Despite being a USAF veteran, I left the U.S. in 1972 to get away from Nixon, the Vietnam war, and paying taxes to support the military industrial complex. I have lived in Canada since '72. I contemplated returning, but could not find a city I wanted to live in. New York is too nasty, Boston - at the time - was so violent, etc. etc. I wanted a large city with a good symphony, opera, serious theatre, European films, and a lot of bookstores. Canada is boring but a secure place to live and run a business. I decided that I have enough money to fly to opera and theatre anywhere and I do not need to live in a specific city. It was the right decision - from Nixon to Palin and the T-Party and the incredible gun obsession that goes with all of them, I am glad I left. But I am a Jeffersonian and retain my U.S. citizenship and passport and despite living here 41 years always state that I am an American.
Foreigners? Not generally. My parents were called first-gen americans, recent immigrants, "greenas (used by other Eastern-European Jewish immigrants to describes themselves). I never heard them referred to as foreigners. That was usually reserved to people visiting the US.
Despite tensions in the US about illegal immigration and some prejudice against immigrants, America is pretty comfortable with heterogenous nature of our population.
Not to mention Governor Schwartzenegger. At least for a time, not a few Americans were bummed that he was Constitutionally ineligible to run for President.
That probably depends on two things:
- Where in the US you are
- How you define “first-generation”
An Indian or Chinese engineer who moves here to Austin, Texas may still be perceived by SOME Texans as a “foreigner” even if he eventually becomes an American citizen.
But if he has kids who were born here or are growing up here, they’re going to be as American as any native-born kids in their attitudes, dress, habits and mannerisms, and practically nobody except the occasional redneck will think of them as foreigners. My sons’ friends, classmates and sports teammates include Mexican, Chinese, Iranian, Indian, Pakistani, Vietnamese, Arab and Korean kids, and while their skin tones may differ from my son’s, they’re all as “American” as he is, no matter how you define that. They all eat pizza, they all play soccer, they all like the same cartoons and the same pop bands.
America used to be sort of unique in that regard, but I’m not at all sure that’s true any more. I have to believe that Vietnamese teenagers who were born and raised in Melbourne feel and act pretty much like white Australian teens, that Indian kids who grew up in Kent think of themselves as regular English kids, and so on. And their white neighbors generally regard them the same way.
Look, I’m not saying that immigrants to the US never face racism, outsider status, and the like. Of course they do. But it’s a matter of degree, as well as of fundamental values. In the US, there is a belief - however imperfectly we realize that belief in daily life - that anyone can become an American. It may take a while, sure, but it can be done. And the next generations can definitely be seen as fully American.
This is simply not true in at least some other countries, and to insist that “well, the way we do it in America must be exactly like how things work in other countries, too” is an extrapolation that has no basis in reality.
Nitpick: I’m not really American.
I understand what you’re saying, and I understand that I’m looking at the world through an immigrant-country filter. Still, things change, don’t they? Everything you’ve said about Egypt, India or Japan could have applied to France, the UK, Denmark or the Netherlands 50 years ago, and yet all of these countries no have very large immigrant populations. 100 years ago “Dutch” meant a white Protestant, exclusively; now, it can also mean an African Muslim. Maybe if enough Westerners settle in erstwhile Third World countries, perception of them will change.
Anything is possible. But I was talking about 2013, not 2113, and I thought your remarks in this thread were also regarding the present day. If you want to discuss what things will be like in 100 years in various countries, that is a different, and much more speculative, conversation.
If the US had single payer healthcare, laws that protect worker’s rights, a version of the program that will allow my son to not graduate with crippling college loans (but instead have a program where the taxation office will take a graduated percentage once he’s making a decent wage), then I’d go back to live in the US. Oh, and if they’d stop being one of one or two nations that taxes their expats on income earned overseas. WTF?
I feel no need to disclose my everyday bank account to the IRS, either, thanks.
Until then, nah, I’m staying in Australia. I didn’t leave because everything was fucked up (I left because I married an Australian) but I’m staying because everything is fucked up, for sure. Plus I love it here.
Socialized healthcare.
