"The lesson of 1933 is - you get out."
June 16, 2025 12:45 AM Subscribe
Starkly, Shore invoked the ultimate warning from history. “The lesson of 1933 is: you get out sooner rather than later.” She seemed to be saying that what had happened then, in Germany, could happen now, in Donald trump’s America – and that anyone tempted to accuse her of hyperbole or alarmism was making a mistake. “My colleagues and friends, they were walking around and saying, ‘We have checks and balances. So let’s inhale, checks and balances, exhale, checks and balances.’ I thought, my God, we’re like people on the Titanic saying, ‘Our ship can’t sink. We’ve got the best ship. We’ve got the strongest ship. We’ve got the biggest ship.’ And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”
When trump won again last November, there was no doubt in her mind. However bad things had looked in 2016, now was worse. “So much had been dismantled … the guardrails, or the checks and balances, had systematically been taken down. The supreme court’s ruling on immunity; the failure to hold trump accountable for anything, including the fact that he incited, you know, a violent insurrection on the Capitol, that he encouraged a mob that threatened to hang his vice-president, that he called up the Georgia secretary of state and asked him to find votes. I felt like we were in much more dangerous territory.”
Events so far have vindicated those fears. The deportations; students disappeared off the streets, one famously caught on video as she was bundled into an unmarked car by masked immigration agents; the humiliation of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as trump and JD Vance ordered the Ukrainian president to express his gratitude to them, even as they were “abusing” him, an episode, says Shore, “right out of Stalinism” – to say nothing of trump’s regular attacks on “USA-hating judges” who rule against the executive branch. It adds up to a playbook that is all too familiar. “Dark fantasies are coming true.”
When trump won again last November, there was no doubt in her mind. However bad things had looked in 2016, now was worse. “So much had been dismantled … the guardrails, or the checks and balances, had systematically been taken down. The supreme court’s ruling on immunity; the failure to hold trump accountable for anything, including the fact that he incited, you know, a violent insurrection on the Capitol, that he encouraged a mob that threatened to hang his vice-president, that he called up the Georgia secretary of state and asked him to find votes. I felt like we were in much more dangerous territory.”
Events so far have vindicated those fears. The deportations; students disappeared off the streets, one famously caught on video as she was bundled into an unmarked car by masked immigration agents; the humiliation of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as trump and JD Vance ordered the Ukrainian president to express his gratitude to them, even as they were “abusing” him, an episode, says Shore, “right out of Stalinism” – to say nothing of trump’s regular attacks on “USA-hating judges” who rule against the executive branch. It adds up to a playbook that is all too familiar. “Dark fantasies are coming true.”
Mrs. gelfin and I happened to be visiting Portugal when the final Roe v. Wade decision came down. I tend to be more "let it ride" and she tends to be more "get ahead of it," traits with positive and negative consequences for each of us at times, but at the time the dollar was very strong, US house prices had peaked, and expatriating had long been part of the long-term plan anyway, so the combined weight of circumstance made the decision pretty clear. And as it happened, in this case her instincts were the right ones anyway.
Overturning Roe was, to an amateur court-watcher like myself, a very big red flag that this court differed from its predecessors in its willingness to take big swings. The SCOTUS historically moves almost maddeningly cautiously, so much so that I was skeptical of the early leak of the decision. I'd also watched with mounting concern for decades as I saw Republicans making very deliberate, chess-like moves to capture every branch of government and undermine the vaunted "checks and balances." I wholly bought that they were serious about it, but I was firmly on the "let the system work" side. Power is distributed, and if good faith fails, at least fear of the prosecutions that follow coming out on the wrong side would keep people in line. Some federal benches held nakedly corrupt partisans, but that's why we have a robust appeals process. One of the best bulwarks against tyranny is requiring a lot of people to sign their names to things they might be held accountable for later, another example of an essay for another day: inefficiency is good.
I watched as corruption in the legislature blocked Obama's SCOTUS pick, while rushing through three for trump, all of which were deeply problematic and transparently told lie after lie in confirmation hearings about their intentions, for all the lies mattered since we all knew deep down those confirmations were rubber-stamping ceremonies, and I had the sense we were in deep trouble. Rather than collegial opposition among the branches to keep one another honest, they had finally built a structure that enabled unchecked partisan collusion. I watched as trump clearly tried to steal the 2020 election, first by fraud and then by violence. Georgia didn't refrain from "finding" n+1 votes for trump because they were insufficiently loyal, partisan or corrupt. They did so because they still credibly feared doing so would land them in prison. That dog has lost its bite.
One may still legitimately debate whether fears that the US will never have another free and fair election are alarmist, but it's hard to deny we are in a position where that dire situation could happen and there is no longer a clearly functioning "system" in place to prevent it. Apropos of the political chess moves I'd seen the GOP making for decades, we are essentially in a "checkmate in two" situation unless the Republicans inexplicably resign, or they blow their strategy due to rank incompetence, or somebody flips the board. It's no longer out of mere pettiness or schadenfreude I relish seeing right-wing incompetence play out. It's the Hail Mary play that stands between our current situation and something far, far worse.
"It" not only can happen in America. It is happening, and although you can kind of tell they'd like to be able to, these days nobody I talk to back home is reacting like I'm being irrational when I tell them I'm glad I got out when I did.
posted by gelfin at 2:01 AM on June 16 [45 favorites]
Overturning Roe was, to an amateur court-watcher like myself, a very big red flag that this court differed from its predecessors in its willingness to take big swings. The SCOTUS historically moves almost maddeningly cautiously, so much so that I was skeptical of the early leak of the decision. I'd also watched with mounting concern for decades as I saw Republicans making very deliberate, chess-like moves to capture every branch of government and undermine the vaunted "checks and balances." I wholly bought that they were serious about it, but I was firmly on the "let the system work" side. Power is distributed, and if good faith fails, at least fear of the prosecutions that follow coming out on the wrong side would keep people in line. Some federal benches held nakedly corrupt partisans, but that's why we have a robust appeals process. One of the best bulwarks against tyranny is requiring a lot of people to sign their names to things they might be held accountable for later, another example of an essay for another day: inefficiency is good.
I watched as corruption in the legislature blocked Obama's SCOTUS pick, while rushing through three for trump, all of which were deeply problematic and transparently told lie after lie in confirmation hearings about their intentions, for all the lies mattered since we all knew deep down those confirmations were rubber-stamping ceremonies, and I had the sense we were in deep trouble. Rather than collegial opposition among the branches to keep one another honest, they had finally built a structure that enabled unchecked partisan collusion. I watched as trump clearly tried to steal the 2020 election, first by fraud and then by violence. Georgia didn't refrain from "finding" n+1 votes for trump because they were insufficiently loyal, partisan or corrupt. They did so because they still credibly feared doing so would land them in prison. That dog has lost its bite.
One may still legitimately debate whether fears that the US will never have another free and fair election are alarmist, but it's hard to deny we are in a position where that dire situation could happen and there is no longer a clearly functioning "system" in place to prevent it. Apropos of the political chess moves I'd seen the GOP making for decades, we are essentially in a "checkmate in two" situation unless the Republicans inexplicably resign, or they blow their strategy due to rank incompetence, or somebody flips the board. It's no longer out of mere pettiness or schadenfreude I relish seeing right-wing incompetence play out. It's the Hail Mary play that stands between our current situation and something far, far worse.
"It" not only can happen in America. It is happening, and although you can kind of tell they'd like to be able to, these days nobody I talk to back home is reacting like I'm being irrational when I tell them I'm glad I got out when I did.
posted by gelfin at 2:01 AM on June 16 [45 favorites]
Wow... so resonate. I started following Thomas Snyder a couple of months ago.
I left the US at the end of 2017, having seen enough of the man (and for other personal reasons), for Europe, specifically France (by way of three years in Germany). I spent four years in France, trying to get residency only to be denied and required to leave the country (and, by extension, the EU). Presumably, I was to return to the US, to stay with family in Texas. This was in November, just before the election.
As the appeal process ground on (three of them by the time I gave up and left), I watched as the situation rapidly changed from December to February. My initial return plans were to fly from Paris to Houston, with a one day layover in Calgary, Alberta (where, as Mr. Young says, the weather is good there in the Spring :) ). But as the last few weeks in February were making clear, I had less and less reason to return to the US.
Upon arrival in Calgary, I went straight to Immigration and requested asylum. I was granted refugee protection, spent the next day making preparations to fly on to Montréal, where I am now and plan to remain for the duration. It has been three months here now and I watch with sadness and frustration at the insanity unfolding before me down south.
Sal si puedes, indeed...
posted by aldus_manutius at 3:28 AM on June 16 [30 favorites]
I left the US at the end of 2017, having seen enough of the man (and for other personal reasons), for Europe, specifically France (by way of three years in Germany). I spent four years in France, trying to get residency only to be denied and required to leave the country (and, by extension, the EU). Presumably, I was to return to the US, to stay with family in Texas. This was in November, just before the election.
As the appeal process ground on (three of them by the time I gave up and left), I watched as the situation rapidly changed from December to February. My initial return plans were to fly from Paris to Houston, with a one day layover in Calgary, Alberta (where, as Mr. Young says, the weather is good there in the Spring :) ). But as the last few weeks in February were making clear, I had less and less reason to return to the US.
Upon arrival in Calgary, I went straight to Immigration and requested asylum. I was granted refugee protection, spent the next day making preparations to fly on to Montréal, where I am now and plan to remain for the duration. It has been three months here now and I watch with sadness and frustration at the insanity unfolding before me down south.
Sal si puedes, indeed...
posted by aldus_manutius at 3:28 AM on June 16 [30 favorites]
for those who (like me) lack the means to just pick up and leave, the future isn't on rails, if we don't want to descend into fascism we had better do something about this.
Most of us can't fuck off to Canada, or Europe, or wherever, and because global warming will decimate the whole planet (and trump if left unchecked will do just that), we had better put on our shoes and get going making sure trump is defeated politically.
Start in your neighborhood by joining or forming a mutual aid group, you will certainly need it when FEMA fails or they send in the national guard, or the creek rises and the rain falls and the wind blows, or just because you want to make some friends and help people.
Then fight the good fight at work, join or form a union, and get that union involved in social justice/political/environmental work both inside and outside your workplace.
Get active in local politics, you would be surprised how just a little effort can have big effects on ossified local power structures that limp along more on inertia than anything else, maybe even run for something!
Mid terms are coming up, and the opposition parties play book is determined in the primary, maybe some of those old stodgy assholes have got to go, replaced by people who give a damn and will fight (and are not owned by big business), maybe that someone is you!
We can't treat the obvious fascism of trump et all as inevitable, or it will become so.
Good luck folks.
posted by stilgar at 3:32 AM on June 16 [96 favorites]
Most of us can't fuck off to Canada, or Europe, or wherever, and because global warming will decimate the whole planet (and trump if left unchecked will do just that), we had better put on our shoes and get going making sure trump is defeated politically.
Start in your neighborhood by joining or forming a mutual aid group, you will certainly need it when FEMA fails or they send in the national guard, or the creek rises and the rain falls and the wind blows, or just because you want to make some friends and help people.
Then fight the good fight at work, join or form a union, and get that union involved in social justice/political/environmental work both inside and outside your workplace.
Get active in local politics, you would be surprised how just a little effort can have big effects on ossified local power structures that limp along more on inertia than anything else, maybe even run for something!
Mid terms are coming up, and the opposition parties play book is determined in the primary, maybe some of those old stodgy assholes have got to go, replaced by people who give a damn and will fight (and are not owned by big business), maybe that someone is you!
We can't treat the obvious fascism of trump et all as inevitable, or it will become so.
Good luck folks.
posted by stilgar at 3:32 AM on June 16 [96 favorites]
You do you, but this is my country and I'm staying here to fight tyranny.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 4:07 AM on June 16 [51 favorites]
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 4:07 AM on June 16 [51 favorites]
There are not a lot of great places to flee to. And even my intelligent, well-read friends are woefully underinformed about international politics.
For example: the friend who wants to flee to the UK…to protect their trans children from the anti-trans turn the US is taking. (Said friend is in one of the US states with the most protections for trans kids.)
The friend who wants to move to Italy because at least their government is liberal and not corrupt.
The friend who wants to move to New Zealand because they would never elect some alt-right guy (let me introduce you to Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour) or gut environment regulations (points and sighs).
The many friend who thinks parties with neo-Nazi backgrounds could never get a toehold in a place like Sweden or Finland. (Sighs, points at Sweden Democrats and Finns Party).
I definitely support people in a targeted group going somewhere else if they have the resources. I also think that if you are going, you REEEEEEEALLY need to read up on the politics first, and remember that politics change. (In 2020, for example, Labour won a supermajority in Parliament in NZ. No one would have predicted that they, and other left-leaning parties, would get shellacked in 2023.) But man, going to Canada right now sure seems like going to Poland in 1936, and Europe seems dicey too. Might I interest you in Uruguay? Great wine, beautiful beaches, left wing for decades, and extremely far away from the USA.
posted by rednikki at 4:46 AM on June 16 [51 favorites]
For example: the friend who wants to flee to the UK…to protect their trans children from the anti-trans turn the US is taking. (Said friend is in one of the US states with the most protections for trans kids.)
The friend who wants to move to Italy because at least their government is liberal and not corrupt.
The friend who wants to move to New Zealand because they would never elect some alt-right guy (let me introduce you to Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour) or gut environment regulations (points and sighs).
