ve always believed that the US and other Western Democracies have never placed barriers on emigration but I don’t know if that’s actually true or not.
Independent of any restrictions that the USSR would have put on a person wanting to immigrate, if I were a US Citizen who wanted to leave the US for the USSR during the Cold War, would the US have put any barriers on my desire to do so?
Absent the USSR, have their been any other cases in history of the US putting restrictions on emigration? If I decided tomorrow that I wanted to move permanently to North Korea, would the US Government try to stop me in any way? What about Iran? or China in the 1970s? Or Japan in the 1940s? And if they could, under what basis would the US derive its authority to do so?
Some ordinary Americans certainly ended up in Moscow and Warsaw Pact countries, particularly East Germany. Not all were spies for either side, captured ( as were a number of US servicemen in various conflicts; whom Stalin generally felt he could keep a while ) or communist ( although some, feute de mieux a la Castro, ended that way for convenience sake ).
Some were businessmen, of the Armand Hammer type ( he just visited ): communists loved western capitalists who loved them; some were engineers ( see the Metro-Vickers Affair, one of the series of ‘Engineers Case’ purges those lunatics ran with [ yes, the participants were British, but typical of how many non-communist foreigners, German, British and American, aided soviet industry and lived in the Soviet Union ( especially with facilitating lend-lease )]; some, just after the Revolution, were idealistic Jews eagerly encouraged to go there by everyone concerned; some were, say, black people, who had less than fond memories of America; and quite a few were entertainers. Whom the Soviet ( or other ) Regime could push and boast of as counters to the American Regime.
However, none were as unbearable or deluded as Pro-Maoist yanks in early communist China.
My guess is that moving to the USSR was not illegal, but cannot say this for certain. We know Lee Harvey Oswald moved to the USSR and was not tried as a criminal when he returned. There is information somewhere online about other Americans who moved to the USSR during the Cold War and from memory they weren’t treated a whole lot different to LHO when they returned.
What can the US Gov’t do to stop you moving to the likes of NK or USSR? At the very minimum they can a travel warning. We still receive these regularly today. Im also certain the Gov’t can be rather cunty to citizens it feels are persona non grata, or are indulging in acts that are considered detrimental to the US cause. These can be IRS audits etc. Im sure Gov’t departments can (and do) also drag their heels over issuing the correct paperwork.
I seem to remember that some number of US citizens had their passports withdrawn during the McCarthy era. But whether they ever intended to travel to the USSR or elsewhere in the communist world, and when the practice of withdrawing passports ended, I don’t know.
Back in the '50s, my parents knew a couple who were card-carrying Communists. They went to the Soviet Union with the intention of moving there (I don’t know the specific arrangements they had with either government). When they saw the kinds of lives people led over there, they returned and became Republicans.
Back in the 1930’s many from the US did emigrate to the USSR. They had miserable lives there and most ended up with 2 in the hat and buried in mass graves.
I believe a book was about the experience and I read the reviews, perhaps a magazine article. As I recall the general area the American’s were killed and put in the mass graves is known.
Many Finnish-Canadians from what is now the Thunder Bay area of northwestern Lake Superior moved to Karelia for what they thought would be a better life and to help with the Soviet cause, but ended up being purged. Documentary and overview.
It used to be (and perhaps will again be) illegal for Americans to go to Cuba. Technically, they can but only if they don’t use US$ or income to get there (I am not at all sure what this means, but I assume it doesn’t apply to me since nearly all my income is from Canadian sources). I think my passport gives a list of countries that my passport is not valid in. Again, I am not sure what that means.
I /think/ that it means that there were economic sanctions placed on Cuba, after the nationalisation of property.belonging to US busines. The economic sanctions included prohibition of tourism.
There were not similar econimic sanctions placed on the USSR. Also, for political resons, the USA did not wish to exactly reciprocate the USSR travel bans on leaving the USSR.
No, it was actually illegal to go to Cuba. My 1960’s passport stated quite clearly that the passport was not valid for travel to Cuba and several other countries. Even Rhodesia was on the list at one time. American passports were very popular conversation pieces in youth hostels in those days, as non-American travelers would pass them around, with great hilarity, for they had never heard of a country outside the Soviet Bloc that prohibited its citizens from traveling freely where they chose.
The economic sanctions came later, after the Supreme Court reminded the State Department that Americans abroad cannot be constitutionally prohibited by US law from going where they pleased. So the government, still hoping to deter them, changed the law, and made it illegal to use US currency to fund travel in any of the black-listed countries.
The Treasury Department knew there were no teeth in the law, and it was only rarely invoked in flagrant cases or to set an example, but the idea was to scare people into staying away.
I met an American in Somalia last summer who lives there. He owns a house there, with his Cuban girl friend. He even owns one of those classic old cars, which he rents out to tourists to drive around in.
Well, not to pick nits or anything, but I don’t see that the endorsement on the passport would make travel to Cuba or the other named countries illegal; at worst it would make it difficult in practice, since you might be refused entry to the country concerned, if “must carry a valid passport” is a condition of entry imposed by the country concerned. But if Cuba is happy to admit a US citizen who has no passport, or an invalid passport, I don’t see that any US law is broken by the US citizen concerned.
I know when I applied for Social Security last year, they sent a brochure and listed about 12 countries where they would not send checks. Azerbaijan was one of them, which I noticed because they now have a Formula 1 race that the now-deposed Bernie Ecclestone raved about while trashing Montreal.
In the late 1960s/early 1970s there were a bunch of left wing SDS loonies that went to Cuba to help with the sugar harvest. Never heard of any of them prosecuted for that. I was under the impression that if you go to a restricted country, the State Department won’t help you if you get into trouble.
