...from The News Blog

http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2006/04/your-city-is-so-much-fun.html

And there I was looking for a topic to post...

After visiting BsAs about a half a dozen times beginning in 2000, I decided to immigrate in late 2003.

I saw the WaPo article and didn't think too much about it, there have been a lot of similar articles in the world press but this one did seem to concentrate specifically on expats so it merited a bit more than a look.

The News Blog is always great. I'm glad I didn't see Steve's post until there were already about 70 comments: they are the best part of the post.

The main thing about the article and the post and the comments is that there is a visceral reaction by every red-blooded American to seeing our countrymen decide to live in another country. That's the main thing that makes the article interesting and that's what made Steve post about it and that's why the comments were especially good. 

The fact that the "star of the show" was a young American woman out to have fun was not accidental. It makes the whole phenomena easier to dismiss and deride.

The US is someplace that people immigrate TO. When we see some of our best rewarded citizens (our poor, of course, don't have that choice) moving to any other country we are struck by one or more of the following negative reactions:

1. Silly people! Don't they know that the USA is number 1?
2. Bad people! They go to capitalize on the suffering of others.
3. Stupid people! What are they going to do when the money runs out?
4. Lucky sonsabitches! I wish I could do that but, of course, I could never..."blank". Fill in the blank with whatever you like but imagination counts for more than dollars.

As to the first: you, me, everybody born and raised in the US suffers from varying degrees of isolation. This isolation is made even more difficult to realize when it occures in the center of the universe. Whether it's due to our media, our world- stomping- mass- mono- culture, or our shining seas, we all have invested ourselves in the confidence-game that tells us we are the greatest, that if there was a better idea it would have come out of the USA, that we have the highest standard of living, that we have the best medical care, that we have the best education, that we have the best form of government, ad nauseum.

People from other countries buy into this as well thus the success of our having "buffaloed" the rest of the world long after we have actually been a force for good, a city on the hill, an honest broker, blah, blah, blah. The Bush administration didn't destroy this single-handedly.

As to the second: I have met people that wouldn't even go to Cancun because they said to do so would be trafficing in the suffering of others. Yeah. Right. This has a lot more to do with the isolation of the previous point than any moral squeemishness. Some people don't want to know that others live at a level of lower consumerism than they do. 

Some don't want to be confronted with people that live in the hills of Jalisco with more happiness, less possessions, and dare we say, more closeness to their family and their God than we do. Add the fact that only some 20% of US citizens possess passports (a figure that drives foriegners crazy..and I think is too high) then mix, stir, and contemplate.

The third point has a lot to do with the character of Americans as it has emerged post-1970's. After Vietnam, our national character changed and began to change more. To this day, economists have trouble explaining what happened in 1973. A cold wind began to blow through the American Dream. The result was "get yours and get yours now." The children of the Isolated   

People heard the message and hunkered down for a piece of the pie that had stopped expanding exponentially. This gave rise to the culture of "greed is good" and has continued to the point today that Michael Douglas' portrayal from the movie Wall Street seems laughably naive to today's viewers. What Americans are willing to do today to "stay ahead of the game" from college debt to hours of comumuting to day-care to, yes, 100 hour work-weeks would not only shock our grandparents but shocks our parents which are probably not far enough emotionally removed to advise us of the ultimate folly.

"What are they going to do when the money runs out?", indeed. What are we all going to do? No matter where we are when that happens.

The fourth affects the least amount of Americans, I think, but the percentage is significant. There are many of us that are looking for the exits; everybody knows somebody in the office or plant like that. We generally think of "sustainable" as something from the environmental movement but the realization that even among the somewhat better compensated of our cohorts that continuing our chosen or potential careers is "shit for birds" doesn't take too much imagination. Doing something about it does...when we do, we become expatriates.

The term "expatriate" doesn't actually apply, as some of Steve's commenters point out. An expatriate, technically, is someone who performs a task for his home country in another land. This comes with the forseeable re-patriation however open ended. It doesn't encompass tourists or "travelers" and certainly doesn't gather people that don't want to ever come back.

Back to Buenos Aires and Argentina:

The US Dollar. No getting around that. The Dollar is strong here and for several reasons. Primarily, the Argentine government supports the Dollar to an artificial level in order to make imports more expensive and exports more attractive.

The Argentine economy has, by some measures, expanded since 2002 at a rate of more than 9% per year due to these policies.

