This is my situation. And I am sure there will be lots of people in similar predicaments should lines be crossed. It’s not a pleasant thought at all.
A month or so is one thing; but living overseas indefinitely on a tourist visa while continuing to work is going to violate local laws. Eventually, they’re going to want you to pay employment taxes.
He’s a dual citizen so he can stay here indefinitely. Sure he ought to declare his income and pay Canadian taxes and his employer would never know. H could take a tax credit on his US tax return for Canadian taxes paid.
You’re talking about your dual citizen son; in the post to which you replied I was describing someone on an all-hands call at my employer who almost certainly is not.
For every Yale professor coming to Canada, there are probably hundreds more who are less publicized but nevertheless welcome here. The one silver lining in this ongoing American horror story is that Canada is getting some of America’s best intellectuals (“intellectual” being a disparaging term in Trump’s idiocracy).
Absolutely, escape is only an option once you have a certain amount of wealth available to you. You can’t escape if you can’t even afford a plane ticket, much less resettling money.
But when I watch those old documentaries about countries sliding into authoritarianism, and then jailing, torturing or slaughtering their scapegoat minorities, intelligentsia and their families, I always think (with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight) “but there were multiple signs! Why didn’t you get out? Why didn’t you save your children from becoming orphans or worse?”
Those people were not universally stupid or ignorant of history because they were old timey. So what lulled them into such deadly complacency?
And so if we were to go back today and exhort them: You should have a line that, if crossed, you just cut and run. Doesn’t matter if you end up with half what you have or penniless on the other side. You have at least a chance to rebuild your life, you can’t bring people back from the dead.
What would they say? Would they listen or would they accuse us of being alarmists and still refuse to draw a line in the sand?
Sometimes you see the writing on the wall, but still can’t escape.
Everyone I know is staying, with one possible exception (a Jewish family: they’ve seen this play). They have various rationales, but it boils down to the fact that emigrating is a daunting challenge and after their 20s, most people with okay lives are not up for it.
Some people are at an age/state of health where rebuilding out of the country is not feasible or even possible.
Before then:
- Voters getting lied to about the justification for a foreign invasion in 2003 and then saying, “Meh,” at the ballot box the following year.
- 2010 Mid-terms: voters either voting Republican or sitting out the election because they believed that Obama was a socialist dictator or because he hadn’t magically erased the worst recession in 80 years.
- 2011-2012 Republicans threaten a technical default on treasuries and force federal government shutdowns and voters don’t bat an aye.
Donald Trump saw the power that lies could have on social media with his ‘birther-gate’ nonsense. He ultimately failed to get Obama unseated, but he instinctively knew at that point the power of the great lie, and he sensed weakness in the American voter and in the Republican party.
CBC article on Canada gearing up to attract more American scientists, particularly those in the medical research community that is now being decimated by Trump and RFK Jr. One of the challenges that we had better fix quickly is that Canada spends disproportionately less (per capita) than the US does (or did, before Trump fired everybody) on medical research. With people’s health now under threat globally, Canada and Europe had better step up quickly to do what the NIH and CDC are no longer doing. Scientific research and defense are two areas where western democracies need to become much more self-sufficient as the US descends into the chaos of idiocracy.
Too late for this Rutgers professor?
A Rutgers University expert on antifa tried to flee the United States with his family on Wednesday night in the wake of death threats that followed President Trump’s push to characterize the left-wing antifascist movement as a domestic terrorist organization.
But when the expert, Mark Bray, got to the gate at Newark Liberty International Airport, after getting the family’s boarding passes, checking their bags and going though security, he was told by the airline that “the reservation was just canceled,” he said late Wednesday night.
That’s terrifying.
A non-paywalled story from the Associated Press:
An expert on anti-fascist groups who teaches at Rutgers University says he is fleeing with his family to Spain after getting death threats amid a campaign by the campus chapter of Turning Point USA and other conservative groups to get him fired.
Mark Bray, an assistant professor of history, said Thursday that he decided to make the move out of concern for his family’s safety after being falsely labeled as a member of antifa, a term used to describe far-left activist groups that oppose fascism.
…
Bray plans to live in Spain and teach remotely for the current academic year, then hopes to be back on campus next fall. He had planned to fly to Spain on Wednesday night but said that shortly before takeoff, he was notified by the airline that his family’s reservations had been canceled. He and his wife, who is also a Rutgers professor, have two young children.
Stranger
And he’s good. Currently over the Atlantic as we speak.
Thank GOD and thank you, @orcenio. This one really got me.
I guess I don’t understand why and how did the flight get canceled?
He has no idea why he was prevented from leaving on his original flight.
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/embedded-video/mmvo249713733911
When I tried to leave the country on Wednesday my reservation was mysteriously cancelled at the last second -I don’t know exactly what happened with that but it was awfully fishy. I was then stopped, searched, and interrogated, by Federal agents, as I made my way out of the country on Thursday despite facing no charges for any crimes whatsoever.