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Films that made people emigrate

theguardian.com

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Re: Films that made people emigrate

#61

Post by 082349872349872 »

jowea wrote: post #51
schoen wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 count…

If the random frenchman happened to have been jewish, Moscow would've been out of the question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement

Re: Films that made people emigrate

#62

Post by justworkout »

ggreer wrote: post #59
justworkout wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, espe…

And by spending money on bigger, expensive cars and bigger, expensive amenities... they end up with less money to spend on travel. Plus there's the fact Americans need to spend more on flights and spend more time to visit Asia or Europe than people in those respective regions do.

You can take a taxi and eat at restaurants daily absolutely anywhere in Asia with a fraction of the median US salary. The cost of many things is simply higher in the US. You can get paid $20 an hour, but if a basic sandwich costs $15, you're not saving as much as someone who gets paid $10 and can buy $2 sandwiches. But on paper, the person making $20/hour has tremendously higher disposable income.

Re: Films that made people emigrate

#63

Post by [deleted] »

jowea wrote: post #51
schoen wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 count…

[deleted]

Re: Films that made people emigrate

#64

Post by [deleted] »

ggreer wrote: post #59
justworkout wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, espe…

[deleted]

Re: Films that made people emigrate

#65

Post by 082349872349872 »

ggreer wrote: post #38
houseatrielah wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American workers barely get any vacation and they probably don't want to burn what little they have on flight time. Mexico is a very popular and that's a different culture and language.

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...

So, where are you going next August?

Re: Films that made people emigrate

#66

Post by 082349872349872 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #32
widenrun wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not perfect, but as an immigrant, I can usually split locals into two groups as soon as I meet them: Those who spent time overseas and those who never left. The conversations are so distinct!

"Oh look at my country's patriots / hunting down below / what do they know of England / who only England know?" (a misquotation of Rudyard Kipling that I've carried in my head for 30 years)

Interesting to see that Bragg did a US tour in 1984; I've always heard rumours that it is difficult to get band visas there, and his lyrics are not exactly Reagan-adjacent.

Re: Films that made people emigrate

#67

Post by ggreer »

082349872349872 wrote: post #65
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...

So, where are you going next August?

In April I’m going on a 10 day cruise through the Caribbean, then spending some time in Puerto Rico.

In August people will be traveling to me, as I’m getting married. We’re not yet sure where we’ll go honeymooning.

Re: Films that made people emigrate

#68

Post by 082349872349872 »

ggreer wrote: post #67
082349872349872 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, where are you going next August?

In April I’m going on a 10 day cruise through the Caribbean, then spending some time in Puerto Rico. In August people will be traveling to me, as I’m getting married. We’re not yet sure where we’ll go honeymooning.

congratulations!

Re: Films that made people emigrate

#69

Post by devilbunny »

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…

A US citizen cannot ultimately be denied entry, but they can be denied permission to board the plane to get there if it's an international flight.

And given that I can't go back to when she was 18 and train her how to do these things, it's just one of those things that I have to accept and deal with. Not all fights are worth having, even if you're in the right.

If you find it bizarre, well, so be it. It reflects certain constraints on my life. Maybe some of them are really silly, but if I'm going to Japan, I don't want to spend my entire time in major cities, and this is by far the most direct route to my goal.

Re: Films that made people emigrate

#70

Post by devilbunny »

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…

I've done two-week trips of Central Europe, the UK and Ireland, southern Spain and Portugal, and the Low Countries/Normandy with no guides (except for local city guides to see interesting bits of history) and no assistance - land, rent car, drive to hotels, drive between cities, usually change itinerary partway through.

So I'm not averse to doing things that way. And I'm not doing some &^#$Q@ bus tour. But if you want to see the countryside and stay in an onsen* and all that, it's not quite as simple as "someone has good English". I've encountered places in all those where nobody around spoke good English, and we made do in another language and Google Translate. Assuming that, of course, you have good cell service - which was a problem when I tried to drive into a restricted area of old town Krakow. The police officer was polite and helpful, but we didn't share a language and cell service was slooooooow. And Google Maps was absolutely dead wrong about routing and cost me an hour of driving around in a circle (it was rush hour, so traffic, and it though certain roads were connected when they were not - this was only five or six years ago, so not ancient history). My hotel was in that area, so they let me through.

My concerns may be overblown, but they're not arising out of some complete ignorance of how the world works.

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