In case it needs said, this country is enormous and vital. It is one third the size of the continental US and is very similar in variety of topography and climate. One big difference is the presence and importance of manufacturing and strong internal markets.

Personal income tax here is virtually unrecognizable to Americans. Taxation here is a very regressive one based on ownership and consumption. To put it too simply, if you own property you pay taxes and whenever you consume items you pay a significant "sales" tax. This makes it difficult on the poor Argentines. However, other than the inevitable inflation of prices in some quarters (harder on the rich that the poor) due to an infusion of foreign spending, illegal residents and even illegal workers (if such a thing actually existed in significant numbers) do not rob the state of revenue. If you live here or even stay here temporarily, by your very consumption you satisfy the treasury.

There is no work here for illegal "first worlders". Buenos Aires universities are the envy of the continent and have always been so. Furthermore, they are free. There is not much reason to pay a "living wage" to an illegal American for lessons in English. Bolivians and Peruvians find work in small numbers, always in the capitol, but at pay scales that would not pay for coffee in the lovely cafes let alone housing that would be acceptable to backpackers.

Argentina is, however, a nation of immigrants on a level very recognizable to Americans. Perhaps even more so. There has never been the reactionary barring of foreigners of the kind that has been seen so often in US history. Immigration policy and citizenship is even enshrined in the Argentine constitution itself. I know of no other country in which it is so easy to become a legal resident. Any phone book in the country bares a strong resemblance to that of one from any of the 3 or 4 largest US cities.

One of Steve's commenters alluded to the fact that this is not the place for those seeking relief from stress. Very true on many levels! But show me a large or medium sized city in the US where one can find scores of elderly people taking an ice cream at midnight and later on almost every city block.

That fact speaks to crime. There is crime here and there is crime in the US...that is as far as the comparison goes. No American would recognize the police blotter here as crime.

Elderly people eating ice cream at midnight, and walking everywhere at all hours, and being an active and involved part of all aspects of society, also leads us to health care. High quality and free. With the addition of a few dollars per month, it gets even better. My foriegn guests in Chicago often would ask me, "where are all the old people?" No one asks that here.

Health care also leads us to mention the middle-class. Argentina by itself has always been famous for a middle-class larger than all of Latin America combined. That's right, combined. I suspect, due to the fate of middle-class people everywhere, that it still does despite the tough financial times experienced here in the last 3 years.

I've tried to stick to a cold hard factual assessment of this beautiful city and the industrial power and patriotism of the nation as a whole. It wouldn't be complete, though, without a description of the dreaminess of the year-round average temperature of 68 degrees, the lack of frost, the palms, the jacarandas, the "palos borrachos", the magnolias. The archicture, the cafe culture (paper cups are unknown), the cultural diversity (though it lacks the infusion of the African that makes the US so vital), and most importantly the cultural willingness to embrace every culture and influence on earth if it benefits the nation...without any conflict or abandoning any "Argentine-ness".

A Parisien traveler in 1911 wrote, "While the physiognomy of the streets of Buenos Aires is wholly European in symmetry, style, and even in the expression of the faces to be seen thereon, yet this people is Argentine to the very marrow of the bones, exclusively and entirely Argentine. New York is nearer to Europe, and New York is North American in essence as completely as Buenos Aires is Argentine. The difference is that in New York, and even in Boston or Chicago, North Americanism is patent to all eyes in type, in carriage, and in voice, as much as in feeling and manner of thinking; whereas the piquancy of Buenos Aires lies in the fact that it offers the spectacle of rabid Argentinism under a European veil. And, strangely enough, this inherent jingoism, which in some nations that shall be nameless assumes so easily an offensive guise, is here displayed with an amiable candour that is most disarming, and instinctively you seek to justify it to your-self. Not satisfied with being Argentine from top to toe, these people will, if you let them, Argentinise you in a trice." Same as it ever was.

Don't worry for Argentina being plagued with foriegn dilletants, she has seen them throughout her history and the lucky ones have been absorbed. The hard working types have been often retained as well and to this day fortunes large and small bear English, Irish, French, Italian and Polish names...just to name a few.

Thanks to all who suggested moving to the US heartland...but no thanks. I was born and raised there and while I wouldn't trade it for anything, all in all, it remains for me a "nice place to be from." There is no way to describe it all in one post but this is truly one of the great cities, places, and peoples of the world. Instead, you could better lament the loss of bright, young, brave people that seek their fortunes elsewhere. There is generally more to it than excellent steak and wine for the price of a Big Mac.