Thinking about Moving?
If you live in America, have you found yourself giving somewhat serious thought to moving permanently to another country?
If you do not live in America, do you have any desire to move here?
If you do not live in America, do you have any desire to move here?
posted by pissed off patricia at 1:30 AM
50 Comments:
No. I love my country. It's my government I don't like. And that can be changed.
I never considered leaving this country until this year when I saw the movie SICKO. I wanted to move to England. Since that's not going to happen, I'm hoping for the pendulum to start swinging the other way, for this country to start taking care of its citizens and freedom winning out over fear.
Yes, I have given that serious thought. Canada, Panama, Belguim, England are the places I've looked at.
But no, Lew is right. The constitution that governs this nation is great. We must take the country back from the traitors that are currently in Power. This country was created to escape from the abuse of power that is now happenning.
Yes I have, and Canada is about 1-1/2 hours from where I live.
Strange thing; I've moved around the country without hesitation but never considered leaving for another nation, even in these dark times. I still have a glimmer of hope that we can turn things around and get back on track.
I don't know if there is a place you could move, that Bush's evil domain hasn't affected.
I have always wanted to live in Britain, esp. Scotland. I've wanted to do this all of my life, not just since Bush has been in office. It feels like home everytime I visit there, and their ways and culture feel very natural to me. If I won the lottery and could afford to move there, I'd leave tomorrow.
Like Blueberry, I was influenced by Sicko. Funny, though, I would have thought I'd want to go to Britain, but after seeing that film, I wanted to go to France. I still think Canada might be a good place for me.
To be quite honest, though, I can't really imagine living anywhere else. I think we have the potential to reform, but we have a long way to go. I'm willing to stick it out. If I were younger, maybe not....
I always wanted to be part of that first Mars colony.
What about you, PoP?
I dont want England-I have family there, they may have socialised medicine, but they wait for procedures-my aunt had to wait for a hip fracture repair.
I loved Iceland, but much too cold for me. Hubby and I liked Spain,
However I am an American through and through and I really don't want to be away from my family and friends. With all it's quirks we still live in the best place in the world. Why do you think so many are trying to get into it! We love our freedoms- how could we blog like this or speak our minds if we were somewhere else!
My concience is at war with my instinct for self preservation. On the one hand, I would love to stand and fight for freedom and liberty. On the other hand, I fear that climate change will make the BushCo years moot, and we may just be the refugees fighting for our lives sooner than later. It depends on what Greenland does in the next ten years. If the ice lets go and the Gulf Stream stops, will global warming cancel out the ice age that would follow? If the massive amount of ice does cool us off enough to mitigate global warming, what will happen when the ice cube melts?
I've wanted to move north or south since the Canadians told Bushco where to look for his drug war (Hint: not in canada - THEY'VE got cojones). Alternatively there's a colony of US ex-pats on the Baja Peninsula, that might be a good place to be if the north ices up.
Yes, I looked into emigration. I discovered I couldn't pass the immigration test for the country of my choice.
I was outraged when Bush was appointed President. I reconciled myself with the thought that it would only be four years, never dreaming of the damage he could do in four years. When he was elected in 2004 I realized I didn't really have a country anymore.
They are running ads on Philly radio to hire border Patrol officers. Wouldn't it be ironic if in a decade they were there to keep people in?
I've thought about moving to Canada, but after spending three years on the Olympic Peninsula, I've realized that the long, dark winters this far north are not for me. So, I think I'll take my country back from the brink of oligarchy and fascism instead of moving.
No, I still believe in this country, not the leaders at present, but what goes around, comes around as the saying goes! We will come back from this mess and we have to insure it doesn't happen again. We need to bring back the constitution to the top of what we stand for and keep it there!
no, not really. i love it here.
it's my country and i'm staying and hope to just weather the storm til 08.
Home is really hard to leave. That's why I'm so interested in all this illegal immigrant talk, and the accompanying assumption that everyone wants to live here. No, everyone would rather live at home, but for lots of reasons they can't. I know this from 10 years worth of volunteer work with refugees from all over the world.
I'm a Social Worker, and I'll die trying to make things right.
Pretty much think about moving every day.
If not for my daughter I'd be gone by now.
We have gone so far as to set up an emergency plan to leave this country should it be necessary to survive. It's sort of like having an evacuation plan in your backpack. For today, we stay and we fight to have a decent country that we can be proud of once again.
I always pictured myself living on a villa on Capri...
