Emigrating FROM the United States

Great Debates
1

For all the years that the US has patted itself on the back for being “the greatest country in the world”, the fact is that that probably isn’t true anymore. The United States consistantly ranks near the bottom of the industrialized nations in various quality of life and social progessiveness indicators:
[ul]
[li]capital punishment[/li][li]prevalence of fundamentalism[/li][li]low student test scores[/li][li]teen pregnancy[/li][li]illiteracy and semi-literacy[/li][li]no national health care[/li][li]poor public transportation[/li][li]high crime rate[/li][/ul]
So what does the US still excel at? It’s vast military, it’s cultural dominance, how successfully it’s corporations reward their shareholders, cheap gasoline, the lowest taxes in the industrialized world, and how many poor but fat people we have. But most of the developed nations have social welfare states that offer a much higher overall quality of life, at least for your average working person.

True, the US isn’t a has-been nation- yet. But look at Imperial Spain. It was a good thing to be a Spainard through most of the sixteenth century. The Hapsburg dynasty ruled or claimed two-thirds of Europe at one point, and had a vast empire in the New World that exported back oodles of gold and silver. The Spanish army was not only the most powerful but the best organized of it’s day. But at some indefinite point, probaby around the middle of the seventeenth century, the Spanish began a decline they never recovered from. Other nations, smaller but more progressive, advanced while the Hapsburgs dug in their heels and became traditionalists. By the end of the Napoleonic era, Spain was a joke of a power.

Is the handwriting on the wall? Are we getting to the point where one might legitimately wonder whether one might be better off living in Canada, or Australia/New Zealand, or even Europe? Are many middle-class Americans doing the immigrant thing in reverse nowadays?

2

We do have one of the highest per capita income, one of the highest rates of degree holders, and we seem to have a relatively heathly population pyramid unlike Europe and Japan. We’re certainly not the best in the world but I think we will do all right.

3

Usa! Usa! Usa! Usa!

4

“capital punishment”

Not in every state.

“prevalence of fundamentalism”

Where? In some parts of the country, yes, but believe it or not, you can find pockets of fundamentalism anywhere. You can find Islamic Fundamentalists in Europe without trying very hard, especially in France.

“poor public transportation”

Major cities such as NYC, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle have excellent public transportation systems. Not as good as Europe, but neither is Canadian public transport, which has similar issues (population being spread out too far to make it as economically viable.)

“high crime rate”

Again, it depends on where you are. And don’t think other countries are immune - I’ve heard stories about crime in British Columbia that would make you shudder (stuff like gang warfare, complete with machine guns.)

“low student test scores”
“teen pregnancy”
“illiteracy and semi-literacy”

Things which need improving! No discussion there. But this is something that even people like us can help with - be it your local literacy group, or Planned Parenthood, or school mentoring program.

5

It was never true for any country. When you say “greatest”, you have to qualify that. No country is absolutely perfect, either good or bad. Whether or not a country is good for you depends on what you deem to be important (and unimportant).

I won’t dispute these things, and I wish the US would improve in these respects. Some of the items are localized – for instance, where I live near Cleveland I would consider as safe as the safest place in the Toronto area. However, I’d hazard a guess that East Cleveland is about 10x more dangerous than the most dangerous areas of Toronto.

On the flip side, if you work in academia or technology, the US is most likely the best place to be. I’m Canadian by birth, American by naturalization. I consider myself to be an “accidental” American. I never intended to stay, I moved with my wife when she went to grad school in the US. However, opportunities in my field (software development) have held me here. I make about double what I could earn in Canada, and if my present employment should dry up, I have a lot of options.

As for health care, be careful what you wish for. Canada is no utopia, and neither is the US. If you have a lot of money, you can’t beat the US. Just ask the middle eastern royalty that come to Cleveland (Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals) and Rochester (Mayo Clinic). If you have excellent insurance, you’re probably better off in the US, too. If you have no insurance or lousy insurance, you’re probably better off in Canada. Exactly where you are, in the US or Canada, makes a huge difference to the quality of care you will receive. If I were king (I can’t be president!), I’d try to combine the best of both systems.

Education can be excellent or poor in the US, depends on where you live (and who your parents are). For undergraduate education, If my kids were college age right now I’d send them back to Canada for undergrad - there are many excellent schools there. However, for graduate schools, no country can compete with the US.

I’m not bothered by fundies, even though I strongly disagree with many of their beliefs. Life would be boring if everybody was the same.

Try north-central Europe (Germany/Austria/Switzerland). They seem to have struck a decent balance, at least in my opinion. Again, your opinion can be different, because your perspective is different.

The Hapsburgs were Austrian. They got knocked off their high horse in WW1.

Great powers seem to collapse under their own weight. I doubt the US will be an exception. As to when that will happen, your guess is as good as mine.