The many friend who thinks parties with neo-Nazi backgrounds could never get a toehold in a place like Sweden or Finland. (Sighs, points at Sweden Democrats and Finns Party).
I definitely support people in a targeted group going somewhere else if they have the resources. I also think that if you are going, you REEEEEEEALLY need to read up on the politics first, and remember that politics change. (In 2020, for example, Labour won a supermajority in Parliament in NZ. No one would have predicted that they, and other left-leaning parties, would get shellacked in 2023.) But man, going to Canada right now sure seems like going to Poland in 1936, and Europe seems dicey too. Might I interest you in Uruguay? Great wine, beautiful beaches, left wing for decades, and extremely far away from the USA.
posted by rednikki at 4:46 AM on June 16 [51 favorites]
the future isn't on rails
Watching from afar, it's my most sincere hope.
Shore's point, though, is hard not to recognise especially especially _especially_ if history has already shown that you and your immediate relatives, family and friends and loved ones can be swept up and disappeared. Living in Germany, now, living with that terror as the background noise however faint, I don't blame anyone for picking up and going.
another quote I thought were significant and illustrative of the quandary: “These things are so contingent; you can’t do a control study on real life.” (will he or won't he round up my friends and neighbours? Is this the moment I'll later look back on and wish I had left? Or do we make it to the midterms and the democrats come in and dismantle the worst of it? - you just can't fucking know.)
It's not an easy time.
posted by From Bklyn at 4:51 AM on June 16 [5 favorites]
Watching from afar, it's my most sincere hope.
Shore's point, though, is hard not to recognise especially especially _especially_ if history has already shown that you and your immediate relatives, family and friends and loved ones can be swept up and disappeared. Living in Germany, now, living with that terror as the background noise however faint, I don't blame anyone for picking up and going.
another quote I thought were significant and illustrative of the quandary: “These things are so contingent; you can’t do a control study on real life.” (will he or won't he round up my friends and neighbours? Is this the moment I'll later look back on and wish I had left? Or do we make it to the midterms and the democrats come in and dismantle the worst of it? - you just can't fucking know.)
It's not an easy time.
posted by From Bklyn at 4:51 AM on June 16 [5 favorites]
Get out...how? I don't even have a passport. I'm living almost paycheck to paycheck. What is the point of telling people to run when they can't?
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:10 AM on June 16 [44 favorites]
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:10 AM on June 16 [44 favorites]
Sorry tiny frying pan. The message isn't for us, it's for the people with the means.
posted by Rudy_Wiser at 5:26 AM on June 16 [32 favorites]
posted by Rudy_Wiser at 5:26 AM on June 16 [32 favorites]
It is incredible to me the number of people I know in the US who are either making active plans to flee or at least have looked into it seriously. Not unsurprisingly mostly people from targeted minority groups who know their turn is coming up if it hasn't already.
My grandmother fled from Mexico with almost nothing. Her kids were going hungry there and thats when she knew she had to get out. She was one of the lucky ones in one way: She had been born in the US as her parents were seasonal farmworkers. So she could claim US citizenship. The tale of her and her eight kids taking cheap buses across Mexico to make it to the US is the stuff of family legends - they 'lost' one of my younger uncles and some of his siblings advocated leaving him behind (!) but they found him luckily. She loved living in the US but she also taught me patriotism is for dummies. Loyalty should be to people, good people in your life, across any national or ethnic boundaries.
I basically 'fled' the US in 2008 though it was mainly for love than for anything else. Still, it wasn't a hard decision. Even then, the healthcare system was badly broken, lax regulations meant lots of uncertainty about the food you were eating, work protections were still nonexistent and none of this was really being addressed. It has all gotten worse since then and took an actual cliff dive this year.
posted by vacapinta at 5:32 AM on June 16 [15 favorites]
My grandmother fled from Mexico with almost nothing. Her kids were going hungry there and thats when she knew she had to get out. She was one of the lucky ones in one way: She had been born in the US as her parents were seasonal farmworkers. So she could claim US citizenship. The tale of her and her eight kids taking cheap buses across Mexico to make it to the US is the stuff of family legends - they 'lost' one of my younger uncles and some of his siblings advocated leaving him behind (!) but they found him luckily. She loved living in the US but she also taught me patriotism is for dummies. Loyalty should be to people, good people in your life, across any national or ethnic boundaries.
I basically 'fled' the US in 2008 though it was mainly for love than for anything else. Still, it wasn't a hard decision. Even then, the healthcare system was badly broken, lax regulations meant lots of uncertainty about the food you were eating, work protections were still nonexistent and none of this was really being addressed. It has all gotten worse since then and took an actual cliff dive this year.
posted by vacapinta at 5:32 AM on June 16 [15 favorites]
You do you, but this is my country and I'm staying here to fight tyranny.I do understand the sentiment, but if I'm realistic there is little I can do locally that I cannot do remotely. I'd be more of a liability than a help in any direct protest action, if for no other reason than that being the perfect recipe for a panic attack. Remotely I can still inform myself and others, vote, donate and persuade, and I can do more direct good making my home available as a safe landing pad for vulnerable loved ones who wouldn't otherwise have the option. That part is already happening.
Particularly to the extent I oppose American fascism, it's not a step I took lightly, and I won't accept the implication that people who don't "stay and fight" (whatever "fight" specifically means) care less, or are less committed to doing what they practically can in the circumstances. That charge devolves pretty immediately into some straight-up crab-pot bullshit. Yes, I had the luxury of taking an option not everybody can. Declining to make the best move I can see in my own specific circumstances would feel like performative posturing at the cost of doing what I am, in fact, able to do.
It's not like I've found and taken a magical escape hatch anyway. I still have deep ties to the US. I worry that I might not be able to go back and visit my family without an unaccountable thug at the border pulling me aside and showing me a copy of this very comment (among others). I worry about being at the mercy of a government that could, if it had a mind to, spontaneously revoke my passport with no due process and concoct any story it likes. Most of my safety abroad comes from the fact that I'm just not that significant. I could shut up, keep my head down, pretend not to have an opinion, but I've spent my entire life depriving bullies of the power to dictate what I do with my life, even when I'm not able to stop them from hurting me, and I'm not about to hand over the wheel now. To anybody.
I have not given up on the US. I still hope the future is not set, and will do what I can to help. But I'd be lying or delusional to deny that it's not looking good. I won't begrudge anybody hedging their bets against the worst case in any way available to them apart from turning collaborator.
posted by gelfin at 5:41 AM on June 16 [10 favorites]
outgrown_hobnail: "You do you, but this is my country and I'm staying here to fight tyranny."
I spent some difficult time in reflection after the 2024 election and came to realize that if this ever was my country, it isn't anymore—there are too many people who either actively embrace fascism or just aren't bothered by it.
My wife won't leave while her parents are still alive. That's the main thing keeping me here for now.
posted by adamrice at 5:46 AM on June 16 [4 favorites]
I spent some difficult time in reflection after the 2024 election and came to realize that if this ever was my country, it isn't anymore—there are too many people who either actively embrace fascism or just aren't bothered by it.
My wife won't leave while her parents are still alive. That's the main thing keeping me here for now.
posted by adamrice at 5:46 AM on June 16 [4 favorites]
The message isn't for us, it's for the people with the means.
It's also for the people who are still in denial about what trump's doing to America - and how much worse things could get before he's done. Dropping that denial is the first step to any kind of resistance - but it's a step very many people have yet to take. Instead, they either fall into Shore's Titanic fallacy or simply can't be bothered to pay attention.
posted by Paul Slade at 5:49 AM on June 16 [10 favorites]
It's also for the people who are still in denial about what trump's doing to America - and how much worse things could get before he's done. Dropping that denial is the first step to any kind of resistance - but it's a step very many people have yet to take. Instead, they either fall into Shore's Titanic fallacy or simply can't be bothered to pay attention.
posted by Paul Slade at 5:49 AM on June 16 [10 favorites]
I won't accept the implication that people who don't "stay and fight" (whatever "fight" specifically means) care less, or are less committed to doing what they practically can in the circumstances.
That's why I began with "you do you". For one thing, I'm not a member of a traditionally-oppressed minority group, except that I'm an atheist, so my circumstances are different from yours.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:03 AM on June 16 [1 favorite]
That's why I began with "you do you". For one thing, I'm not a member of a traditionally-oppressed minority group, except that I'm an atheist, so my circumstances are different from yours.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 6:03 AM on June 16 [1 favorite]
Being a refugee is an act of desperation but Western exceptionalism really does not open any doors (we Brits are as bad, "they're illegal immigrants, I'm an ex-pat") hoping they'll accept you because you want to come is, in most desirable parts of the world, delusional. Shore was undoubtedly able to get her new employer to pull strings, few of you will have that advantage.
Do not underestimate the amount of wealth, planning and preparation required. Your wealth, pensions? Leave in the US or take with you? No country wants an extra burden on their health system, are you elderly or have health issues? Better make sure you can demonstrate that you can pay. You'll have to learn the language of course and have a plan B in case you do not get residency/nationality. In virtually every case you will need access to a reliable lawyer. Most of you will need to get a job as well.
If you can convincingly demonstrate overseas heritage then many countries will give you an easier time.
Some countries offer golden passports where you can buy your way in by investment or property purchase. I strongly suspect such schemes are volatile and that residency is very much easy come, easy go.
I can see why Canada is a tempting option for Americans but if that starts looking like a flood then shutters could come crashing down without notice.
posted by epo at 6:06 AM on June 16 [6 favorites]
Do not underestimate the amount of wealth, planning and preparation required. Your wealth, pensions? Leave in the US or take with you? No country wants an extra burden on their health system, are you elderly or have health issues? Better make sure you can demonstrate that you can pay. You'll have to learn the language of course and have a plan B in case you do not get residency/nationality. In virtually every case you will need access to a reliable lawyer. Most of you will need to get a job as well.
If you can convincingly demonstrate overseas heritage then many countries will give you an easier time.
Some countries offer golden passports where you can buy your way in by investment or property purchase. I strongly suspect such schemes are volatile and that residency is very much easy come, easy go.
I can see why Canada is a tempting option for Americans but if that starts looking like a flood then shutters could come crashing down without notice.
posted by epo at 6:06 AM on June 16 [6 favorites]
> You do you, but this is my country and I'm staying here to fight tyranny.
Both staying and fleeing have to be options. Some people have no future -- or no safe future -- here. Scholars are seeing their means to sustain their careers terminated. Entire disciplines of science and liberal arts are in the process of being outlawed. For example climate research.
People living in the US on work visas and green cards face detainment and deportation in the course of simply traveling for work or family reasons -- or for any other reason that involves being noticed by ICE at an inopportune moment, for example when entering a federal building for their citizenship hearing. These days when resident aliens get together to chat the topic drifts to what their backup plans are for themselves and their families -- not in terms of career or schools for their kids, but in terms of starting their lives over from scratch in another country.
It's absolutely essential that people stay here to fight. But it's also absolutely essential to ensure that people at high risk, or whose work demands ongoing effort in an environment bent on shutting it down, can escape safely.
posted by at by at 6:08 AM on June 16 [8 favorites]
Both staying and fleeing have to be options. Some people have no future -- or no safe future -- here. Scholars are seeing their means to sustain their careers terminated. Entire disciplines of science and liberal arts are in the process of being outlawed. For example climate research.
People living in the US on work visas and green cards face detainment and deportation in the course of simply traveling for work or family reasons -- or for any other reason that involves being noticed by ICE at an inopportune moment, for example when entering a federal building for their citizenship hearing. These days when resident aliens get together to chat the topic drifts to what their backup plans are for themselves and their families -- not in terms of career or schools for their kids, but in terms of starting their lives over from scratch in another country.
It's absolutely essential that people stay here to fight. But it's also absolutely essential to ensure that people at high risk, or whose work demands ongoing effort in an environment bent on shutting it down, can escape safely.
posted by at by at 6:08 AM on June 16 [8 favorites]
If I was a younger person I would have been making serious, dedicated plans to get out eight years ago. It's just not feasible for us at this point. We (probably) have the mosey to do so, but not the years.
I'm happy with whatever decisions people make to be fulfilled and safe, but it's not in the cards for most people.
posted by SoberHighland at 6:24 AM on June 16 [4 favorites]
I'm happy with whatever decisions people make to be fulfilled and safe, but it's not in the cards for most people.
posted by SoberHighland at 6:24 AM on June 16 [4 favorites]
The message isn't for us, it's for the people with the means.
I'm not even sure it's that broad. Shore's and Snyder's cases are very specific: they're notable academics who study repressive regimes. Their names will be near the top of any hit list. When you're in that position, sticking around to wait for the bad guys to start working down the list would be unbelievably brave and self-sacrificing. You can't have any hope of getting lost in the crowd, or safety in numbers—you're a very specific target. What good can you do if you're dead? But they can do a lot of good in raising awareness from a place of safety, as they've already shown.
I liked Shore's point about physical cowardice, where she's wondering whether she would put her own physical safety on the line if ICE busted into the room to grab some of her students. She's in a line of work where that's a real possibility, and her self-analysis struck me as refreshingly sober and honest.
This clip today on Bluesky also got me thinking about physical cowardice and physical bravery. Seeing that guy getting out of the back seat with an automatic rifle is terrifying. I wouldn't blame a single onlooker for running for their lives if they saw that, rather than standing up to these guys, even though only standing up to them would have any hope of making a difference in that situation.
