Sublight writes:
> I wonder though, should military stationed overseas count as expats? The term
> is usually used for people who are overseas on their own. In the military, you’re
> still working for the US government, under and alongside other Americans, for
> payment in US dollars, living under US rules and subject to US laws (and AFAIK,
> not subject to local law for on-base activities), all within (at least at the bases
> around here) a microcosm of American society.
There are also a fair number of civilian Americans who are employees of the federal government living abroad under the same rules. I was one from August 1987 to August 1990. I don’t think it ever occurred to me to think about whether I would call myself an expatriate. When I was asked what I was doing there, I would say that I was an employee of the U.S. government working in England for three years. I’ve been back to the U.K. for vacations several times. For me, it’s not too much different than going back to Sarasota, Austin, or Columbus, where I was in college or grad school for three or four years each. In fact, I have more reason to go back to England than to my college towns, since my friends from college or grad school were fellow students and are mostly gone from there, while a lot of my British friends from my three years in England are still around. I’ve never met anyone who left the U.S. because they were unhappy with American politics or society, although such people must exist.
Nope, nor were there huge groups of conservatives who packed up and left America because they didn’t like the politics of previous administrations. Some people talk big, but it simply is not that easy to just move to another country.
In my experience in fifteen years of life as a Yank Abroad, we fall into three categories:
- Americans who are working in another country, temporarily or permanently, and their families. This includes military folks and employees of the federal government as well as people in private industry. Many of these folks are on temporary contracts and intend to return to the States after, typically, 2-5 years.
- Americans who are married to or otherwise in a relationship with someone from another country, and for various reasons ended up living in the other partner’s country. This is where I come in.
- Americans who, after studying abroad or going on an extended vacation or whatever, become so totally infatuated with another country and another culture that they make their own opportunity to live there, temporarily or permanently. This is harder than many think, but it is possible if you’re really determined.
The people who threaten to move abroad if so-and-so wins the next election tend to be all bark and no bite, in my experience.
Speaking as someone who has to live abroad for my job (I’m a Foreign Service Officer), I don’t necessarily consider myself an expat, nor do most other employees of the other agencies and services who get posted abroad.
I get paid in dollars, work around other Americans in a facility that has a commissary stocking American junk food favorites and hard-to-find staples and my mail goes to an Army Post Office address. While most of my job involves working directly with ordinary Peruvians, in Spanish, at the end of the day I get into my car that I bought in the U.S., drive to my apartment and live what is largely indistingushable from most people’s middle-class experience in the States.
The expats I’ve known in the countries I’ve been stationed have it much different – they live almost entirely on the local economy, have to observe local tax and civil laws that I as a diplomat am exempt from; they usually do a lot more in the lingua franca, etc.
From talking to people back in the States, they just plain don’t spend much time thinking about expats or people who work overseas; usually I have to explain what my job is , then they think it’s cool. I’ve never had anyone question my integrity or patriotism for living overseas, but then I’m doing it to serve the U.S. interests.
the snopes about celebrities who threatened/promised to leave the country if W was elected in 2000. Basically, a lot of posturing, followed by denials and claims they were joking. Pierre Salinger was the only person who actually left the country after the election.