Less politically polarized
Gun control
More room
Beautiful
Why leave Canada to go to back to the US?
Your post makes an interesting contribution to the conversation, but I think the particular comment above doesn’t make much sense. Why would you choose to live abroad based on the fact that the US is one of very few countries that taxes their expats on income earned overseas?
(For those unfamiliar with the issue, Gleena is correct. However, the situation is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the first $90k or so is exempt from taxes. After that, however, you pay tax at the same marginal rate you would if the first 90k were taxed.)
If I go back, I have to file. Technically I have to file anyway, but I don’t, since I don’t plan to go back.
I would have to pay if I filed, which I find monumentally unfair.
Your bolded statement is not necessarily correct, depending on your circumstances. Whether you are in the US or abroad, you do not have to file a US tax return if certain conditions are met. These can be found on p. 3 of IRS Publication 54 - middle column under the heading “Filing Requirements”. http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p54.pdf
I point this out only because I myself was under the (I think commonly held) misapprehension that all US citizens living abroad have to file a tax return, no matter what. I was surprised to find out I was wrong!
Not really a misapprehension…
It is pretty much true that ALL citizens living abroad have to file. Unless your total income is close to poverty level, you have to file a 1040 form. And if you have any money (over poverty level) in foreign banks, you have to file a TDF90-20.1 form, too.
Y’know, there’s another thing…
Americans generally descend from the people who were willing and able to take off and leave their old land behind. Including to a more internal degree getting on a wagon train from Pennsylvania to Oregon, on Route 66 from Chicago to L.A., on the train from Alabama for Michigan, on the Greyhound from Fargo to NYC. So it should not be surprising if they had been conditioned to a mentality that is comfortable with doing the same thing internationally outbound.
Not true wanderers, but feeling you have a right to be where it feels right for you.
One country’s “poverty level” is another’s “perfectly livable income.” There are a number of US citizens in Indonesia who subsist reasonably comfortably on wages that would be “poverty level” in the US.
Westerners will NEVER settle in any of those countries in large enough numbers to make any difference.
Large scale Third World immigration, on the other hand, may yet happen. It’s already starting to, as Japan’s population gets older and shrinks. They may NEED Filippinos to work at the nursing homes and to take the factory jobs that were supposed to be filled by the kids the Japanese never had.
Interestingly, we’re seeing an African presence in China, today. Will black Africans and their kids ever be accepted as “real” Chinese? I guess we’ll find out.
Interestingly, we’re seeing an African presence in China, today. Will black Africans and their kids ever be accepted as “real” Chinese? I guess we’ll find out.
not since the public security bureau ( psb) is kicking them all out as undesirable and doing bad for the ‘image’.
what is happening in south china these days are many africans on some sort of ‘buisness visa’ or kazahstan prostitutes obtaining visas and getting into problems.
children born in china are not chinese.
many americans at the white swam hotel in canton which is a handover point for adopted kids from china.
I think the US is categorically different in this area since we didn’t have a base ethnicity to start with. Initially we were colonized by English, French, Spanish, Portuguese etc. Obviously I’m not including Native Americans, for obvious reasons in this discussion.
In Egypt there are Ethnic Egyptians and then Egyptians by citizenship or birth that are ethnically different. Of course they should be treated as fully fledged members of their country, but one can see why the POV might be different than in a country where everybody is originally from somewhere else.
How “your people” get here is an important part of everyone’s story in the US. It’s why we have the DAR or track who came on the Mayflower. It’s why the effects of slavery still have such a hold- how would you feel if your immigrant story was that your people were dragged here in chains. Everyone knows which relative of theirs came to the US- was it mom, grandma, great-grandpa, great-aunt so-and-so etc. People know their immigration story. It’s why Ellis Island has such a romantic hold on so many people.
As a result we look at immigration and immigrants a bit different. I think it’s one of the reasons illegal immigration pisses so many people off. Their “people” did it “right”. (not my personal opinion, but an observation).
My parents were refugees throughout Europe after WWII and finally settled in Israel for three years (1948-51) before coming to the US. Here they feel they could become Americans.
on the upside to this.
america is in shut down. why go back and to what? this is what my mate said just now.