Someday one of them is going to be getting out of their car with their big fucking rifle and be met by somebody else with a big fucking rifle that's pointed at them, and then all hell breaks loose. And not some cosy figurative hell.
posted by rory at 6:28 AM on June 16 [14 favorites]
I'm not even sure it's that broad. Shore's and Snyder's cases are very specific: they're notable academics who study repressive regimes. Their names will be near the top of any hit list. When you're in that position, sticking around to wait for the bad guys to start working down the list would be unbelievably brave and self-sacrificing. You can't have any hope of getting lost in the crowd, or safety in numbers—you're a very specific target. What good can you do if you're dead? But they can do a lot of good in raising awareness from a place of safety, as they've already shown.
I liked Shore's point about physical cowardice, where she's wondering whether she would put her own physical safety on the line if ICE busted into the room to grab some of her students. She's in a line of work where that's a real possibility, and her self-analysis struck me as refreshingly sober and honest.
This clip today on Bluesky also got me thinking about physical cowardice and physical bravery. Seeing that guy getting out of the back seat with an automatic rifle is terrifying. I wouldn't blame a single onlooker for running for their lives if they saw that, rather than standing up to these guys, even though only standing up to them would have any hope of making a difference in that situation.
Someday one of them is going to be getting out of their car with their big fucking rifle and be met by somebody else with a big fucking rifle that's pointed at them, and then all hell breaks loose. And not some cosy figurative hell.
posted by rory at 6:28 AM on June 16 [14 favorites]
“When John McCain chose Sarah Palin, I felt like she was a character right out of the 1930s.” The Republican vice-presidential candidate lived, Shore thought, “in a totally fictitious world … not constrained by empirical reality.” Someone like that, Shore believed, could really rile up a mob.But enough about GenAI...
And then came trump.
Once again, it was the lack of truthfulness that terrified her. “Without a distinction between truth and lies, there is no grounding for a distinction between good and evil,” she says.
I jest, but I am also serious.
posted by postcommunism at 6:35 AM on June 16 [4 favorites]
Stay and be a pain-in-the-ass. This is your country, too.
posted by chasing at 6:35 AM on June 16 [10 favorites]
posted by chasing at 6:35 AM on June 16 [10 favorites]
Other people have eloquently pointed out how escaping is an avenue open to the limited set of people with resources. Finger-wagging people about it really really reads like Marie Antoinette & cake.*
And, really, those fleeing to Canada should ask the Germans who fled to Poland (or most of the neighboring countries) in the 1930s how it worked out for them.
*despite the fact that it's likely that Antoinette never said it.
posted by Galvanic at 6:36 AM on June 16 [2 favorites]
And, really, those fleeing to Canada should ask the Germans who fled to Poland (or most of the neighboring countries) in the 1930s how it worked out for them.
*despite the fact that it's likely that Antoinette never said it.
posted by Galvanic at 6:36 AM on June 16 [2 favorites]
I'm looking at leaving at least temporarily, which is something prior to Nov 2024 I never considered. My whole family is in the USA and one of the reasons I'm considering leaving is so that if something happens or someone needs to leave for safety there is a spot for them to run to.
posted by Art_Pot at 6:37 AM on June 16 [3 favorites]
posted by Art_Pot at 6:37 AM on June 16 [3 favorites]
She expresses guilt and feels like a coward for leaving, and notes that instead of fighting back, “people become atomised. The arbitrariness of terror atomises people. You know, people put their heads down, they go quiet, they get in line, if only for the very reasonable, rational reason that any individual acting rationally has a reason to think that the personal cost of refusing to make a compromise is going to be greater than the social benefit of their one act of resistance. So you get a classic collective action problem.” But she also 'speaks of the beauty of solidarity, those fleeting moments when societies come together, often to expel a tyrant. She recalls the trade union Solidarity in communist-era Poland and the Maidan revolution in Ukraine.'
I don't begrudge anyone getting out if they can. But most of us can't. I'm on team stay here and fight. If we think we should fight, we have to start joining organizations small and large today. And we have to push those organizations to respond more forcefully.
Something that every region can quickly build is a being modeled in the Bay Area by Bay Resistance. A network built from existing left groups and progressive non profits and unions. It mostly functions as a rapid response alert. When ICE activity happens they can quickly activate a big network to respond. This weekend, that worked.
Not arguing that's the only thing to do. But it's A thing to do right now that is having an impact right now.
posted by latkes at 6:43 AM on June 16 [11 favorites]
I don't begrudge anyone getting out if they can. But most of us can't. I'm on team stay here and fight. If we think we should fight, we have to start joining organizations small and large today. And we have to push those organizations to respond more forcefully.
Something that every region can quickly build is a being modeled in the Bay Area by Bay Resistance. A network built from existing left groups and progressive non profits and unions. It mostly functions as a rapid response alert. When ICE activity happens they can quickly activate a big network to respond. This weekend, that worked.
Not arguing that's the only thing to do. But it's A thing to do right now that is having an impact right now.
posted by latkes at 6:43 AM on June 16 [11 favorites]
She fears that the sheer shamelessness of trump has “really disempowered the opposition, because our impulse is to keep looking for the thing that’s hidden and expose it, and we think that’s going to be what makes the system unravel.” But the problem is not what’s hidden, it’s “what we’ve normalised – because the whole strategy is to throw it all in your face.”
I thought that was a good clear statement of some of the problem.
Also, tbqh, this is a very large country and there is no guarantee that she wouldn't have gotten a nice job offer outside the US and moved anyway - high profile academics do that. If people have the means to leave and want to leave, why not? The iron curtain has not yet totally closed around our borders.
Honestly, if I were younger and/or didn't have aging family here, I'd leave if I could - even in this political/economic climate, I think I could still get some little tiny English composition job in Asia and hit the bricks. I feel like it's a mistake to stay, and there's going to be a point where I wish I'd pulled it together and left, but I know that I wouldn't see my older family members more than a time or two before they died and I just can't bring myself to get moving.
If we don't consider it morally dicey for someone to take a contract gig in Belgium or a teaching position in Harare there's no real reason for them not to pack up now - "stay and fight" applies just as much when things are pretty bad, as they have been for my entire adult life, as when they are catastrophic.
posted by Frowner at 6:44 AM on June 16 [6 favorites]
I thought that was a good clear statement of some of the problem.
Also, tbqh, this is a very large country and there is no guarantee that she wouldn't have gotten a nice job offer outside the US and moved anyway - high profile academics do that. If people have the means to leave and want to leave, why not? The iron curtain has not yet totally closed around our borders.
Honestly, if I were younger and/or didn't have aging family here, I'd leave if I could - even in this political/economic climate, I think I could still get some little tiny English composition job in Asia and hit the bricks. I feel like it's a mistake to stay, and there's going to be a point where I wish I'd pulled it together and left, but I know that I wouldn't see my older family members more than a time or two before they died and I just can't bring myself to get moving.
If we don't consider it morally dicey for someone to take a contract gig in Belgium or a teaching position in Harare there's no real reason for them not to pack up now - "stay and fight" applies just as much when things are pretty bad, as they have been for my entire adult life, as when they are catastrophic.
posted by Frowner at 6:44 AM on June 16 [6 favorites]
I'm a middle -aged, middle class white southern cis lady without a uterus who has aging parents and works for a family business. There are a lot vulnerable people that will need to get out ahead of me, and most of them have less means that I do to do so. I'm going to keep doing what I can here even if all I end up doing is trying to figure out how to get other people out, feels like a thing I can do.
Besides, I've spent my whole life in the south. I have experience with bullies.
posted by Thivaia 2.0 at 6:46 AM on June 16 [10 favorites]
Besides, I've spent my whole life in the south. I have experience with bullies.
posted by Thivaia 2.0 at 6:46 AM on June 16 [10 favorites]
Also, I'm not sure I'd have the face to go up to someone who fled a country and came to the US in fear of their life or their freedom and tell them that they should have stayed and fought. It isn't weird to think "huh, federal lists of people with autism, federal databases on every citizen pulling together all available information, lots of eugenics in the media, sounds bad, man" and want to get out.
I think there's some American exceptionalism/it-can't-happen-here-ism in saying "stay and fight" when you would not say "go home and fight" to someone who fled to here.
posted by Frowner at 6:47 AM on June 16 [17 favorites]
I think there's some American exceptionalism/it-can't-happen-here-ism in saying "stay and fight" when you would not say "go home and fight" to someone who fled to here.
posted by Frowner at 6:47 AM on June 16 [17 favorites]
I'm not going anywhere. I'm too old, too infirm, too autistic, too trans. But more than that, if I were somehow able to remove myself from danger while other people were still at risk, I don't think I could live with myself. I don't deserve to be safe until everyone is safe.
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:48 AM on June 16 [10 favorites]
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:48 AM on June 16 [10 favorites]
Rudy_Wiser: "Sorry tiny frying pan. The message isn't for us, it's for the people with the means."
And I'm sad for us and happy for them, I guess. But it's the same old classism - you should have planned better and not been a Poor.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:00 AM on June 16 [11 favorites]
And I'm sad for us and happy for them, I guess. But it's the same old classism - you should have planned better and not been a Poor.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:00 AM on June 16 [11 favorites]
(I'm not saying the subject of this article is saying that, just questioning the usefulness of such articles)
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:03 AM on June 16
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:03 AM on June 16
Another factor in the calculation, "What is the opposition party doing?" Not sure at the state level (aside from Gavin Newsom send out a fundraising text relating to the attack on LA) but at the Federal level it appears to be on cruise control. Voting for resolutions applauding ICE, approving nominees, etc etc. Signs of life every now and again with Booker's speech and Padilla getting roughed up at a Noem stenography session.
posted by Slackermagee at 7:14 AM on June 16 [2 favorites]
posted by Slackermagee at 7:14 AM on June 16 [2 favorites]
This feels like an existential survival response of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn and it's only in retrospect that we can judge what was the "right" decision. I've lived a privileged enough life that I don't know what I would do when that moment comes, so I can't really judge others for their decisions.
And, really, those fleeing to Canada should ask the Germans who fled to Poland (or most of the neighboring countries) in the 1930s how it worked out for them.
I get the point, but equally, how did it work out for those who stayed in Germany?
posted by slimepuppy at 7:17 AM on June 16 [7 favorites]
And, really, those fleeing to Canada should ask the Germans who fled to Poland (or most of the neighboring countries) in the 1930s how it worked out for them.
I get the point, but equally, how did it work out for those who stayed in Germany?
posted by slimepuppy at 7:17 AM on June 16 [7 favorites]
Getting the fuck out and surviving can be a heroic act, too.
I'm of the opinion that the roughly 300,000 Jews who left Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1939 were pretty heroic. Certainly the later members of their family lines are very grateful.
There's a point where resistance is critical in preventing tyranny from taking root. And there is a point where tyranny is already in place and nothing you can do at that time will derail it. And then later, even after that, sometimes there also comes a moment where tyranny starts to wobble and if you recognize it, you can topple it.
I can salute people who suffered or died resisting the communists in Romania. I can salute people who found a way to get themselves and/or their families out. I can respect people who bided their time and were ready to join the wave in 1989 that brought the whole thing down. I don't think it makes much sense to try and say one was more right than another.
I have my opinions, but I do not know how to tell you for sure which moment is which for the United States. I wouldn't know what to tell you to do in any given one of these moments if I did. But I certainly do not look askance at people who are opting to extricate themselves and their families. Countries are abstractions that come and go. The United States is not an abstraction for which I would give my family. I'm sorry. It's not.
We cannot afford to leave right now. But when we can, we will.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:28 AM on June 16 [12 favorites]
I'm of the opinion that the roughly 300,000 Jews who left Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1939 were pretty heroic. Certainly the later members of their family lines are very grateful.
There's a point where resistance is critical in preventing tyranny from taking root. And there is a point where tyranny is already in place and nothing you can do at that time will derail it. And then later, even after that, sometimes there also comes a moment where tyranny starts to wobble and if you recognize it, you can topple it.
I can salute people who suffered or died resisting the communists in Romania. I can salute people who found a way to get themselves and/or their families out. I can respect people who bided their time and were ready to join the wave in 1989 that brought the whole thing down. I don't think it makes much sense to try and say one was more right than another.
I have my opinions, but I do not know how to tell you for sure which moment is which for the United States. I wouldn't know what to tell you to do in any given one of these moments if I did. But I certainly do not look askance at people who are opting to extricate themselves and their families. Countries are abstractions that come and go. The United States is not an abstraction for which I would give my family. I'm sorry. It's not.
We cannot afford to leave right now. But when we can, we will.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:28 AM on June 16 [12 favorites]
At some point I realized I'm not leaving. Not just because no one's offering me a cushy landing pad but also because this is my home, and while I don't want to die or be hurt any more than anyone else, I'd like to spend my energies doing as much good as I can here. Someone has to.
There are good people here who want to fight and love what their country could be. At some point this fascist group will crash, and then we need people ready to pick up the pieces. Between now and then we need people to help, to preserve as much as possible of what is good and necessary, to remind each other that fascism is not inevitable or sustainable and that we can do better.
We aren't strictly analogous to vulnerable groups in Germany in the 30s, and nothing is inevitable.
posted by emjaybee at 7:28 AM on June 16 [10 favorites]
There are good people here who want to fight and love what their country could be. At some point this fascist group will crash, and then we need people ready to pick up the pieces. Between now and then we need people to help, to preserve as much as possible of what is good and necessary, to remind each other that fascism is not inevitable or sustainable and that we can do better.
