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Films that made people emigrate

theguardian.com

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Re: Films that made people emigrate

#51

Post by jowea »

schoen wrote: post #28
adastra22 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But visa-free travel is not the same as visa-free emigration. Very, very few countries let people from other countries just buy a house or setup shop (pretty much just the Schengen zone).

Were there actually legal restrictions on those things in many places prior to the routinization of passports and passport controls in World War I?

From a quick check of Wikipedia and guesses:

the US started restrictions (at the time by race) with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

Australia and New Zealand had their own versions of the above in place somewhere between the 1880s that and the 1920s.

Latin America also attracted a lot of immigrants so I assume not that many restrictions but I don't know what laws were in place. You'd have to check country by country.

I assume colonial powers didn't restrict their own countrymen from emigrating to their colonies in Africa or Asia but that's just a guess.

I believe the above covers most of the large scale immigration at the time. To be honest I don't know what would happen if say a random Frenchman went to Tokyo/Moscow/Beirut and tried to buy a house, get a job and marry a local but that's an interesting question.

Unfortunately the general wikipedia page isn't complete: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_law

Re: Films that made people emigrate

#52

Post by sdenton4 »

devilbunny wrote: post #25
lmm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not flying is one thing, but so many US-Americans are scared of going into an actually different culture - somewhere where they speak a different language and watch different TV. A lot of people - not everyone, but a lot - could easily reach somewhere like that on that 8 hour road trip, but they won't, and they'll all try and talk about how it's "oh there's so much variety in the US I don't need to" which is just suc…

> which is just such a transparent lie Let's give it a generous read, though. Your life will be more interesting, in all likelihood, if you travel a lot (I can see a few narrow exceptions, but not the point). However. If you don't leave the US, you are limited to one absolutely huge country that has pretty much every kind of subtropical to alpine climate, landscape, etc., that you can imagine. You don't need a passpo…

I just took my first trip to Japan, and found it amazingly easy to get by. There is actually a lot of English signage, but also just great design of public infrastructure which makes everything kinds easy.

(For example, one train transfer that I thought seemed dicey actually had enough time built in to figure out an ongoing ticket with the ticket both, get to the platform, and then wait around for twenty minutes explaining the local train's car numbering system to other tourists who hadn't figured it out yet.)

There's a lot of understanding and tolerance of difference, in Japan in particular. You are a guest. Putting in some effort to learn how to do things is respectful, and there's a lot of tolerance for getting things not quite right of you're giving it an honest shot.

I've lived a lot of places: US, Hungary, Kenya, and visited a lot more. if you approach the world with an open heart and good intentions, people will tend meet you there.

Re: Films that made people emigrate

#53

Post by rtpg »

refactor_master wrote: post #5

The thing I’m always missing from these pieces is how . How do the rest of us emigrate, without being anglophone and teaching English, or a “digital content creator”? Or for example, “Scott” moving to Japan with his Chinese wife. How do the visas even wok out? Moving to the (rich part of) EU from the non-Western world is certainly not easy. I don’t know if I should read these pieces as “I can transfer freely with ful…

Most huge cities have IT companies that can absorb english-only workers. There's gonna be some "hard mode" stuff involved in any case with living abroad of course.

And my general impression is that outside the US visa stuff is relatively straightforward if you're going into a skilled job.

Re: Films that made people emigrate

#54

Post by shiroiuma »

nonethewiser wrote: post #8
michaelteter wrote: post #2

Those who can should try living in different parts of the world. It really broadens your appreciation for life and other cultures. Of course, how you feel during and after the period depends greatly on where you are and whom you meet along the way. I'm always amazed at how many people from my home country (US) I talk to who say, "oh I can't afford to go there". For less than $1500, usually, you can go to the opposite…

Frankly world travel has made me happier to live where I am. I think the Americans also deserve some slack for lack of international travel. I really think its out of touch. The rest of the world is far away and its not cheap to travel. $1500 isnt going to pay for many nights in a hotel either. Its a lot to ask for your average person, and very difficult if you have a family. Of course this is less true for your typi…

>$1500 isnt going to pay for many nights in a hotel either.

You're right: $1500 will only get you a few nights at an American hotel chain like Hilton here in Japan ($400/night at Hilton Tokyo). If you use local hotels, you could spend a month here for that much money, but Americans can't stay at non-American hotels, just like they can't go anywhere on public transit and need to rent a huge SUV to drive everywhere.

