No, I am not planning on returning regardless, but if Obama is elected I might not-consider it less if that makes sense.
If the American public is stupid enough to vote for 4 or 8 more years of corruption, corporate pandering, and moving ever closer to a theocracy then it makes my decision to stay elsewhere even easier.
And yes, I will be getting my British passport next year. Remains to be seen if I will burn my US passport at the same time.
Even when I was trying to move to the US permanently, I never intended to immigrate, at least not if you define so as “become a citizen thereof.” I just can’t promise to give up all loyalty to Spain and be truthful.
At this point I don’t want to work there. Too much hassle, sorry; I have a lot of other places where I can get jobs in my field with less paperwork involved. If there is a rationalization and clarification of immigration procedures and laws (both for permanent and temporary migrants), I’ll be willing to consider it again. But that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with Obama being elected.
In some ways this is a bit of a silly question. Nowadays there’s really no reason for someone from another industrialized country to emigrate to the U.S. just for the hell of it. In a few cases he or she may have a specific reason for doing so – such as a specific job offer.
For example, I work for a multinational company, and we often hire Europeans for our Bay Area office. They clearly have no issues with moving to the U.S.
I personally moved back and forth between Canada and the U.S. for family reasons.
On the other hand there are still plenty of people from developing countries, ranging from Indian engineers to Mexican laborers, who would love to emigrate to the U.S. Whether that’s good or bad is another debate entirely.
I like all the Americans I know and there are some admirable things America has going for it but You folks are generally too conservative for my taste. The in your face religiosity doesn’t make me feel comfortable.
To be honest I really like where I live, I can’t think of anything that would make me want to leave at this moment and to become a citizen of another country just doesn’t register for me at all.
Well, I lived there for three years, and the USA isn’t short of low-level IT drones, desktop aviators or irrititating know-it-alls. But I do happen to be in love with an American woman.
Edit: Oh yeah, the OP! I may or may not go back to the USA to live, but I don’t think a hypothetical Obama victory would sway my opinion one way or the other.
If this were the biggest problem, it would mean wanting to avoid regions rather than the entire country. The religious climate is very different when you compare the south to the northeast, for example. You know those mind-blowing threads about people getting taken to task about religion by coworkers? Those blow my mind too, because this isn’t one of the parts of the country where religion is spoken about casually or often, and we don’t know the faith of coworkers for the most part. Keep in mind that it’s a really big country, and there are a lot of differences between regions.
You’d better have some words with Cunctator, then.
My sense of the facts of the matter: “immigrate” and “emigrate” are like “come” and “go” or “bring” and “take”: they aren’t tied to particular prepositions, though there is a deictic factor. I can come to the store, I can go to the store, I can come from the store… I can bring something from the store, I can bring something to the store, I can take something from the store, I can take something to the store.