We aren't strictly analogous to vulnerable groups in Germany in the 30s, and nothing is inevitable.
posted by emjaybee at 7:28 AM on June 16 [10 favorites]
It is incredible to me the number of people I know in the US who are either making active plans to flee or at least have looked into it seriously.
These sentiments come in waves. Many of your older countrymen wanted to flee during the W Bush administrations. And a lot of their parents would say "Love It Or Leave It" -- as if there's anywhere to go. During the Vietnam War, draft-dodgers were accepted and welcomed in places like Canada and Scandinavia but those welcomes dried up a long time ago.
I can see why Canada is a tempting option for Americans but if that starts looking like a flood then shutters could come crashing down without notice.
Not a flood, and won't be because those shutters are already in place. Yes, with your US passport you can go a lot of places (and even overstay if you like living dangerously) but as a tourist you'll have to move on, every 90 days. In order to effectively immigrate you'll need to marry in for a Marriage Visa or have a marketable skill so you can get a Work Visa -- but first you have to find a job, there. And know the language. Good luck!
posted by Rash at 7:29 AM on June 16 [2 favorites]
These sentiments come in waves. Many of your older countrymen wanted to flee during the W Bush administrations. And a lot of their parents would say "Love It Or Leave It" -- as if there's anywhere to go. During the Vietnam War, draft-dodgers were accepted and welcomed in places like Canada and Scandinavia but those welcomes dried up a long time ago.
I can see why Canada is a tempting option for Americans but if that starts looking like a flood then shutters could come crashing down without notice.
Not a flood, and won't be because those shutters are already in place. Yes, with your US passport you can go a lot of places (and even overstay if you like living dangerously) but as a tourist you'll have to move on, every 90 days. In order to effectively immigrate you'll need to marry in for a Marriage Visa or have a marketable skill so you can get a Work Visa -- but first you have to find a job, there. And know the language. Good luck!
posted by Rash at 7:29 AM on June 16 [2 favorites]
My partner and I have talked seriously about options for leaving. But also… bluntly, we can relatively easily pass as nice white straight cis rich neurotypical folks, for all that few of those adjectives are actually true.
But we have too many close friends and family who are much more visibly marginalized. So we’re prioritizing our resources to help support them, and/or help them relocate if they wish.
posted by learning from frequent failure at 7:29 AM on June 16 [6 favorites]
But we have too many close friends and family who are much more visibly marginalized. So we’re prioritizing our resources to help support them, and/or help them relocate if they wish.
posted by learning from frequent failure at 7:29 AM on June 16 [6 favorites]
Also, I'm not sure I'd have the face to go up to someone who fled a country and came to the US in fear of their life or their freedom and tell them that they should have stayed and fought
If it was a rich person who'd used their resources to comfortably move abroad while leaving behind the people who couldn't escape? I could.
I get the point, but equally, how did it work out for those who stayed in Germany?
Yes, that was my point.
posted by Galvanic at 7:31 AM on June 16
If it was a rich person who'd used their resources to comfortably move abroad while leaving behind the people who couldn't escape? I could.
I get the point, but equally, how did it work out for those who stayed in Germany?
Yes, that was my point.
posted by Galvanic at 7:31 AM on June 16
It is not shameful to immigrate. It is not easy to start over in a new country with a new language. But it is not cowardly or decedent, only for the spineless rich. FFS.
The US is a nation of immigrants. Many are first, second, third generation. In that sense, the US is one of the easiest countries to immigrate from — many people have long, close ties to other countries already.
Personally, I feel that the America that most Americans apparently now want is not a country I want to support or be a part of. It is not a culture I want to raise my children in. No country or culture is perfect, but the impenetrable hyper-capitalist, rabidly anti-intellectual, prison- and trigger-happy Christofascist fog that has settled over the US doesn’t exist everywhere. It is parochialism and American exceptionalism to assume it does.
I think the only hope for the US is to change the culture fundamentally. But that might not be possible within the US anymore. And to say you’re trying to change the culture while raising children to be natives within it seems like tragic denialism.
posted by night traveler at 7:38 AM on June 16 [12 favorites]
The US is a nation of immigrants. Many are first, second, third generation. In that sense, the US is one of the easiest countries to immigrate from — many people have long, close ties to other countries already.
Personally, I feel that the America that most Americans apparently now want is not a country I want to support or be a part of. It is not a culture I want to raise my children in. No country or culture is perfect, but the impenetrable hyper-capitalist, rabidly anti-intellectual, prison- and trigger-happy Christofascist fog that has settled over the US doesn’t exist everywhere. It is parochialism and American exceptionalism to assume it does.
I think the only hope for the US is to change the culture fundamentally. But that might not be possible within the US anymore. And to say you’re trying to change the culture while raising children to be natives within it seems like tragic denialism.
posted by night traveler at 7:38 AM on June 16 [12 favorites]
for those who (like me) lack the means to just pick up and leave, the future isn't on rails, if we don't want to descend into fascism we had better do something about this.
Most of us can't fuck off to Canada, or Europe, or wherever
Exactly.
I'm not comfortable sharing much of my situation here, but various members of my extended family and friends network have made certain location decisions.
For me? I'm staying.
First, I want to fight. To do what I can. Right now that means energetically helping my world (academics; futurists), participating in actions in my area, writing, talking, and making videos. I'd like to do more.
Second, as an independent not backed up by an institution, business, or wealthy family, I have to protect my means of supporting my family. Moving from the US to another country would seriously clobber that for a while, between the logistics of selling house, schlepping stuff, finding new place, etc., but also rebuilding the systems underpinning my professional work from another country. (A good chunk of my clients are in the US; reconnecting with them from Canada etc may prove difficult.)
I do what I can.
posted by doctornemo at 7:39 AM on June 16 [5 favorites]
Most of us can't fuck off to Canada, or Europe, or wherever
Exactly.
I'm not comfortable sharing much of my situation here, but various members of my extended family and friends network have made certain location decisions.
For me? I'm staying.
First, I want to fight. To do what I can. Right now that means energetically helping my world (academics; futurists), participating in actions in my area, writing, talking, and making videos. I'd like to do more.
Second, as an independent not backed up by an institution, business, or wealthy family, I have to protect my means of supporting my family. Moving from the US to another country would seriously clobber that for a while, between the logistics of selling house, schlepping stuff, finding new place, etc., but also rebuilding the systems underpinning my professional work from another country. (A good chunk of my clients are in the US; reconnecting with them from Canada etc may prove difficult.)
I do what I can.
posted by doctornemo at 7:39 AM on June 16 [5 favorites]
Staying and fighting is admirable, if you've got it in you to do so, and completely understandable if you have no other choice—and in that case, it's more admirable than staying and hiding—and staying and hiding is understandable too, if it's what you need to do to survive. I don't think applying moral judgment to this personal risk-assessment is going to get us very far. (I don't think anyone here is being judgmental of others; we're just seeing people talking about their own choices, so far.)
It seems worth noting (and this will take some explaining, so bear with me) that there's an uncomfortable connection between "stay and fight" and "go back to where you came from". Even in good times, and even if you're pursuing a line of work where migration is normal, there's part of you that thinks, when you leave home, about the difference you might have made if you'd stayed. Maybe if the best academics hadn't moved, the universities back home would have been better. Maybe if all the actors didn't flock to Hollywood or Broadway, everywhere else would have a better theatre scene. There's an element of "stay and fight" to that. We migrants think about this! It's what prompts migrants to return home when they feel they can make a difference there, to help rebuild their home country after war, or to use their new skills to help the next generation in some other way.
It's also, sadly, part of the message of those who would kick out all migrants, even migrants from undeniably dangerous places: why don't they stay home and sort out their own problems there? And even of those who would limit migration short of kicking all migrants out, who say (for example) that when our rich countries take doctors from poorer countries we're not only saving ourselves from having to invest in training more of our own, we're depleting the numbers of doctors in those poorer countries, which would have been better off if they'd stayed. That's a "stay and fight" argument too. Part of the Lexiter/left-Brexiter argument was that letting Eastern European workers into the UK not only suppressed working class wages in the UK, it also denied Eastern European countries the human resources to improve their lot.
As individuals we can only decide for ourselves, knowing our own potential—to get a job that makes the best use of our skills, to put up with oppression or to do something about it if we can't, to be willing to put our physical safety on the line, all of it. If countries decide they want to do something about a brain drain, they can choose to invest in their knowledge industry; if they want to keep their actors and artists, they can invest in the arts.
The awful thing at the moment is that we know when America's key moments of decision were, and they're all behind us. Americans collectively made political choices over many years that led to this. What we're seeing now is the equivalent of young people in a mining town moving to the city because the mine shut down. In the USA last November, democracy shut down.
posted by rory at 7:44 AM on June 16 [11 favorites]
It seems worth noting (and this will take some explaining, so bear with me) that there's an uncomfortable connection between "stay and fight" and "go back to where you came from". Even in good times, and even if you're pursuing a line of work where migration is normal, there's part of you that thinks, when you leave home, about the difference you might have made if you'd stayed. Maybe if the best academics hadn't moved, the universities back home would have been better. Maybe if all the actors didn't flock to Hollywood or Broadway, everywhere else would have a better theatre scene. There's an element of "stay and fight" to that. We migrants think about this! It's what prompts migrants to return home when they feel they can make a difference there, to help rebuild their home country after war, or to use their new skills to help the next generation in some other way.
It's also, sadly, part of the message of those who would kick out all migrants, even migrants from undeniably dangerous places: why don't they stay home and sort out their own problems there? And even of those who would limit migration short of kicking all migrants out, who say (for example) that when our rich countries take doctors from poorer countries we're not only saving ourselves from having to invest in training more of our own, we're depleting the numbers of doctors in those poorer countries, which would have been better off if they'd stayed. That's a "stay and fight" argument too. Part of the Lexiter/left-Brexiter argument was that letting Eastern European workers into the UK not only suppressed working class wages in the UK, it also denied Eastern European countries the human resources to improve their lot.
As individuals we can only decide for ourselves, knowing our own potential—to get a job that makes the best use of our skills, to put up with oppression or to do something about it if we can't, to be willing to put our physical safety on the line, all of it. If countries decide they want to do something about a brain drain, they can choose to invest in their knowledge industry; if they want to keep their actors and artists, they can invest in the arts.
The awful thing at the moment is that we know when America's key moments of decision were, and they're all behind us. Americans collectively made political choices over many years that led to this. What we're seeing now is the equivalent of young people in a mining town moving to the city because the mine shut down. In the USA last November, democracy shut down.
posted by rory at 7:44 AM on June 16 [11 favorites]
Now, if we want to talk about academia, some nations have been mounting efforts to attract American academics. I don't know if anyone has done a post on this (I could, if needed), but it's interesting.
I note the linked article doesn't mention this. It might be because the piece is biographical. Or it's classic Yale not paying attention to the rest of lesser post-secondary edu.
posted by doctornemo at 7:46 AM on June 16 [2 favorites]
I note the linked article doesn't mention this. It might be because the piece is biographical. Or it's classic Yale not paying attention to the rest of lesser post-secondary edu.
posted by doctornemo at 7:46 AM on June 16 [2 favorites]
Right now, and I know the fault is with me, I just don't have any response to this besides ten minutes of chicken noises. Because being able to flee is a huge privilege, and everyone who uses that privilege is going to make it that much harder for those of us who don't have it.
Stick around and goddamned fight please.
posted by DorsetNaga at 8:14 AM on June 16 [5 favorites]
Stick around and goddamned fight please.
posted by DorsetNaga at 8:14 AM on June 16 [5 favorites]
> The US is a nation of immigrants. Many are first, second, third generation. In that sense, the US is one of the easiest countries to immigrate from — many people have long, close ties to other countries already.
Having family in another country means a place to stay at night, at best. Maybe some connections for getting work. If you're not fluent in their language -- and somewhere around 80% of US citizens are monolingual -- you are not going to have an easy time getting a permanent residency. In fact you might have to pass a language exam -- you very probably will if you apply for citizenship. That's assuming your new country will allow you to.
Many countries have strict regulations on the behavior of foreign residents. For example, land ownership may be limited to citizens, so foreign residents might only be able to rent certain types of apartments. Banking and investment might be restricted to specific types of accounts through designated banks -- which you might only have access to through on-site visits rather than virtually. Your choice of country might have nationalized health care but only for citizens -- foreign residents might have to pay into the plan at a different rate, or buy separate private health insurance.
Assuming you get a legitimate job, as a US citizen you will have to pay income tax both to your new country and to the US. You might opt to cut the US out of that but you'd better be confident of your own future -- you'll be a tax dodger in the US and subject to paying back taxes, fines and possibly detainment if you ever set foot on US soil again. That includes layover stops on flights to other countries.
Your short-stay visa might not be convertable to a work visa if you aren't in a profession that country is interested in, or if it has annual quotas, or requires particular kinds of referrals. If you can't get a work visa, you'll be living illegally after a while, doubly-so if you to take jobs that pay under-the-table.
People who were relocated by the multinationals they work for usually have their employers take care of many of these issues. Family ties alone won't help much. Especially if your own ancestors had emigrated to the US to escape war or crushing poverty -- the descendents of the people who had stayed might not be thrilled to help, or might be in worse straits than you are now. Or might live so far from the urban areas with job opportunities that no matter how supportive they might want to be there's not much they can help with.
posted by at by at 8:30 AM on June 16 [3 favorites]
Having family in another country means a place to stay at night, at best. Maybe some connections for getting work. If you're not fluent in their language -- and somewhere around 80% of US citizens are monolingual -- you are not going to have an easy time getting a permanent residency. In fact you might have to pass a language exam -- you very probably will if you apply for citizenship. That's assuming your new country will allow you to.