It's extremely expensive for Americans to travel internationally, because they simply can't live and travel like the locals, and need to do everything like they're back in America.

Re: Films that made people emigrate

#55

Post by shiroiuma »

lmm wrote: post #34
devilbunny wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is just such a transparent lie Let's give it a generous read, though. Your life will be more interesting, in all likelihood, if you travel a lot (I can see a few narrow exceptions, but not the point). However. If you don't leave the US, you are limited to one absolutely huge country that has pretty much every kind of subtropical to alpine climate, landscape, etc., that you can imagine. You don't need a passpo…

> You don't need a passport to pick up and go whenever you like, and - and this really mattered in the immediate post-COVID world - they can't keep you from coming back home. If you're a US citizen you can't be denied entry to the US; if you were going to another continent thne theoretically you could worry about a scenario where they ground all flights (even though they didn't do that at the height of Covid), but ev…

>This mentality is just utterly bizarre to me.

It is bizarre, especially the stuff about the addresses. Has the OP never heard of Google Maps? You just point it where you want to go and it tells you how to get there. No one in Japan cares about addresses; the only thing those are really important for is addressing your mail.

But I don't think his mentality is unusual for Americans who contemplate foreign travel. They really do think they need to hire a tour guide for a week to get around in a foreign country.

Re: Films that made people emigrate

#56

Post by sdenton4 »

justworkout wrote: post #49
devilbunny wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is just such a transparent lie Let's give it a generous read, though. Your life will be more interesting, in all likelihood, if you travel a lot (I can see a few narrow exceptions, but not the point). However. If you don't leave the US, you are limited to one absolutely huge country that has pretty much every kind of subtropical to alpine climate, landscape, etc., that you can imagine. You don't need a passpo…

You can go to the most isolated towns on earth and you'll find people who speak English working in nearly any facility. You'll find signs in English even when you're in the extremely rare case where nobody is speaking up and volunteering to help you in English. Needing to read the language before traveling is putting the cart before the horse. The vast majority of people don't get good at a language or even bother le…

When I was a young hacker, around 2002, I went for a couple weeks hike in the Greek mountains north of Delphi with little more than a map and a backpack. I wandered through a lot of tiny villages, slowly disappearing as the youth all moved to the cities. Each place o would show up and get led to The One Who Speaks English, and then have a truly unique conversation.

In one village the English speaker was an American oil drilling engineer who changed course to become a philosophy professor, and then changed course again to live out his retirement in this tiny Greek mountain town. I really regret not staying longer there.

In the next town, the English speaker was a guy who had left 30 years ago to work in the Canadian fishing industry, and only returned a week previously. He translated for a lot of the family elders, who were reaaally old and remembered doing the yearly pilgrimage on foot through the mountain passes.

(Then I came to a town and chatted with a random person... When I described where I had been and where I was going, she crossed herself and begged me to turn back! Felt like a scene from a Dracula knock off...)

And finally, I came to a very remote village, where I was housed by an Canadian woman who had lived in the village for like sixty years and forgotten all of her English! (Which was communicated through a combination of artifacts, drawing, and pantomime.)

Which is to say, you've gotta get real far off the beaten path to find places where no one speaks English. And even then, people are helpful and fascinating.

Re: Films that made people emigrate

#57

Post by com2kid »

devilbunny wrote: post #25
lmm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not flying is one thing, but so many US-Americans are scared of going into an actually different culture - somewhere where they speak a different language and watch different TV. A lot of people - not everyone, but a lot - could easily reach somewhere like that on that 8 hour road trip, but they won't, and they'll all try and talk about how it's "oh there's so much variety in the US I don't need to" which is just suc…

> which is just such a transparent lie Let's give it a generous read, though. Your life will be more interesting, in all likelihood, if you travel a lot (I can see a few narrow exceptions, but not the point). However. If you don't leave the US, you are limited to one absolutely huge country that has pretty much every kind of subtropical to alpine climate, landscape, etc., that you can imagine. You don't need a passpo…

> I'd love to go to Japan, for example, but it's a long damned way, you can't even read a lot of the signs, and Japanese addresses are... uniquely formed.

Japan caters very well to American tourists. Plenty of menus are in English, signs to anyplace you need to go will have romanized letters, and on top of that your phone will happily translate a decent % of written text.

Heck lots of countries have English signs all over the place. Since a large % of people with money know English, it has become tourist language of sorts.

