So will all the folks that fled the country during the Bush years come back now that Obama’s in charge?
If one accepts the premise that there are actually a significant number of expatriates who left the country specifically because they couldn’t stomach the Republicans, sure. But I think the majority of expats leave their home country for a host of more complex reasons than simple dislike of a current Administration. Usually, it is either “itchy feet” or because one’s job/company requires it.
Or at least, that’s the case with most of the expats I have known from having lived in Micronesia, Mozambique, Egypt, and Indonesia over the past 20+ years. Since those are all developing countries, perhaps my sample is skewed.
Bush was one of the reasons I left (there are many others). I am flying to the US tomorrow and may decide to stay, probably just spending a lot more time in the US now, but still keeping an overseas base.
The swallows are returning to Capistrano. There can’t seriously be that many people who left the US because they hated GW Bush?
I didn’t leave the country because Bush was elected, and I won’t be coming back because Obama was. I live here now. I’m marrying a Brit, and I’m buying a house. I like it here; it’s got very little to do with American politics.
I don’t know any who left only because of Bush, but he was certainly a huge factor for many of the people I have met while living in UAE, Czech Republic, Rep. of Georgia and New Zealand. Actually New Zealand is where I experienced the strongest anti-American/anti-Bush feelings.
Nevermind.
For me, well, yes, in a manner of speaking. Suddenly, I’m much more sentimental for things back home now that Obama has been elected. This might be an irrational reaction, or just leftover victory warm-n-fuzzy-feelings, but I’m scaling back my attempts to put off going home.
I left during the first Clinton administration, stayed overseas through Bush, and it’s very unlikely I’ll be coming back for more than a visit during Obama’s tenure. Nothing political about it, this is just where the opportunities were when I left college, and now it’s where my home, family and career are.
I felt happy when Obama won, but I’m less and less interested in US politics as time goes on.
Alec Baldwin is coming home!
No-one actually leaves the country if the someone they don’t like gets elected (at least, not in a Western democracy). It’s just a way for those people who aren’t particualarly good with words to express their dissapointment that their country disagrees with them.
In the last Irish election I knew lots of people who swore blue that they were going to leave if Fianna Fail were returned to government. They were, and not one of them left.
It’s just empty-headed hyperbole.
Surely, you have a cite for this extraordinary claim.
Coincidently, my wife and I are talking about moving back to the US. It’s not that I moved out of the US because of Bush, but I did stay away because of him. I felt that I didn’t have anything in common with a country that re-elected that piece of trash, but now I kind of would like to be part of what’s coming.
Whilst I think you’re right to make that call (I’m sure at least one individual somewhere has left the country over such matters), would I really need a cite when I say that it seems pretty apparent that the vast majority of people who declare they’ll emigrate if their party loses are, well, full of shit and never have the faintest intention of doing so (unless it’s tacked on as a “reason” to a considered move abroad anyway)?
It reminds me a bit of the beer strikes we used to have here. I was too young for them, but my dad said that just about every Christmas, the brewery workers would walk out on some pretext, and the pubs would run dry. People would drink Coca Cola, and loudly announce that it was actually quite a nice drink, and fuck those brewery workers - we’ll STICK TO Coke when they come back to work. Yeah right.
Yes, I’ll bet that all of the zero people who left the US because Bush was elected will return for an Obama administration.