6

I don’t think you’ll find, from talking to immigrants anywhere, that they made their decisions on such abstruse factors, but on what their *own * personal futures and their own families’ personal futures would be like on a relative basis. Even at that, they also had to decide that the situations where they were were not only so difficult as to make leaving their own homes a realistic consideration, but that they’d probably never be much better. But that goes against American traditional rhetoric, and mostly experience too - things do change here, often rapidly, we do have the power to change them, we do have the ability to work ourselves up from poverty to riches, and so forth. It’s more difficult now than at other times in the past, sure, but the hopelessness that drives emigration just isn’t there for more than a handful. How many Americans would say Yes to the question “Do you believe your future and your family’s future would be better in (fill in country) by enough to make it worth leaving?”

7

Canada’s health care system is not bad, but it’s not great, either. It’s chronically under-funded, it suffers from bureaucratic sclerosis and all the inefficiencies that come with large government programs. The waiting lists are growing longer, and our access to high-tech diagnostic tools like MRI and CT scans lags FAR behind the U.S. For those reasons, survival rates for people diagnosed with cancer are significantly lower than they are in the U.S. (because the best chance for survival is early diagnosis and treatment, and Canadians wait longer for that than do Americans). When the premier of Ontario, who was one of the champions of our socialized health care system, came down with cancer he went to the U.S. for treatment.

Also, all these social programs do not come without cost. I find it amusing that you Americans are screaming about the horrible jobless rate, which is sitting at 5.6%. Here in Canada, it’s currently 7.4%, and it’s not even an issue because that’s par for the course here and everyone’s used to it. In ‘progressive’ Europe, the jobless rate is well over 8% on average, and in France and Germany it’s over 10%. Those numbers are unthinkable today in the U.S.

Another cost of social programs is economic growth, and rise in standard of living. Next year, the U.S. growth rate is predicted to be around 5%, while Canada’s is predicted to be 2.7%. Compound that kind of difference over a decade or so, and you’ll see major differences in the standard of living between the two countries.

Canada is a fine country, but we have plenty of our own problems. It’s always easy to focus on only the faults of your country, especially when a political party is in power that you don’t like.

8

Isn’t that a small town on the Japanese island of Kyushu? Yes, I see from my atlas that it is.

That’s right, but it didn’t stop them ruling Spain too (and Portugal, Hungary, Tuscany, Burgundy and a bunch of other places at one time or another). Fifteen Holy Roman Emperors were Habsburgs.

It’s true that there are no perfect countries in the world, though. Wherever you go you’ll find things to complain about or that were done better in the last place you visited.

9

Why don’t you give the growth rates for 2002, Sam? With the exception of this past year, Canada’s economy has been outgrowing the rest of the G7 for some time. “Compounding that difference over a decade” would only be meaningful if the numbers you were pointing at were indicative of a longterm trend.

As to the OP, I suspect most emigration based on the stated issues is likely to be internal to the US - people tired of fundamentalism will move out of the Bible Belt to New England, etc.

10

I would submit that one of the most prominent reasons for emigration from the United States is monetary. I can’t cite this, but hopefully someone else can, and I’m not going to explain how I know it.

Currently Halliburton is one of the largest employers of mercenaries. They are primarily ex-elite armed forces veterans like SEALs, Special Forces, and Delta folks. One of Halliburton’s largest incentives is that they will pay these people a shitload of money and station them overseas for at least one calendar year. I don’t know exactly how it works, but if you stay outside of the U.S. for a full year, somehow all that shitload of money you make magically becomes tax free.

Look, I’m not a paranoid lunatic. I didn’t make this up because I’m not that smart. I don’t know exactly how it works. But I do know that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people doing it for Halliburton alone.

I hope there is a reader out there who can confirm this and explain how it works.

11

And we all know mercenaries make up a large percentage of the US population, right?? :rolleyes:

Moving on…pretty much the OP has been answered, but I’ll give my own condensed views. Basically, the OP is incorrect, as has been pointed out, because of the flaw that the US is some kind of monolithic political/social/economic entity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Don’t like capital punishment? Move to a state where its not allowed. Hard line Democrat/Republican? MOve to a state that meets your political view point by electing senators/govenors that have similar stances. Don’t like fundamantalists? Move to a state where there isn’t a large percentage of them. You don’t believe in evolution? Move to a state where they teach…well, whatever BS they teach for this. The point is, the US is made up of a federation of many states, each subtly different than the others…and in some cases NOT very subtly different. The US runs the spectrum of political ideology, socio-economic levels, religion, and anything else you can think of. Unless you’ve never actually traveled throughout the US, this is pretty damn obvious.