Many countries have strict regulations on the behavior of foreign residents. For example, land ownership may be limited to citizens, so foreign residents might only be able to rent certain types of apartments. Banking and investment might be restricted to specific types of accounts through designated banks -- which you might only have access to through on-site visits rather than virtually. Your choice of country might have nationalized health care but only for citizens -- foreign residents might have to pay into the plan at a different rate, or buy separate private health insurance.
Assuming you get a legitimate job, as a US citizen you will have to pay income tax both to your new country and to the US. You might opt to cut the US out of that but you'd better be confident of your own future -- you'll be a tax dodger in the US and subject to paying back taxes, fines and possibly detainment if you ever set foot on US soil again. That includes layover stops on flights to other countries.
Your short-stay visa might not be convertable to a work visa if you aren't in a profession that country is interested in, or if it has annual quotas, or requires particular kinds of referrals. If you can't get a work visa, you'll be living illegally after a while, doubly-so if you to take jobs that pay under-the-table.
People who were relocated by the multinationals they work for usually have their employers take care of many of these issues. Family ties alone won't help much. Especially if your own ancestors had emigrated to the US to escape war or crushing poverty -- the descendents of the people who had stayed might not be thrilled to help, or might be in worse straits than you are now. Or might live so far from the urban areas with job opportunities that no matter how supportive they might want to be there's not much they can help with.
posted by at by at 8:30 AM on June 16 [3 favorites]
“Stay and fight for your country,” but also “immigrants make America great.”
Should immigrants all go home and fight for their countries of origin instead of coming here? If not, why shouldn’t I leave the country that I was accidentally, arbitrarily born in and which I have both the cause and the means to leave?
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 8:30 AM on June 16 [4 favorites]
Should immigrants all go home and fight for their countries of origin instead of coming here? If not, why shouldn’t I leave the country that I was accidentally, arbitrarily born in and which I have both the cause and the means to leave?
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 8:30 AM on June 16 [4 favorites]
At the end of the day this is a highly individual decision for all of us, and that is a decision influenced by a whole hell of a lot of things (income, health, personal risk, personal comfort with risk, etc.)
So maybe instead of hashing out which choice is "correct" we all accept that we're each doing the best we can to fight on multiple fronts and from multiple places?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:35 AM on June 16 [12 favorites]
So maybe instead of hashing out which choice is "correct" we all accept that we're each doing the best we can to fight on multiple fronts and from multiple places?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:35 AM on June 16 [12 favorites]
Those are good points, at by.
This is sort of the challenge for us. We are fortunate enough to have ties to another country, but only in a way that would get us in and let us feel sort of at home. It would not be in a way that would let us transplant our careers. As such, we can only move when we have squared up our debts and socked away enough money to retire or semi-retire.
There's a ticking clock element in that we do not know how long we have until this administration decides to rescind my spouse's citizenship. (This is an exhausting fear to have because people insist that it is paranoid, even though Project 2025 listed this specifically as a plan. And then people want us to run through the particular things Comrade Doll did that would make her exportable... Ummmm, NO.)
We can at least get our kid an EU passport and send him to Europe for college in two years. Criminy, that's cheaper anyway, and since he wants to go into the sciences, probably an increasingly preferable option.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:46 AM on June 16 [6 favorites]
This is sort of the challenge for us. We are fortunate enough to have ties to another country, but only in a way that would get us in and let us feel sort of at home. It would not be in a way that would let us transplant our careers. As such, we can only move when we have squared up our debts and socked away enough money to retire or semi-retire.
There's a ticking clock element in that we do not know how long we have until this administration decides to rescind my spouse's citizenship. (This is an exhausting fear to have because people insist that it is paranoid, even though Project 2025 listed this specifically as a plan. And then people want us to run through the particular things Comrade Doll did that would make her exportable... Ummmm, NO.)
We can at least get our kid an EU passport and send him to Europe for college in two years. Criminy, that's cheaper anyway, and since he wants to go into the sciences, probably an increasingly preferable option.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:46 AM on June 16 [6 favorites]
You can look at my bank account, at my social media history, at the clothes I wear and the company I keep but you can't look inside my head and know how hard it is to be me day-by-day, what's easy for me and what my struggles are. Do I have the strength, energy and skills to stay and fight for my rights and my country, or is each day a war only I can see where getting out of bed is a minor triumph. I am saying: this is a thing each of us should only judge about ourselves. And giving that kind of grace to others may allow them the healing and strength they need to advance to a time where they can bring themselves to bear against challenges others can see.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:47 AM on June 16 [11 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:47 AM on June 16 [11 favorites]
It is interesting that many of the immigrants my family knows feel that they worked hard to get to the US, this is their country now, and they are staying.
But the folks I know from former Communist Bloc countries are far more likely to simply shrug and say something to the effect of "Sometimes you just have to leave a place, if you can."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:47 AM on June 16 [6 favorites]
But the folks I know from former Communist Bloc countries are far more likely to simply shrug and say something to the effect of "Sometimes you just have to leave a place, if you can."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:47 AM on June 16 [6 favorites]
Getting the fuck out and surviving can be a heroic act, too.
This is what my friends and family have been telling me about my still-in-progress-flight, particularly if I tell them I'm feeling guilty about leaving others behind and in danger.
My parents and brother have been trying hard to get the trans woman in their family (that's me) out since January. I knew it was time when my primary identity document - the thing that says I belong in this country - came under existential threat.
But it's been clearer since. I've watched as, while many cis allies have admittedly spoken out for trans rights and against this administration, the prevailing opinions in this country about trans rights have shifted in fairly substantive ways. We've been first on the firing line, right next to our immigrant brothers and sisters. "First they came for the socialists" indeed.
At my work, I've heard well-meaning liberals joke about the forced loss of pronouns in our signatures - I've heard them assure me that I'm welcome in their bathrooms. Too little. I've watched the passport situation, the healthcare situation - the I would go to a men's prison situation - be lost in the swirl. "And I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist" seems far too relevant.
Do you all think I should be playing on a woman's sport's team? That I really am a woman? Because I know that most American's don't anymore. Pretty sure close to half don't think I belong in a public bathroom. That me getting estrogen just isn't a high priority matter right now.
So yeah. Not my country anymore. I'm out of here, from the land my ancestors died creating. Going to Europe. And yes, it's way better than the US on this stuff right now. Sorry. Way better in so many ways. Nice solid GDP. Good values. Brilliant scientists and engineers. And no obsession with the freaking military. I will go there, and I will make it even better.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 8:59 AM on June 16 [22 favorites]
This is what my friends and family have been telling me about my still-in-progress-flight, particularly if I tell them I'm feeling guilty about leaving others behind and in danger.
My parents and brother have been trying hard to get the trans woman in their family (that's me) out since January. I knew it was time when my primary identity document - the thing that says I belong in this country - came under existential threat.
But it's been clearer since. I've watched as, while many cis allies have admittedly spoken out for trans rights and against this administration, the prevailing opinions in this country about trans rights have shifted in fairly substantive ways. We've been first on the firing line, right next to our immigrant brothers and sisters. "First they came for the socialists" indeed.
At my work, I've heard well-meaning liberals joke about the forced loss of pronouns in our signatures - I've heard them assure me that I'm welcome in their bathrooms. Too little. I've watched the passport situation, the healthcare situation - the I would go to a men's prison situation - be lost in the swirl. "And I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist" seems far too relevant.
Do you all think I should be playing on a woman's sport's team? That I really am a woman? Because I know that most American's don't anymore. Pretty sure close to half don't think I belong in a public bathroom. That me getting estrogen just isn't a high priority matter right now.
So yeah. Not my country anymore. I'm out of here, from the land my ancestors died creating. Going to Europe. And yes, it's way better than the US on this stuff right now. Sorry. Way better in so many ways. Nice solid GDP. Good values. Brilliant scientists and engineers. And no obsession with the freaking military. I will go there, and I will make it even better.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 8:59 AM on June 16 [22 favorites]
From the article: Matter-of-factly, she says: “My fear is we’re headed to civil war.” She restates a basic truth about the US. “There’s a lot of guns. There’s a lot of gun violence. There’s a habituation to violence that’s very American, that Europeans don’t understand.”
And, some of the lone mass shooters turn out to have been trying to instigate a civil war. Not yet as far as we know in Vance Boelter's case, but, for example, reaching back, Dylan Roof the Charleston church shooter was described as wanting to start a civil war. Thomas Matthew Crooks, the Pennsylvania shooter who nicked Donald trump was described as putting us "basically one inch from a potential civil war." Tucker Carlson et al. on the right continually and casually bring up civil war as a likely consequence of any kind of gun control. Analysts on the left have described us as already being in a "slow civil war."
Could one lone shooter start a civil war? As suggested in the Crooks link above, sure. But so far, "rational" ultra-rightists have abstained from joining or imitating the typically deranged shooters. And it's harder for a group of them to collude — witness the foiled 2020 conspiracy to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer (the perps of which trump briefly considered pardoning).
Still, in a country with millions of white nationalists who are armed to the teeth, it's perfectly conceivable that a sizable posse of them will attempt to do what Boelter tried to do by himself, in hopes of setting off an even larger conflagration. And that, in turn, becomes the pretext for martial law, the suspension of habeus corpus, elections, and the Bill of Rights, etc.
posted by beagle at 9:00 AM on June 16 [3 favorites]
And, some of the lone mass shooters turn out to have been trying to instigate a civil war. Not yet as far as we know in Vance Boelter's case, but, for example, reaching back, Dylan Roof the Charleston church shooter was described as wanting to start a civil war. Thomas Matthew Crooks, the Pennsylvania shooter who nicked Donald trump was described as putting us "basically one inch from a potential civil war." Tucker Carlson et al. on the right continually and casually bring up civil war as a likely consequence of any kind of gun control. Analysts on the left have described us as already being in a "slow civil war."
Could one lone shooter start a civil war? As suggested in the Crooks link above, sure. But so far, "rational" ultra-rightists have abstained from joining or imitating the typically deranged shooters. And it's harder for a group of them to collude — witness the foiled 2020 conspiracy to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer (the perps of which trump briefly considered pardoning).
Still, in a country with millions of white nationalists who are armed to the teeth, it's perfectly conceivable that a sizable posse of them will attempt to do what Boelter tried to do by himself, in hopes of setting off an even larger conflagration. And that, in turn, becomes the pretext for martial law, the suspension of habeus corpus, elections, and the Bill of Rights, etc.
posted by beagle at 9:00 AM on June 16 [3 favorites]
at by,
A lot of that doesn’t hold for Europe, and the tax thing is completely wrong. Yes, the US and Eritrea are the only two countries in the world that “double tax” their citizens aboard, but that doesn’t mean you literally pay both taxes (at least as an American). If you are taxed less in your new country than in the US, then you pay the difference to the US. Living in Europe that’s not going to happen — our taxes are higher here, so we pay no US taxes. Now, you will start getting actually double taxed if you spend more than 30 days in the US in a year.
posted by antinomia at 9:16 AM on June 16 [3 favorites]
A lot of that doesn’t hold for Europe, and the tax thing is completely wrong. Yes, the US and Eritrea are the only two countries in the world that “double tax” their citizens aboard, but that doesn’t mean you literally pay both taxes (at least as an American). If you are taxed less in your new country than in the US, then you pay the difference to the US. Living in Europe that’s not going to happen — our taxes are higher here, so we pay no US taxes. Now, you will start getting actually double taxed if you spend more than 30 days in the US in a year.
posted by antinomia at 9:16 AM on June 16 [3 favorites]
eh, i'm goin down with the ship
posted by AlbertCalavicci at 9:22 AM on June 16 [3 favorites]
posted by AlbertCalavicci at 9:22 AM on June 16 [3 favorites]
So, the idea is that anyone on our side with means and resources to actually do something leaves the country? Thanks.
posted by Furnace of Doubt at 9:39 AM on June 16 [2 favorites]
posted by Furnace of Doubt at 9:39 AM on June 16 [2 favorites]
It seemed like at by's comments weren't intended as comprehensive advice so much as a sampling of potential concerns. While no overview of this kind could be true across all countries, they are bringing up a list of real concerns that do really apply in some/many cases.
Only the tax thing was maybe overstated a little. And even that is a topic most Americans do not know a lot about that can be unraveled, but with some work. It was a fair point to bring up, even in a quick bullet point sort of way.
The gist of what they are saying--it's harder than it sounds and you may need some help--is sound advice and a good reminder.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:40 AM on June 16 [2 favorites]
Only the tax thing was maybe overstated a little. And even that is a topic most Americans do not know a lot about that can be unraveled, but with some work. It was a fair point to bring up, even in a quick bullet point sort of way.