We've been in Seattle for going on 34 years, and although it's been experiencing growing pains, and has gotten increasingly expensive, it's still a relative haven of open-mindedness. I don't want to move. I don't want to even tour Europe,racking up old churches and souvenirs, but while I'm still fit, want to see some big unspoiled landscapes, if there are any left...
POP
It really isn't funny but Larry is right. No matter where you live in the world Bush has affected it negatively.
It's funny but I keep thinking of moving somewhere else in America but cams to the conclusion that it doesn't matter where you live, you can't escape Bush.
I know a lot of people that are starting to look at Mexico but that's no safe haven. Especially if you believe Bush is clandestinely working on a North American Union between us, Mexico, and Canada.
I already did. I moved to Texas and now I can’t get a visa to get back into the real United States.
I use to say that I liked the U. S. because anywhere in the country you:
1. can drink the water right out of the tap,
2. have a good idea where you could tell the police to get off, and you
3. can always find a decent cheeseburger.
In the past five years, I’ve made brief business visits to Lisbon, Marrakech, Kuala Lumpur, Cape Town, Riyadh and Istanbul and have seen enough to know that in the right place, I could live like the raj, but that I’d still prefer the USA.
Recapturing the government from special / single interest organizations is problematic. Chamber of Commerce or Right-to-Life can marshal money and activists and have their agenda heard and acted on. That is the way representative democracy works, but along the way it tends to pervert the democracy part.
It is much harder, maybe impossible for “We the People” to pursue and promote our very amorphous agenda, even though ALL we want is individual liberty, low taxes, an end to poverty, universal health care, preservation of our environment, protection of our personal property and investments, a fair and consistent foreign polity, equal justice for all, affordable education, criminals behind bars, potholes filled, cheap and abundant food, cheap and available energy, secure borders, a forty hour work week, and no more dead soldiers, sailors, airmen or marines.
Let me be the first to admit that I am far too lazy and selfish to organize the Joe Doakes Society or contribute big dollars to Schmo-Pac, but I will gladly piss, moan and vote for our betterment.
"No. I love my country. It's my government I don't like. And that can be changed."
It's not just the government that needs to be changed, it's the culture in America.
Great comments.
We considered Ireland as I can claim dual citizenship (parent, grandparents...that sort of thing). But we do have an obligation not to become other nations' refugee problem if things get so intolerable here. If we fall apart or continue on the path we are currently on, we are taking a whole of the world with us. It is imperative to find everyday acts of resistance (bike to work...recycle...blog...don't shop)to the entire system.
Anonymous is correct: the culture requires significant alteration 1)in order to survive 2) be a leader for good once again.
dear PoP,
I love it here in el cajon but it was 106F today! i have to live somewhere sunny.
peace, peter
I have the same concern that Miss Knows It All voiced. I fear we will wake up one day and find the mexican wall was built to keep us in even more than to keep 'them' out.
if/when that happens it will be too late.
I've debated Iceland, Holland, Mexico -- but I moved to Florida to be near family and just finished unpacking. don't want to go through THAT again!
basically-- I don't know WHAT to do-----
I feel like a German in 1938.
Sometimes I think of moving to another country but I know that I must make the best of what I have here.
There is a reason we have an immigration problem. When entire families are willing to uproot themselves from their home they've had all their life, and try to get here....we still have something better than anybody else. For how long.....that is the 64 Million Dollar question.
no, no moving north, but just because Canada is freaking cold
I spent about six months seriously considering Canada. I eventually decided no. Reasons:
1. I would always be an outsider there, no matter what. Because Canada is a very conservative society (in a good way, not in the sick neo-con way), that means I'd always have less opportunity than someone born and raised there.
2. The only major Canadian city that isn't frozen half the time is Vancouver, and it's either raining or foggy there the other half of the time.
3. Money. Don't laugh. I can make sick money here in the United States with my talents. In Canada... not so much, even if I were a native-born Canadian.
4. Access to relatives. It's a PITA to get across the border nowdays due to the Homeland Insecurity goons, and it's a long way for them to go if they want to visit me.
Canada is a much saner culture, and there's the health care thing. But we're working on fixing that over here in California, though the fact we're being looted and plundered by the pathetic red state ignoramuses who can't make it in real economies like California's and thus loot us for welfare for their states makes it a bit more difficult than it should be. The culture in some places in California isn't that deranged either, though mostly that's the places where the rednecks ain't (Bakersfield might as well be Alabama as far as culture is concerned).