In the forseeable future at least, I don’t see mass migrations from the US to anywhere in the world…there just isn’t an incentive. I would go out on a limb here and say that the thought would never even occur to the majority of citizens from all strata of society. I know this doesn’t fit with the gloom and doomers view that the US is teetering on the brink of total collapse (after all, we have aprox. 6% unimployment!! Plus BUSH is in charge!! Oh my god, time to bail out…), but lets get real here people. Ya, we have a lot of problems, but so does everyone else. I don’t think the citizens are QUITE ready to bail out for Canada or Europe en mass just yet…

-XT

12

At first I though of slipping across the Rio Grande River into Mexico but then I found out that ilegal entry into Mexico was punishable by death or something worse.

Quickly, I looked north to Canada where ilegal immigrants are given lollipops.

You know, like in the states.

13

Hhhmmm… I think I will have to defend the US here.

Social “indicators” might suck in the US… especially if compared to the massive GDP per capita. Why this happens is the difference compared to Imperial Spain. Spain acquired all its wealth through gold and good influx from the New World Colonies. They had no “economy” per se… only a lot of wealth. No industry or merchant economy. A bit like Saudi Arabia today maybe. The US is rich due to a very strong economic base. Agricultural, industrial, high tech and services.

So the US might spend less than ideally in social issues like europeans… but that is the same reason why their economy is so massive. Americans don’t cut slack for “losers”. Your poor ? Get a job. (Yeah, I know its a gross simplification) Governement is smaller and therefore businesses are less burndened by taxes which makes them more competitive. Add to the fact that their economy is inflated by having the dollar as the world’s currency and in fact the number of jobs availabe is pretty good compared to rules laden Europe labor market.

Like Xtisme loves to say, and I agree, the US system has a good ability of self correction. This stops stagnation... or has stop stagnation until now. Economic stagnation. We could argue that the US culturally and educationally is stagnant... and that might eventually affect their economy... but it will take time.

Back to the social indicators... I feel the US should be spending more in education and therefore avoid in part  importing so much brainpower and reducing in part crime rates. Check out Cecil's comments on the US having the biggest prison population size wise of the world nowdays. A modern democratic economy shouldn't have so many people behind bars if it had a bit more progressive social spending... IMHO. Build schools and you might avoid building more prisons.

 Summary:

Got good education and skills ? The US offers great salaries, conditions and choices. Best medicine if you can affored it.
Low education ? Oh Oh ! You will get jobs… but don’t expect much help.

14

Do they get free use of the Black Helicopters too?

15

I’m not quite sure about how they make civilians tax exempt, but when a war breaks out that we are involved in, a region is designated as a hostile area that has very specific boundaries. In the military, if you enter that region for any part of a month the entire month becomes tax-free, even if you’re just stopping to refuel and there’s no real danger. I suspect that it’s much the same deal for civilians.

16

Oh. yes, this is quite a common career path. My high school guidance counselor recommended the Delta Force/Halliburton Mercenary career path to many a student. I sometimes think enviously of my old schoolmates, now making huge sums for killing dark-skinned innocents all over the world.

I will. You either got it off some nutjob website, were told it by some fruitcake claiming he worked for the CIA, or else you invented it all on your own.

Fine then. You’re brainlessly repeating it because you’re not smart. Better?

I hope there is a magic conspiracy fairy that will confirm that Osama Bin Laden is jointly funded by Noam Chomsky and Pat Robertson; but somehow I don’t think that’ll happen. Wanna guess why?
As to the OP, if your question is wheteher or not people are in fact already leaving, that’s already availible.

17

I get the impression the one year tax-free thing is fairly universal. In my experiences of both Ireland and the UK, if you spend more than one calendar year outside the country, everything you earn in that year is untaxable, because it is assumed you’re paying tax elsewhere. I presume this applies to mercenaries too.

18

Regarding the OP - You might want to check with the nations you mentioned - Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. My guess is that they are interested in immigrants who want to come there for the opportunity to suceed, to add to the economy and help to pay for some of those social programs.

My guess is disaffected Americans with an eye on their generous welfare benefits aren’t high on the list of potential immigrants.

19

I would watch out in Germany and Austria. From the numbers and personal expereince their economy has not fared well in the last decade. Finding a job may not be easy.

20

Any country you are a citizen of can tax you on your world income. Whether they do or not is a matter of internal policy. Any country where you reside can tax you on income made within its borders. Whether your country of citizenship allows you a credit for foreign taxes paid depends on what tax treaty (if any) exists between your country of citizenship and your country of tax residence.

The US generally allows US citizens to exempt $80,000 of foreign-earned income per year if you are not a US resident. However, the country that you live in can tax you on that money.

Where this exemption is useful is if you live in a country with no (or low) income tax. If you live in a country with high income tax, the exemption is a moot point.

cite:
http://www.irs.gov/faqs/faq13-7.html
http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc853.html