The gist of what they are saying--it's harder than it sounds and you may need some help--is sound advice and a good reminder.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:40 AM on June 16 [2 favorites]
Sometimes American exceptionalism is insisting that this collection of land and some ideals it claims to hold are too important for people to do selfish and bougie things like try to move themselves or their family somewhere they will not be in danger.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:41 AM on June 16 [7 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:41 AM on June 16 [7 favorites]
There is no shame in leaving at all, wtf is wrong with you people? I would get the hell out so fast if I could figure out a country that would take my impossible family, which includes a soon to be four year old whose father might object and a 76 year old with mental illness and dementia, not to mention a vegan anarchist with a checkered past and multiple humanities graduates. Not a STEM degree in sight and also we don’t have much money. Now yes if we sold the house and liquidated everyone’s funds completely we might - might - end up with half a million and how far will that get six people? Not the rest of our lives as we earnestly try to get by in the polyglot of languages we all kind of half know - I got through French 410 in college in 1987! He can count in Danish! And hey my great grandmother, or possibly my great great grandmother, was born in Ireland, we think. All of this races around my head every day.
That’s just my complicated life. Everyone has their own complicated life and I applaud anyone who manages to get out because it isn’t easy.
It’s going to get very ugly here soon. Saying you will fight is nice and all but what does it actually mean? Frankly I’d rather have someone on the outside saying, hey, I have worked out a deal where you can come live in rural Ireland and it will be okay. Otherwise, I have no idea what it’s going to look like and neither do you. Are all the male teenagers going to be marching off to war with rifles that we crowdfund like it’s 1860 or 1775? Which side are they going to be on? The geographic lines are not that clear anymore. Or is the current federal government, which I increasingly think of as completely illegitimate, just going to carpet bomb my small Oregon town?
posted by mygothlaundry at 9:46 AM on June 16 [11 favorites]
That’s just my complicated life. Everyone has their own complicated life and I applaud anyone who manages to get out because it isn’t easy.
It’s going to get very ugly here soon. Saying you will fight is nice and all but what does it actually mean? Frankly I’d rather have someone on the outside saying, hey, I have worked out a deal where you can come live in rural Ireland and it will be okay. Otherwise, I have no idea what it’s going to look like and neither do you. Are all the male teenagers going to be marching off to war with rifles that we crowdfund like it’s 1860 or 1775? Which side are they going to be on? The geographic lines are not that clear anymore. Or is the current federal government, which I increasingly think of as completely illegitimate, just going to carpet bomb my small Oregon town?
posted by mygothlaundry at 9:46 AM on June 16 [11 favorites]
There is no shame in leaving to protect your health or that of your family.
There is no shame in staying because you want to fight what's happening here.
And there is no shame in muddling along despite wanting to leave because legitimate life circumstances prevent it.
The only shame is for those who vote for this or refuse to use their secret ballot to vote to stop it.
posted by tclark at 9:47 AM on June 16 [15 favorites]
There is no shame in staying because you want to fight what's happening here.
And there is no shame in muddling along despite wanting to leave because legitimate life circumstances prevent it.
The only shame is for those who vote for this or refuse to use their secret ballot to vote to stop it.
posted by tclark at 9:47 AM on June 16 [15 favorites]
I fled last year. I wasn't born in the US (I'm Canadian) so people have presumed I didn't feel a strong sense of ties with the country (which is kind of true and also completely false? I don't really care about "America" as a concept but I love my friends and my family there and feel a great deal of love for the land of Tennessee as well, it's so friggin gorgeous), but mostly what I felt was impatience with the median American.
I gave what money I could spare to Pro Publica and the Black Male Voters Project. I spent countless hours door-knocking. I went to protests and marches. I went to multiple talk-to-the-public-type meetings with the local Democratic party and kept trying to volunteer, and they couldn't be arsed to follow-up so I did my own thing to try to get out the vote for their candidates. I hand-wrote over 10,000 postcards to get out the vote for the Democrats between 2017 and 2022, and held monthly postcard parties (except for in 2020 and 2021, when I did a few remote ones but people did not show up) to get others to also write, at which my friends and random members of the public wrote another ~2k or so. I didn't become a citizen until 2019. The first two years I was doing this, I couldn't even vote yet. I contacted candidates directly to set up postcard campaigns when Postcards to Voters and Postcards to Swing States weren't covering an election important to my state or city. I guilted my friends with money into giving me money for postage since they were too busy to do any writing. I showed up every day for the cause for six years. I know there are people who do this all the time, and have put in decades, and I'm not trying to say that I am a hero or anything. But I already did the fighting part.
The thing that made me give up was that it was like pulling teeth to get born-Americans to give even one tiny shit over what was happening in their own country.
In 2022, after writing 1,000 postcards that summer alone for Postcards to Swing States, and after the mid-terms, I kind of threw up my hands and said why am I working so hard to save this fucking country when its own citizens don't give a shit? It was clear to me that trump was likely to win because of the apathy of the average American. Dobbs happened. The Covenant school shooter gunned down the classmates of children whose families I knew, and Vanderbilt, where I worked, decided to put airport-style security at the entrances I would have to go through every day to go to work, because people kept being caught with guns on campus, and the state legislatures' response was to do dick all except to kick out two Democratic legislators for being uppity and black.
One of my partners is in a category that may be targeted. I could bring him to Canada, when leaving on his own was just not an option (he was born in the US and has no meaningful ties to any countries except mine, through me). Or I could "stay and fight" while everybody around me sat on their asses and let the immigrant do all the work.
I decided to save my loved one and maybe myself too (I have been pretty outspoken, under my own name, so I might be on a list somewhere, who knows).
We have a lot of survivors' guilt about the whole thing and I expect that's only going to get worse. But I do still think I made the right decision for my situation, and if anybody wants to judge me, I would like you first to tell me exactly what you did to try to stop him before he was elected.
posted by joannemerriam at 9:49 AM on June 16 [18 favorites]
I gave what money I could spare to Pro Publica and the Black Male Voters Project. I spent countless hours door-knocking. I went to protests and marches. I went to multiple talk-to-the-public-type meetings with the local Democratic party and kept trying to volunteer, and they couldn't be arsed to follow-up so I did my own thing to try to get out the vote for their candidates. I hand-wrote over 10,000 postcards to get out the vote for the Democrats between 2017 and 2022, and held monthly postcard parties (except for in 2020 and 2021, when I did a few remote ones but people did not show up) to get others to also write, at which my friends and random members of the public wrote another ~2k or so. I didn't become a citizen until 2019. The first two years I was doing this, I couldn't even vote yet. I contacted candidates directly to set up postcard campaigns when Postcards to Voters and Postcards to Swing States weren't covering an election important to my state or city. I guilted my friends with money into giving me money for postage since they were too busy to do any writing. I showed up every day for the cause for six years. I know there are people who do this all the time, and have put in decades, and I'm not trying to say that I am a hero or anything. But I already did the fighting part.
The thing that made me give up was that it was like pulling teeth to get born-Americans to give even one tiny shit over what was happening in their own country.
In 2022, after writing 1,000 postcards that summer alone for Postcards to Swing States, and after the mid-terms, I kind of threw up my hands and said why am I working so hard to save this fucking country when its own citizens don't give a shit? It was clear to me that trump was likely to win because of the apathy of the average American. Dobbs happened. The Covenant school shooter gunned down the classmates of children whose families I knew, and Vanderbilt, where I worked, decided to put airport-style security at the entrances I would have to go through every day to go to work, because people kept being caught with guns on campus, and the state legislatures' response was to do dick all except to kick out two Democratic legislators for being uppity and black.
One of my partners is in a category that may be targeted. I could bring him to Canada, when leaving on his own was just not an option (he was born in the US and has no meaningful ties to any countries except mine, through me). Or I could "stay and fight" while everybody around me sat on their asses and let the immigrant do all the work.
I decided to save my loved one and maybe myself too (I have been pretty outspoken, under my own name, so I might be on a list somewhere, who knows).
We have a lot of survivors' guilt about the whole thing and I expect that's only going to get worse. But I do still think I made the right decision for my situation, and if anybody wants to judge me, I would like you first to tell me exactly what you did to try to stop him before he was elected.
posted by joannemerriam at 9:49 AM on June 16 [18 favorites]
latkes, thank you for mentioning Bay Resistance and how people can resist ICE.
I installed the ICEBlock app on my phone, so if I do see ICE vehicles, I am ready to report it.
posted by ryanrs at 9:51 AM on June 16 [3 favorites]
I installed the ICEBlock app on my phone, so if I do see ICE vehicles, I am ready to report it.
posted by ryanrs at 9:51 AM on June 16 [3 favorites]
".. trigger-happy Christofascist fog that has settled over the US."
Not "settled over": "rising up". It's a persistent and viable port of who we are as a nation, evidenced by our most recent free and fair election. I've seen it all my life, and voted against it since Reagan, and here we are.
I've been thinking about how violence will be used in the upcoming years. So far it is overwhelmingly state violence in some Niemöller hierarchy, but I fear the day when neighbors take up arms against neighbors.
The momentum is very great: they have the mandate of an election, with both Houses and the Supreme Court, and the disastrous consequences of the unitary executive command economy have not yet trickled down. When conditions inevitably get bad for MAGA jingos, the last thing they are going to do is re-examine their decisions and change their beliefs. They are going to double down.
In liberal-minority areas, too many guns and too much othering and dehumanization and some foot-dragging investigations, like what was common in the apartheid South before the Civil Rights movement will potentiate stochastic nights of murder. I hope I'm wrong.
Perhaps the destination for would-be emigrants would be someplace bluer in their own country, like the southwest or the northeast of the US. It might happen slower here. We might weather it better here.
posted by the Real Dan at 10:03 AM on June 16 [1 favorite]
Not "settled over": "rising up". It's a persistent and viable port of who we are as a nation, evidenced by our most recent free and fair election. I've seen it all my life, and voted against it since Reagan, and here we are.
I've been thinking about how violence will be used in the upcoming years. So far it is overwhelmingly state violence in some Niemöller hierarchy, but I fear the day when neighbors take up arms against neighbors.
The momentum is very great: they have the mandate of an election, with both Houses and the Supreme Court, and the disastrous consequences of the unitary executive command economy have not yet trickled down. When conditions inevitably get bad for MAGA jingos, the last thing they are going to do is re-examine their decisions and change their beliefs. They are going to double down.
In liberal-minority areas, too many guns and too much othering and dehumanization and some foot-dragging investigations, like what was common in the apartheid South before the Civil Rights movement will potentiate stochastic nights of murder. I hope I'm wrong.
Perhaps the destination for would-be emigrants would be someplace bluer in their own country, like the southwest or the northeast of the US. It might happen slower here. We might weather it better here.
posted by the Real Dan at 10:03 AM on June 16 [1 favorite]
It seemed like at by's comments weren't intended as comprehensive advice so much as a sampling of potential concerns.
Generalizing about what a hypothetical person could hypothetically encounter if they choose to immigrate from the US to a hypothetical country is unhelpful, though. All of the information in that comment is either incorrect or inapplicable to my family's situation, for example, and I'm hardly unique.
Immigrating is hard. People who have immigrated to the US or been brought up by people who immigrated already know that because they have seen it first-hand. But hard doesn't mean impossible. And I am sick of people condemning the choice as cowardly or decadent, as they have in this thread. Ironically, there is nothing more American than leaving your old home behind for better opportunities and greater freedom.
But I already did the fighting part.
This is how I feel. And the US has the right to its own culture and self-government. This is what it chose. Fine, that doesn't mean I have to be a part of it. That doesn't mean I have to feed my children into its bloody maw.
posted by night traveler at 10:03 AM on June 16 [5 favorites]
Generalizing about what a hypothetical person could hypothetically encounter if they choose to immigrate from the US to a hypothetical country is unhelpful, though. All of the information in that comment is either incorrect or inapplicable to my family's situation, for example, and I'm hardly unique.
Immigrating is hard. People who have immigrated to the US or been brought up by people who immigrated already know that because they have seen it first-hand. But hard doesn't mean impossible. And I am sick of people condemning the choice as cowardly or decadent, as they have in this thread. Ironically, there is nothing more American than leaving your old home behind for better opportunities and greater freedom.
But I already did the fighting part.
This is how I feel. And the US has the right to its own culture and self-government. This is what it chose. Fine, that doesn't mean I have to be a part of it. That doesn't mean I have to feed my children into its bloody maw.
posted by night traveler at 10:03 AM on June 16 [5 favorites]
> A lot of that doesn’t hold for Europe, and the tax thing is completely wrong. Yes, the US and Eritrea are the only two countries in the world that “double tax” their citizens aboard, but that doesn’t mean you literally pay both taxes (at least as an American). If you are taxed less in your new country than in the US, then you pay the difference to the US. Living in Europe that’s not going to happen — our taxes are higher here, so we pay no US taxes.
Fair enough, but that doesn't necessarily apply to people who would emigrate to a non-EU country. Similarly my cautions about language aren't relevant for anybody here emigrating to a country where English is an official or at least dominant language. But every one of those issues I've listed is relevant to situations I'm familiar with or people I know, somewhere.
It probably sounds alarmist but I see so many Americans who think that fleeing the US just means making sure your passport is current before taking all your money out in cash and getting on a plane. A fair amount of harm is going to be self-inflicted by people suddenly surprised that the rest of the world is not the theme park their limited travel experience led them to believe. Erring on the side of fear is good, if that fear leads to preparation rather than paralysis.
posted by at by at 10:16 AM on June 16 [4 favorites]
Fair enough, but that doesn't necessarily apply to people who would emigrate to a non-EU country. Similarly my cautions about language aren't relevant for anybody here emigrating to a country where English is an official or at least dominant language. But every one of those issues I've listed is relevant to situations I'm familiar with or people I know, somewhere.