One thing I did like about my trip to Canada, though, is that they still very much have a can-do attitude towards everything. Here in America we have this fatalistic attitude. "There's nothing that can be done" is the response to any social problem you think of, as if it were handed down by God that we would have heroin addicts dying of AIDS in the streets and stuff like that. In Canada, they try to solve their problems. Maybe some of the solutions they try don't work, but at least they try. We don't even try anymore here in the good ole' U.S. of A....
- Badtux the Travelin' Penguin
I'm Canadian, and I'd never consider moving to the States. Never. One main reason is the secularity of our public sphere. Rarely do we have politicians making any kind of overt appeal to religious groups or trying to argue for policy based on religious values. I say this as a "spiritual" person living in the most conservative of the Canadian provinces - I'm so thankful God keeps God's nose out of Canadian politics!
Sweden. The Old Country.
I think of leaving...but undoubtedly wouldn't go. It would have to get really bad here for me to leave.
No. I love California.
I'm actually at the point of considering doing some research into emigration to one of several countries. I am not at all convinced that we will ever have elections in this country again, and I would rather leave my entire network of family and friends behind than to live under the tyranny of a Bush Dictatorship.
I don't know. I mean, sure, I fantasize about it. But realistically? Where's better?
Somebody up there said something about the culture and I agree with that but I wonder: Are Americans really dumber than other people or is it just that our stupidity is so crassly commercial compared to the stupidity of other peoples/countries?
Besides. I live in California. Arnold will protect me, right?
If I could, New Zealand. In a heartbeat.
Everybody still has that glimmer of hope, that dream of the old AMERICA in all our hearts. That means there is still hope for us, hope for this country.
When America fragments (and I do believe the question is now "when," rather than "if,") I thought I'd have to leave here. Thanks to the recent "blue"ing locally, it may be my Chimpleton detractors that feel like pulling up and moving.
I lived in Canada for three years. Great place but too cold. Regarding America, after Bush, it would be the very last place I would want to live.
Australia is O.K. but very isolated and, like America, exceedingly parochial.
I could happily live on a Greek Island.
Cheers from DownUnder!
... have you found yourself giving somewhat serious thought to moving permanently to another country?
All. The. Time.
I have had serious discussions with some friends about spending the last 20 or so years of our lives smewhere else. It pains us, but it is an option on the table.
I think Miss Knows It All is right on. I think that once we need to have passports to travel from one state to another it will be past the point of no return. It can't happen here? When I look at some of Dumbya's recent executive orders, I think "Yes, it not only can happen here, it already IS happening here."
Canada looks better and better all the time. I have thought about looking into what it would take to retire there. My wife and I will probably be retiring in the next 8-12 years...
I've thought of moving to Canada but rejected it - too cold. I hate winter. Ireland would be one possibility. I think about these things when I get really disgusted with this country and fed up with what is going on. But I suppose, as others have said, it's better to stay and fight and hope things turn around. But if I get too old and tired I might consider leaving!
i don't like any government or any country. I am screwed.
I have thought about it a lot lately.
When my wife and I went to Paris over the holidays last year, I dreaded coming back. That has never happened before.
I'm with Graeme. I've lived abroad (Germany and now Austria) for over 20 years. I think about changing citizenship periodically, but always realize that it is just changing one label for another. I don't attach myself to labels and I've never understood concepts like "national pride". It is an accident that we are born whereever it happened to be, we, personally, certainly had no choice in the matter. What is there to be "proud" of?
JG.
If Bush were to use the emergency authority he ceded himself by royal fiat and either prevent the 2008 elections or the 2009 transition to a Democratic administration, Canadian air would begin to smell very nice.
The Future Was Yesterday repeated a very often heard refrain:
"There is a reason we have an immigration problem. When entire families are willing to uproot themselves from their home they've had all their life, and try to get here....we still have something better than anybody else."
Actually, that is not true. It just shows that the US has something better than somebody else. Not anybody else. In particular, the US has it better than Mexico and the rest of South America. Not so many Canadians are trying to sneak over the border, eh?
That said, despite all the talk about being a nation of immigrants, the truth is that the US does not take in much more immigrants than other countries, relative to its size. Only 12% of American residents are foreign-born. That's the same amount as Germany, Sweden and Belarus, and only slightly more than France, Netherlands and Spain (10%), less than Austria and Ukraine (14%), Canada (18%), Australia (20%) and Switzerland (23%).
Emigration remains a drastic step, one usually taken out of desperation (unless you're in a profession that encourages or requires international mobility). But there is a lot to be said for living in different countries for extended periods of time. I think that it is a good time to watch events in the US from across an ocean. For a few years. You never know, Guiliani might be a worse president than Bush.
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