I’ve seen some news lately about people who are deciding to leave the United States. Apparently there is a long waiting list of people living in Europe who want to renounce their U.S. citizenship.
There are always articles on how to move to other countries, assuming you have enough money, focusing on which countries will welcome you and what the bureaucracy is, but while these used to be aimed at people looking to retire someplace where their money goes farther, it now seems more politically based.
After the Supreme Court’s horrible ruling this week gutting the Voting Rights Act, I saw some discussion by Black people on social media suggesting it was time for African Americans to go elsewhere. I can sympathize with that, though I doubt it’s a practical option for most.
As for me, though, I’m not going anywhere.
For one thing, the horrible things being done by the grifter and his minions to the United States are, unfortunately, not confined to the United States. I doubt there’s much of any place in the world you can be truly safe from the ravages of these people.
Also, I don’t want to live somewhere where I don’t have the right to participate in public life — to vote, to advocate, to march in the streets – and ties to other people as neighbors and friends. I’d want to be able to speak the language well enough to fit in and complain to local officials.
I don’t have any right to citizenship in another country except what they might allow through immigration, and I doubt I have enough years left to get that done, get really comfortable in the language, and actually become a full citizen before I’m too old for it to matter.
As I have written before, I am not a person with a deep connection to place. Whenever I visit somewhere else, I always think about what it would be like to live there. I’ve visited some lovely places.
Which is to say, I could probably live somewhere else. It just doesn’t seem like a reasonable course of action at this point in my life. And I don’t think running away would solve anything.
Recently it has been pointed out that anyone with a Canadian great-great grandparent can acquire Canadian citizenship. I don’t fall into that category, but I know others who do. And I know of people whose parents and grandparents came here from other countries who have recently acquired passports for those places.
If I did have the right to citizenship in another country, I would go after it, not for escaping the current regime but for the value of having ties to more than one place.
I have noticed in recent years that a lot of the best analysts of what’s going on in the United States today are people with dual citizenship or deep ties to other countries, particularly Canada. I suspect having such ties undermines the overwhelming propaganda about American exceptionalism – found everywhere from news reports to history classes to the way we structure official holidays – which affects even people like me who’ve read enough history and political theory to know better.
Alas, I lack any such ties. The most recent immigrant in my family history came from Ireland before the Civil War. My family is tied to the United States and thoroughly integrated in our history — the good and the bad — going back before the Revolution.
It is sobering to try to balance the genuine respect I have for the strong pioneer women among my ancestors – I come from a long line of powerful women on both sides – while recognizing the genocide and enslavement that made it possible. But any ties I have to European countries are too remote to give me any real connection there (except, perhaps, for my grandmother’s love of the Irish based on her love of her Irish grandfather).
There’s no other place on the planet where I belong as much as I do here. In fact, while I’m not planning to leave California, there’s probably no place I belong as much as in Texas despite being very tired of the mythology of Anglo Texas.
I’m foundering around for a theory here. I think where I’m coming to is some kind of combination of the importance of being an active part of the place where you live and the importance of understanding that the rules and systems of that place are not the only way to do things, much less the only good way to do it.
And for the sake of all the living beings on the planet on which we live, it’s way past time to get rid of American exceptionalism!