It probably sounds alarmist but I see so many Americans who think that fleeing the US just means making sure your passport is current before taking all your money out in cash and getting on a plane. A fair amount of harm is going to be self-inflicted by people suddenly surprised that the rest of the world is not the theme park their limited travel experience led them to believe. Erring on the side of fear is good, if that fear leads to preparation rather than paralysis.
posted by at by at 10:16 AM on June 16 [4 favorites]
night traveler: "Generalizing about what a hypothetical person could hypothetically encounter if they choose to immigrate from the US to a hypothetical country is unhelpful, though. All of the information in that comment is either incorrect or inapplicable to my family's situation, for example, and I'm hardly unique."
Probably 80% of it did apply to my situation, though. So there you go. So it's hardly weird edge case scenarios they were discussing.
Given how little Americans often understand about immigrating elsewhere, it seems more than fair to bring up possible pitfalls, particularly if it's clear you're speaking generally. Even people who are knowledgeable within their situation often do not know how things shake out in/with other countries they have not explored.
I look at the second half of your comment where you say:
night traveler: I am sick of people condemning the choice as cowardly or decadent, as they have in this thread. Ironically, there is nothing more American than leaving your old home behind for better opportunities and greater freedom.
... and I think you're maybe not having the argument you think you are. I think maybe you think you're pushing back against someone you think is saying immigration is too hard or shouldn't be done and all they actually said was that going back from whence you came isn't always as easy as it sounds.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:18 AM on June 16 [1 favorite]
Probably 80% of it did apply to my situation, though. So there you go. So it's hardly weird edge case scenarios they were discussing.
Given how little Americans often understand about immigrating elsewhere, it seems more than fair to bring up possible pitfalls, particularly if it's clear you're speaking generally. Even people who are knowledgeable within their situation often do not know how things shake out in/with other countries they have not explored.
I look at the second half of your comment where you say:
night traveler: I am sick of people condemning the choice as cowardly or decadent, as they have in this thread. Ironically, there is nothing more American than leaving your old home behind for better opportunities and greater freedom.
... and I think you're maybe not having the argument you think you are. I think maybe you think you're pushing back against someone you think is saying immigration is too hard or shouldn't be done and all they actually said was that going back from whence you came isn't always as easy as it sounds.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:18 AM on June 16 [1 favorite]
I mean, I am 100% in this thread saying, "Yes, this is me and my family. We will be leaving. Best of everything to you all" and I will still tell you immigrating is really fucking hard and there is a lot to consider.
I think it's important to discuss how hard it is both to keep people from entering into it out of reflexive disgust with the US, but also to disabuse people of the notion that people saying they're leaving are going to just show up at like a Swiss chalet and pay for an extended stay with a stack of gold bars. Or call the home office and say you'll be working from Copenhagen now, or whatever bougie fantasy people think choosing to move to another country is.
It's fucking hard to do. We're going to need two years to even be able to run, four years to be able to do it and scuffle a bit, and six to eight years to do it comfortably. And the truth is, I do not know how long we will have.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:23 AM on June 16 [6 favorites]
I think it's important to discuss how hard it is both to keep people from entering into it out of reflexive disgust with the US, but also to disabuse people of the notion that people saying they're leaving are going to just show up at like a Swiss chalet and pay for an extended stay with a stack of gold bars. Or call the home office and say you'll be working from Copenhagen now, or whatever bougie fantasy people think choosing to move to another country is.
It's fucking hard to do. We're going to need two years to even be able to run, four years to be able to do it and scuffle a bit, and six to eight years to do it comfortably. And the truth is, I do not know how long we will have.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:23 AM on June 16 [6 favorites]
Does anyone among us know someone who is really saying "oh la la I will just wait til things get bad and then withdraw my money and go move to Denmark"? The specter of that person gets raised a lot on metafilter, but I've never met them. I've met lots of people who are well aware that if they want to emigrate they may not be able to do so, that it takes money, that it takes employability, that it takes health and luck and lots of things that many people do not have.
posted by Frowner at 11:01 AM on June 16 [8 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 11:01 AM on June 16 [8 favorites]
> Does anyone among us know someone who is really saying "oh la la I will just wait til things get bad and then withdraw my money and go move to Denmark"?
Reddit's r/AmerExit occasionally has them.
posted by at by at 11:23 AM on June 16
Reddit's r/AmerExit occasionally has them.
posted by at by at 11:23 AM on June 16
As an immigrant to the US, I met an awful lot of people who thought all I had to do was marry some American and voila, I was a citizen. So I expect those kinds of folks think it works that way (that they think it works in the US) elsewhere too.
posted by joannemerriam at 11:24 AM on June 16 [3 favorites]
posted by joannemerriam at 11:24 AM on June 16 [3 favorites]
As a matter of fact, for all the people saying "this is only an option for wealthy people," I would say that the logistical stress is the far larger challenge than the financial one. Any move is stressful. Moving overseas can easily be one of the most stressful things the average person will ever attempt.
I wouldn't wave off the financial requirements entirely, but I know a handful of twenty-something expats who are definitely not rich kids and made it work. There's a lot to be said at that age for having fewer obligations, such as aging relatives, and the particular group of kids I know are mostly trans so that was a huge influence on their priorities, but financially you can manage it on a much smaller budget than I think some people are imagining. You'll have to secure housing, but you were going to have to do that anyway. Likewise funding a bank account. It's the uprooting and transplanting your whole life that's hard, and I get that's not for everybody for a whole lot of reasons.
I do often see this assumption that every other country is more hostile to immigration than the US, sometimes extending to more of this "exceptionalism" attitude that only the US is broadly open to immigration, and that's not even remotely the case. Of course you can't just pack a bag, grab your passport and start living in another country, but I don't think I've seen anybody suggest that, and neither is it the case that the only option is a "golden visa." There are rules. You pick a viable legal path, follow it, apply, and get a visa or don't.
I have also seen people completely fail at expatriating from a cultural standpoint, and that's typically the people who notice they can't easily get Dr. Pepper or Campbell's Condensed Mushroom Soup and act like that's something wrong with the country. Indeed you're not going for a vacation, and you won't have a concierge or tour guide to keep you safely packed in bubble wrap for your entire brief experience. But you might, you know, make friends instead. You're going to live there, and that means you adapting to there. If you're not willing to do that, it's not going to work out. But if you are adaptable and willing to meet the place on its own terms, it can be really rewarding. Yes, you might have to learn a language (the horror!) but that's a thing people do sometimes. Immersion plus making even a little effort goes a surprisingly long way.
I'd planned to eventually move abroad with or without Nazis. The present moment just made advancing the timetable make sense. It's a daunting thing, but not a broadly impossible one. If it's something you'd like to do, you won't really know if it's feasible until you do the homework and make some decisions for yourself. And if you decide that's something you don't want to do, you don't owe anybody an explanation why not. I'd feel like a real asshole if I went around judging other people for making different life decisions from the ones I'd make on the basis of limited information.
posted by gelfin at 11:56 AM on June 16 [4 favorites]
I wouldn't wave off the financial requirements entirely, but I know a handful of twenty-something expats who are definitely not rich kids and made it work. There's a lot to be said at that age for having fewer obligations, such as aging relatives, and the particular group of kids I know are mostly trans so that was a huge influence on their priorities, but financially you can manage it on a much smaller budget than I think some people are imagining. You'll have to secure housing, but you were going to have to do that anyway. Likewise funding a bank account. It's the uprooting and transplanting your whole life that's hard, and I get that's not for everybody for a whole lot of reasons.
I do often see this assumption that every other country is more hostile to immigration than the US, sometimes extending to more of this "exceptionalism" attitude that only the US is broadly open to immigration, and that's not even remotely the case. Of course you can't just pack a bag, grab your passport and start living in another country, but I don't think I've seen anybody suggest that, and neither is it the case that the only option is a "golden visa." There are rules. You pick a viable legal path, follow it, apply, and get a visa or don't.
I have also seen people completely fail at expatriating from a cultural standpoint, and that's typically the people who notice they can't easily get Dr. Pepper or Campbell's Condensed Mushroom Soup and act like that's something wrong with the country. Indeed you're not going for a vacation, and you won't have a concierge or tour guide to keep you safely packed in bubble wrap for your entire brief experience. But you might, you know, make friends instead. You're going to live there, and that means you adapting to there. If you're not willing to do that, it's not going to work out. But if you are adaptable and willing to meet the place on its own terms, it can be really rewarding. Yes, you might have to learn a language (the horror!) but that's a thing people do sometimes. Immersion plus making even a little effort goes a surprisingly long way.
I'd planned to eventually move abroad with or without Nazis. The present moment just made advancing the timetable make sense. It's a daunting thing, but not a broadly impossible one. If it's something you'd like to do, you won't really know if it's feasible until you do the homework and make some decisions for yourself. And if you decide that's something you don't want to do, you don't owe anybody an explanation why not. I'd feel like a real asshole if I went around judging other people for making different life decisions from the ones I'd make on the basis of limited information.
posted by gelfin at 11:56 AM on June 16 [4 favorites]
I would say that the logistical stress is the far larger challenge than the financial one.
And the whole, leaving the culture you know and adopting a new culture that you will never ever really fit into because you are a foreigner and always will be to the extent that people will periodically ask when you are going back even after you become a citizen. That's kinda tough, YMMV.
The fantasy is a fantasy: the reality, the bureaucracy of integrating into a new society and culture is another, epic beast entirely - from my own experience. More to the article, what is the point when you decide - "if we don't leave now we might not be able to leave later, and then things get very very dark."-? For Shore and Snyder, public intellectuals who are openly critical of the administration, it was now/as soon as they found work elsewhere. And for them it was probably the right choice.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:23 PM on June 16 [4 favorites]
And the whole, leaving the culture you know and adopting a new culture that you will never ever really fit into because you are a foreigner and always will be to the extent that people will periodically ask when you are going back even after you become a citizen. That's kinda tough, YMMV.
The fantasy is a fantasy: the reality, the bureaucracy of integrating into a new society and culture is another, epic beast entirely - from my own experience. More to the article, what is the point when you decide - "if we don't leave now we might not be able to leave later, and then things get very very dark."-? For Shore and Snyder, public intellectuals who are openly critical of the administration, it was now/as soon as they found work elsewhere. And for them it was probably the right choice.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:23 PM on June 16 [4 favorites]
I have done it twice, once from Canada to the US and once from the US back to Canada (that latter was simple for me but my partner was immigrating). In 2004, it cost about $8k not counting lost wages. In 2024, it cost about $12k, not counting 15% tax on my 403b retirement account so I could move that money to Canada (not being entirely certain the US won't just start seizing bank accounts). The bulk (both times) was legal fees for an immigration barrister. ~$10k is not chump change to be sure but many middle class people can scrounge that together, especially if you're willing to sell your stuff (which is how we raised most of it).
A note on nomenclature: a lot of people here are using the term ex-pat. I would caution against thinking of yourself that way if you do this. Ex-pats are (mostly white) people who live in their own privileged enclave in other people's countries. Immigrants are people who make their home in their new country, getting to know their neighbours and neighbourhood and becoming a part of their local community. Be an immigrant, not an ex-pat.
posted by joannemerriam at 12:58 PM on June 16 [9 favorites]
A note on nomenclature: a lot of people here are using the term ex-pat. I would caution against thinking of yourself that way if you do this. Ex-pats are (mostly white) people who live in their own privileged enclave in other people's countries. Immigrants are people who make their home in their new country, getting to know their neighbours and neighbourhood and becoming a part of their local community. Be an immigrant, not an ex-pat.
posted by joannemerriam at 12:58 PM on June 16 [9 favorites]
And the whole, leaving the culture you know and adopting a new culture that you will never ever really fit into because you are a foreigner and always will be to the extent that people will periodically ask when you are going back even after you become a citizen.
People *will* periodically ask you, will they? Bollocks. Yes, you will never ever be a native but if you attempt to assimilate most locals will accept you for what you are. In big cities your origin will never be an issue if you are not an issue as a person. Hell, there are many parts of England where English people not born in a particular village might take 10 years to be accepted. Fit in and in time you will be accepted, add value and you will be valued.
posted by epo at 1:03 PM on June 16 [2 favorites]
People *will* periodically ask you, will they? Bollocks. Yes, you will never ever be a native but if you attempt to assimilate most locals will accept you for what you are. In big cities your origin will never be an issue if you are not an issue as a person. Hell, there are many parts of England where English people not born in a particular village might take 10 years to be accepted. Fit in and in time you will be accepted, add value and you will be valued.
posted by epo at 1:03 PM on June 16 [2 favorites]
If you are already at risk or project to become at risk in the US, if it's not just comfort/preference for you, I hope you're figuring out what you can do to protect yourself, whether it's leaving or something else.
I hope you're paying attention to the mile markers we are passing.
There is no bonus for being so clever that you don't leave too early, but there sure as hell will be a huge fucking penalty if you don't try and leave until it's too late.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:18 PM on June 16 [4 favorites]
I hope you're paying attention to the mile markers we are passing.
There is no bonus for being so clever that you don't leave too early, but there sure as hell will be a huge fucking penalty if you don't try and leave until it's too late.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:18 PM on June 16 [4 favorites]
As a Canadian, I can see both sides of the argument. You have to leave the US to stay safe and we welcome refugees. But you have to stay and fix it because Canada is within trump's (or more likely his successors') Lebensraum and most of us live near or south of 49. We're gonna have to fight it either way if things get worse. We've known this for the last few decades, watching you slip into the abyss.
