Last year the U.S. experienced something that hasn’t definitively occurred since the Great Depression: More people moved out than moved in. The Trump administration has hailed the exodus—negative net migration—as the fulfillment of its promise to ramp up deportations and restrict new visas. Beneath the stormy optics of that immigration crackdown, however, lies a less-noticed reversal: America’s own citizens are leaving in record numbers, replanting themselves and their families in lands they find more affordable and safe.
I wonder if just like Brits and French, Unitedstaters emigrating elsewhere will call themselves “expats” instead of immigrants.
We, white people of the west, can go anywhere in the world for work, affordability and/or safety without considering ourselves immigrants.
Many years ago I was chatting with someone from Malmö. He was complaining how immigrants were “taking over his city”. But when I mentioned that I, a Canadian, would also like to move to Sweden, he told me it would be fine, that he would not consider me “an immigrant” because I’m from the west.
Anyway, I understand why anyone would want to leave. It’s just that it seems the vocabulary used is different for different people.
I’m an American immigrant in Germany. It’s infuriating how many Germans complain to me about immigrants, then when hearing that I’m an immigrant, wave their hand and say I’m not like the others. I’m now a German teacher and married to a German, so they’ve always got plausible deniability that it’s about language or integration, but I wasn’t always good at German and I only met my husband after a few years here. It used to be much more fun to push back on why.
Daaamn. You moved to a foreign country and became a teacher of their language in said country? Jesus that’s an almost pornographic level of integration. Almost like a flex.
I was German club president in high school and I could not even fathom doing this. Kudos.
I mean, to be fair, it’s not German literature, I’m teaching German as a second language. I’m a big proponent of dual native/nonnative language teaching, because native speakers (almost) always know what’s right and nonnative speakers (almost) always know why. I think of it like having a math teacher who’s a prodigy vs one who struggled with math- both are useful to have for different reasons.
My German’s not perfect, but it’s very good (C2) and it’s good enough to teach new speakers, I just let them know that I also make mistakes.