Last year the U.S. experienced something that hasn’t definitively occurred since the Great Depression: More people moved out than moved in. The Trump administration has hailed the exodus—negative net migration—as the fulfillment of its promise to ramp up deportations and restrict new visas. Beneath the stormy optics of that immigration crackdown, however, lies a less-noticed reversal: America’s own citizens are leaving in record numbers, replanting themselves and their families in lands they find more affordable and safe.
Let’s quantify the cost of getting there (not the cost of a visa, application, or just air travel but also the cost of moving your entire life (everything you own, including vehicles, knick knacks, pets, children etc). I can’t afford it. I make decent money. But I also have a kid with special needs and a lot of stuff I have invested in like tools that I can’t really afford to just leave behind if I plan to be working in the same trade I work now.
I can afford a surprise bill. I can’t afford to just up sticks and leave the country permanently without literally probably years of saving and prep.
Having to pay for storage and housing and so on even before I get there, the cost of moving all that stuff (or selling it for a fraction of what it’s worth), that cost adds up.
But sure. Let’s do the foster care two trash bag thing for a family of four just because you want to be right.
That’s before even the cost of a job search.
You’re supposed to sell all your shit.
It’s stupid to try to move to another country with more than a backpack. It’s also stupid not to use contraception
Ahem. You want me to sell $80K work of tools and tool boxes, the car I literally rebuilt, and all my damn family photos for probably 1/16 or less what they are worth? My assets aren’t liquid and I’m not going to be able to rebuild that in my field in another country regardless of whether or not I can afford the fees and transportation. Those tools are how I make money. It took me ten years worth of buying and working to be able to afford them and I was lucky enough to get the basics for a ridiculous price as a student. There are a lot of people like me out there living and working in America who will not just abandon everything they own in order to leave until they have no other choice because that’s how they afford to feed and clothe and shelter themselves.
Skilled work doesn’t just mean working from home at an overseas job on a computer all day. If that works for you because you’re a software dev or work in like financial billing or something, that’s great. Plumbers, Civil Engineers, Automative Techs, etc aren’t going to be able to just re-enter that field with the clothes on their back and a backpack.
You’re deluding yourself if you think that even if you sell all that stuff it’s not going to take time and be a financial hardship.
And I have done it. I’ve moved overseas with more than a fucking backpack.