You have to admit that there's an element of the prepper mentality among people with the means to leave, the idea that you're going to stock up and hide out so that when the world collapses around you, you'll some how ride it out and emerge safe and belly-full on the other side. But that's nonsense for privileged American "refugees" (who, as a class, have very little in common with, for example, Jews escaping the Third Reich) as much as for the men with a hundred pallets of beans in their bunkers. You can't win by running away from it, you can only win through mutual support, collective action, courage and, if necessary, the willingness to put your life on the line.
posted by klanawa at 1:20 PM on June 16 [3 favorites]
You have to admit that there's an element of the prepper mentality among people with the means to leave, the idea that you're going to stock up and hide out so that when the world collapses around you, you'll some how ride it out and emerge safe and belly-full on the other side. But that's nonsense for privileged American "refugees" (who, as a class, have very little in common with, for example, Jews escaping the Third Reich) as much as for the men with a hundred pallets of beans in their bunkers. You can't win by running away from it, you can only win through mutual support, collective action, courage and, if necessary, the willingness to put your life on the line.
posted by klanawa at 1:20 PM on June 16 [3 favorites]
That's very dramatic and stirringly phrased but I am quite sure that if my wife and I just retire to some dusty European old town and drink coffee, tend houseplants, and watch old movies until we die of old age, that will count as a win.
Living in Brooklyn and working at the post office and not being dead was a win for my friend's Jewish grandma. She didn't have to personally die fighting the Nazis.
You don't always have to personally save the world. It can be a victory just to live in it and be happy.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:25 PM on June 16 [8 favorites]
Living in Brooklyn and working at the post office and not being dead was a win for my friend's Jewish grandma. She didn't have to personally die fighting the Nazis.
You don't always have to personally save the world. It can be a victory just to live in it and be happy.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:25 PM on June 16 [8 favorites]
Yeah, people usually get pretty dismissive when they feel called out. Don't worry, nobody's going to stop you from leaving.
My grandfather fled the Russian civil war so I can have a similar background to your friend and come to entirely different conclusions without using him as a human shield. But then, I don't have to defend my decision to leave because I don't have that luxury.
posted by klanawa at 1:46 PM on June 16 [2 favorites]
My grandfather fled the Russian civil war so I can have a similar background to your friend and come to entirely different conclusions without using him as a human shield. But then, I don't have to defend my decision to leave because I don't have that luxury.
posted by klanawa at 1:46 PM on June 16 [2 favorites]
The thing about the take that leaving is an easy way out for the privileged and there is no value in anything other than staying and fighting is that we have actually had a whole ass discussion right here with many smart people offering many, many thoughtful takes on why those takes are reductive and the realities are more complex. You can use that wheel on your mouse, scroll right up, and help yourself to reading some of them.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:50 PM on June 16 [4 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:50 PM on June 16 [4 favorites]
Although if I was gonna pick one thing, I do not know that "using someone as a human shield" would be the metaphor I would reach for after insisting that people need to stay in the troubled country and be prepared to die.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:52 PM on June 16 [1 favorite]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:52 PM on June 16 [1 favorite]
Yes, you will never ever be a native but if you attempt to assimilate most locals will accept you for what you are
I'm just speaking to my own experience, having immigrated twice - once at eleven and then the second time in my late thirties. Yes, people accept me for what I am, and I am a part of community, learned the language and etc. ...but, yes, like the 'outsider' who came from the village over the hill... It's a different way of being than if you stay in the culture you started out in from childhood. On the other hand being an immigrant has led to some very profound conversations with other immigrants about the experience of being an immigrant. No regrets at all.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:52 PM on June 16 [4 favorites]
I'm just speaking to my own experience, having immigrated twice - once at eleven and then the second time in my late thirties. Yes, people accept me for what I am, and I am a part of community, learned the language and etc. ...but, yes, like the 'outsider' who came from the village over the hill... It's a different way of being than if you stay in the culture you started out in from childhood. On the other hand being an immigrant has led to some very profound conversations with other immigrants about the experience of being an immigrant. No regrets at all.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:52 PM on June 16 [4 favorites]
insisting that people need to stay in the troubled country and be prepared to die.
I mean, it's not like all 380million people are going to be able to leave. It's a pretty select group, and they can all rationalize it in their own way. You do you.
posted by klanawa at 1:54 PM on June 16 [2 favorites]
I mean, it's not like all 380million people are going to be able to leave. It's a pretty select group, and they can all rationalize it in their own way. You do you.
posted by klanawa at 1:54 PM on June 16 [2 favorites]
A whole ass thread. It's right there.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:56 PM on June 16 [2 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:56 PM on June 16 [2 favorites]
My partner and I moved to the Netherlands in 2018 and a lot of what I read here sounds like scaremongering. Yes there are circumstances, like being in a care role for aging parents, that would make things difficult, but otherwise it’s really not. We did the DAFT visa (entrepreneurial visa for Americans) which so far has a 100% acceptance rate. You get two years, at which point if you can show that you’ve had some clients (profit isn’t necessary) then you get a renewal for five more years. After five years of living here you can apply for permanent residency or naturalization. You do have to take a language test, but it’s Dick and Jane level of Dutch (well, Jip en Janneke), and you have five years to get there.
Immigration officials have always been nice to us, I’ve had far better medical and mental health care here than I got in the US, despite having had excellent insurance in the US. While the Dutch are supposedly standoffish to anyone they didn’t grow up and go to school with, we’ve found that in an urban environment among the tech crowd this is absolutely not the case. Society here has a high level of trust compared to the US and social cohesion is seen as important, which is refreshing.
When friends visit I sometimes ask them to bring grits or Hatch green chilies, but honestly there is much more that I would miss from here if I moved back to the States than I miss from there. And it’s easy to travel all over Europe if we want a change of scenery.
Our only regret is not moving sooner.
posted by antinomia at 2:02 PM on June 16 [2 favorites]
Immigration officials have always been nice to us, I’ve had far better medical and mental health care here than I got in the US, despite having had excellent insurance in the US. While the Dutch are supposedly standoffish to anyone they didn’t grow up and go to school with, we’ve found that in an urban environment among the tech crowd this is absolutely not the case. Society here has a high level of trust compared to the US and social cohesion is seen as important, which is refreshing.
When friends visit I sometimes ask them to bring grits or Hatch green chilies, but honestly there is much more that I would miss from here if I moved back to the States than I miss from there. And it’s easy to travel all over Europe if we want a change of scenery.
Our only regret is not moving sooner.
posted by antinomia at 2:02 PM on June 16 [2 favorites]
My spouse is working on getting us Greek citizenship as they're eligible. As a trans woman who is increasingly targeted by this administration, and with Democrats debating back and forth about whether to throw the trans community under the bus, it feels more and more like leaving the country is not an "if" but a "when." I say this as someone who lives in a relatively safe state (New York). If there's a federal ban on HRT, either directly or indirectly, then that is my red line, and I will be fucking gone as soon as we can get the hell out. Thankfully, all my documentation was updated years ago.
posted by SansPoint at 2:26 PM on June 16 [6 favorites]
posted by SansPoint at 2:26 PM on June 16 [6 favorites]
Does anyone among us know someone who is really saying "oh la la I will just wait til things get bad and then withdraw my money and go move to Denmark"?
This entire thread is about the best choice being to get out now, and with large numbers of commenters weighing in on agreement. Are we reading the same thing?
posted by Galvanic at 2:58 PM on June 16
This entire thread is about the best choice being to get out now, and with large numbers of commenters weighing in on agreement. Are we reading the same thing?
posted by Galvanic at 2:58 PM on June 16
Does anyone among us know someone who is really saying "oh la la I will just wait til things get bad and then withdraw my money and go move to Denmark"?
I assume I'm not the only person with two passports who spent a few months getting themselves into a "Go, and Go inside of a month" to a country I speak the language of but have never lived in.
posted by Slackermagee at 3:33 PM on June 16
I assume I'm not the only person with two passports who spent a few months getting themselves into a "Go, and Go inside of a month" to a country I speak the language of but have never lived in.
posted by Slackermagee at 3:33 PM on June 16
being able to flee is a huge privilege, and everyone who uses that privilege is going to make it that much harder for those of us who don't have it
Six months ago we saw people who had been disappeared for years or even decades emerge from Sednaya Prison in Syria when Assad's regime fell. If they had been in a position to flee rather than suffer that fate, what possible positive difference did it make to the people who weren't that they stayed and ended up in that hellhole? And that's just the ones who survived—what positive difference did the ones who died make when their families didn't even know whether they were dead or not?
Erdoğan in Turkey jailed hundreds of academics several years ago who'd signed an "Academics for Peace" petition. Many others were effectively banned from work and forced into poverty. How is their fate making life any easier for those who don't have the opportunity to leave Turkey?
Dictators control budgets, the courts, state media, and voting, and they cow private business into submission: they control the resources normal people need to fight political opponents in the ways familiar to us in democracies. And they control police forces and the military, so have a huge advantage in the kind of fight not familiar to us in democracies.
It may feel right now like staying and fighting means going on marches like Saturday's, but the fight everyone's ultimately talking about is the one Shore mentions in her interview: a second civil war. If that arrives and people start fleeing it in their millions, as they will, the same way Syrians did, it won't be out of "huge privilege".
The lessons needed to face this aren't going to be American lessons. They're going to be Middle Eastern lessons, and Eastern European lessons, and South American lessons, and Chinese lessons, and African lessons. Every model of dictatorship has been played out somewhere at some point in living memory. Sure, the particular permutations will be unique to the U.S., but the lessons are out there of how people lived, survived, and eventually got through it—or haven't yet. Maybe what's needed are not more #uspolitics posts but more posts on those.
posted by rory at 4:29 PM on June 16 [3 favorites]
Six months ago we saw people who had been disappeared for years or even decades emerge from Sednaya Prison in Syria when Assad's regime fell. If they had been in a position to flee rather than suffer that fate, what possible positive difference did it make to the people who weren't that they stayed and ended up in that hellhole? And that's just the ones who survived—what positive difference did the ones who died make when their families didn't even know whether they were dead or not?
Erdoğan in Turkey jailed hundreds of academics several years ago who'd signed an "Academics for Peace" petition. Many others were effectively banned from work and forced into poverty. How is their fate making life any easier for those who don't have the opportunity to leave Turkey?
Dictators control budgets, the courts, state media, and voting, and they cow private business into submission: they control the resources normal people need to fight political opponents in the ways familiar to us in democracies. And they control police forces and the military, so have a huge advantage in the kind of fight not familiar to us in democracies.
It may feel right now like staying and fighting means going on marches like Saturday's, but the fight everyone's ultimately talking about is the one Shore mentions in her interview: a second civil war. If that arrives and people start fleeing it in their millions, as they will, the same way Syrians did, it won't be out of "huge privilege".
The lessons needed to face this aren't going to be American lessons. They're going to be Middle Eastern lessons, and Eastern European lessons, and South American lessons, and Chinese lessons, and African lessons. Every model of dictatorship has been played out somewhere at some point in living memory. Sure, the particular permutations will be unique to the U.S., but the lessons are out there of how people lived, survived, and eventually got through it—or haven't yet. Maybe what's needed are not more #uspolitics posts but more posts on those.
posted by rory at 4:29 PM on June 16 [3 favorites]
Yeah, people usually get pretty dismissive when they feel called out. Don't worry, nobody's going to stop you from leaving.
Calling out DirtyOldTown about his choices in this matter sucks, and implying he's using others as a human shield takes it beyond the pale.
posted by tclark at 4:41 PM on June 16 [2 favorites]
Calling out DirtyOldTown about his choices in this matter sucks, and implying he's using others as a human shield takes it beyond the pale.
posted by tclark at 4:41 PM on June 16 [2 favorites]
I'm in LA. A few days ago, when Kristi Noem talked about liberating my city of its "burdensome leadership," I felt a chill that wasn't quite like anything else I'd ever experienced in my life. They're not just saying the quiet part out loud; they're hollering it through a bullhorn.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:48 PM on June 16 [2 favorites]
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:48 PM on June 16 [2 favorites]
But then, I don't have to defend my decision to leave because I don't have that luxury.
posted by klanawa at 5:46 PM on June 16
I don't mean to pile on, but I am deeply confused by this statement. I was wrong and privileged to flee to Canada instead of staying and fighting for my adopted country but you are stuck without the luxury of fleeing *checks notes* Canada? I really am not sure what you are trying to say there.
posted by joannemerriam at 4:50 PM on June 16 [1 favorite]
posted by klanawa at 5:46 PM on June 16
I don't mean to pile on, but I am deeply confused by this statement. I was wrong and privileged to flee to Canada instead of staying and fighting for my adopted country but you are stuck without the luxury of fleeing *checks notes* Canada? I really am not sure what you are trying to say there.
posted by joannemerriam at 4:50 PM on June 16 [1 favorite]
Interesting. In grade school, most of my friends parents came from another country, a few for political reasons some for academic. The political reasons were never really openly discussed. The academic reasons are what I benefited from.
it is not my place to opinionate on what people should do with their concerns and their family.
still, I'm stashing a canoe in Port Huron.
posted by clavdivs at 5:11 PM on June 16
it is not my place to opinionate on what people should do with their concerns and their family.
still, I'm stashing a canoe in Port Huron.
posted by clavdivs at 5:11 PM on June 16
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This is a powerful piece, and it knocked me for a loop when I read it a couple of hours ago. I have yet to regain my balance.
posted by jamjam at 12:56 AM on June 16 [2 favorites]