> She has a terrible sense of direction and has needed me to walk her three or four blocks pointing out landmarks along the way just to make sure she could get to the nearest pharmacy.

Yeah my wife is the same way, we did just fine in Japan. We stuck together, and as a reminder, phones have maps on them, maps that let you live stream your location to other people. Maps that give turn by turn directions so you can find someone if you get separated.

> So now I need to find a guide or guides that I can hire for a week or two, pay for all their expenses as well as their salary, and at least occasionally navigate a sensible but immense transit system with all sorts of unusual quirks.

No, you just go to Japan and eat really damn good food. This is particularly easy in Japan since restaurants there have 3d sculpted models of the dishes they serve out front. Plenty of restaurants have digital ordering kiosks (and they've had them long before the US did), and you just tap on the picture of the dish that looks yummy. It is pretty damn easy. For the ones that don't have kiosks, you can just point at the miniature of whatever dish you want.

Japan gets over a million and a half visitors from the US every year. Capitalism being what it is, plenty of services have sprung up to ensure tourists who can afford a $2k flight have ways to spend the rest of their disposable income.

Re: Films that made people emigrate

#58

Post by com2kid »

shiroiuma wrote: post #55
lmm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't need a passport to pick up and go whenever you like, and - and this really mattered in the immediate post-COVID world - they can't keep you from coming back home. If you're a US citizen you can't be denied entry to the US; if you were going to another continent thne theoretically you could worry about a scenario where they ground all flights (even though they didn't do that at the height of Covid), but ev…

>This mentality is just utterly bizarre to me. It is bizarre, especially the stuff about the addresses. Has the OP never heard of Google Maps? You just point it where you want to go and it tells you how to get there. No one in Japan cares about addresses; the only thing those are really important for is addressing your mail. But I don't think his mentality is unusual for Americans who contemplate foreign travel. They…

> They really do think they need to hire a tour guide for a week to get around in a foreign country.

TBF I've done single day small tour groups with local guides, and when the guide is good, the experience has been amazing.

Doing it first day in Mexico City was actually super useful to get myself orientated and to get a good overview of the mass transit system there, and also to get a list of other things I should do.

Plenty of people from all around the world go on "tour bus" types of tours though, I'd say that before Google Maps and online resources, such tours were likely more popular. You still see huge tour groups at any popular destination, oftentimes grouped together by nationality.

Re: Films that made people emigrate

#59

Post by ggreer »

justworkout wrote: post #50
ggreer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept of Americans being overworked and underpaid is simply incorrect. US PPP-adjusted median disposable income is $46,600/year. Only Luxembourg has higher amounts of disposable income. The average American works 1,765 hours per year, the same as New Zealand. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...

Disposable income is income minus taxes. That money drops fast when you factor in America's extremely high rent, the fact most Americans need a car+insurance+gas, many pay for their own health care, and other various fees. Plus people who do have some savings are often paranoid and save it because they know car trouble or one trip to the doctor will financially ruin them. Flat numerical values alone don't tell the fu…

Average health insurance cost in the US is $5,250 per year, which would put disposable income just below Norway. The median American would need an extra $15,000 in expenses each year to have less spending money than the median German. To get down to UK or Italy levels of disposable income, the median American would need an extra $20,000/year in expenses. Cars, housing, and health insurance aren't that expensive, especially for the median American.

Typical Americans really are wealthier than typical people in other developed countries. As you said, they own cars (which tend to be bigger and more expensive than typical cars elsewhere). They also tend to have bigger houses with more amenities (air conditioning, dishwasher, clothes washer/dryer, kitchen island, etc). Some may consider these uses of wealth to be gauche or indicative of something unhealthy about American way of life, but that doesn't change the fact that they are uses of wealth.

Re: Films that made people emigrate

#60

Post by jongjong »

This was a pleasant read and as a serial immigrant I can relate to moving countries on a hair trigger impulse. Like one line in a movie that reveals something about a different culture which captures your imagination. Makes me chuckle.

Reality is never quite like the movies but there's definitely something there. You do get some sense of fulfillment and you do usually get to experience what you wanted... The problem is usually not that the culture doesn't have what you thought it had (it often does), the problem is that there are often unseen downsides that simply did not occur to you and you could not imagine being a problem before you made the move since they are not a problem in your own culture. You don't notice what your culture gets right.

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