Naysayers gonna naysay
Some people are going to try to hold you back from seeking a better life; don't let them
Whenever a person endeavors to take on a new challenge, whether it’s trying to make it as a freelance writer or moving to a new country, there seems to be a phenomenon that will reliably happen as surely as our sun rises and sets each day: some people are just going to poo-pah whatever it is you're trying to do. The riskier or more novel your undertaking appears to be to others, the stronger and more numerous their objections seem to be.
I recently published a Substack about the American Diaspora presently underway, of which I am a part. Almost on cue, I received an unsolicited, naysaying comment on one of the social media platforms where I shared my piece from a person I know from a community I previously lived in.
This “Negative Nancy” angrily insisted that only affluent people had the means to move internationally. The implication was that I, in leaving my country behind, was exercising a privilege of wealth, which is not only untrue, it’s also a harmful idea that I want to nip in the bud. But more on that later…
What's going on here?
First, I want to talk about this naysaying phenomenon, especially in the context of moving away from a community (or country) that no longer meets your needs, because let me tell you, this is a known thing1 you may also encounter if you decide to move.
We didn't disclose our plans to move to Portugal to our friends and family until things were already very much in motion. Our minds were made up and we had no doubts about doing what was best for us, so I did not foresee the very strong, negative reactions a few people would have to the news. I wasn't interested in being argued with. Our decision to move was not up for debate. But once the announcement was made, the unsolicited feedback missiles were target locked and incoming: you're being reckless, you're overreacting, you haven't thought this through, you won't be any better off, etc.
I was really taken aback by these reactions. Plenty of others were excited for us, several were curious about the details because they had been secretly thinking about it, too, but it had simply not occurred to me that a certain subset of people would be so hostile to something we were doing that had nothing whatsoever to do with them.
I can only guess that there's something psychological at play here, and while I’m no expert on that kind of thing, I think perhaps it causes some people cognitive dissonance. Perhaps our choosing to move internationally challenges some people's need to protect their belief that they live in the best possible place and that even if things are kinda messed up right now, everything is going to be fine eventually (which is an unhealthy and dangerous kind of optimism bias that puts people in harm's way). I suspect our choice to leave must trigger some subconscious fearful emotions, maybe even some unrecognized jealously. “How dare you move and not stay and suffer like the rest of us!”
Some people were obnoxiously oblivious to our reasons for leaving, too. Several, including former coworkers of mine, wrongly assumed we were going for the adventure and thrill and treated our move like we were going on an extended vacation, which felt like a serious insult to me. We were literally leaving out of desperation to survive, leaving behind the lives we'd built, everyone we cared about, and all of our worldly possessions that we couldn't fit into our suitcases.
We had just bought our dream home and moved in in June, but by late October we could no longer ignore that things were going downhill so badly and rapidly in the U.S. that we started planning to move out of the country. We hadn't even finished unpacking and just had new furniture delivered (to replace furniture our moving company badly damaged), and next thing you know, we're giving everything, including the new furniture, away to friends and sending the rest to Goodwill! People seeking adventure don't do these things, but people running for their lives do.
And so, I want to flip that narrative of our having the privilege to move on its head and suggest that those who think this is so maybe ought to consider they have the privilege to stay. This especially applies to the white, comfortably middle-class naysayers who are in cishet, or cishet passing, relationships. Every single person with something negative to say about our move has come from this demographic. All of them also live in “blue” states, or in blue cities within purple states.
We left because we calculated the risk of leaving was far less than the risk of staying. After a year of mounting health catastrophes, two of which nearly killed me, and a barrage of overlapping stressors (all traceable to the slow-motion collapse of society), I foresaw an early grave awaiting me if I stayed.
If it wasn't death from rising violence (especially the violence being targeted at queer and gender non-conforming people like me and my other family members) or death from the crumbling and bankruptcy-inducing healthcare infrastructure, the death would come more slowly, but all too soon, from the continuous stress levels that were already working to shut down my body bit by bit.
So, I want the naysayers to understand that your negativity might cause people who have very valid reasons to want to seek a path to safety to succumb to self-doubt about the validity of their fears. You might inadvertently cause their death. Knock it off. Other people choosing to seek a better life isn't about you. You lose nothing by keeping your opinions to yourself. Your unsolicited criticism just further adds to our anguish.
And it was and is anguishing. I, and some of the other U.S. immigrants I’ve talked to here, have had to grapple with survivor's guilt and the knowledge that a lot of people aren't going to make it out. I hate that I feel so powerless to do much about that apart from try to help as many people as I can from a place of safety and to write about all of this to let as many people as I can know about what's going on in the U.S.
Most people I've talked to in Europe have no idea how bad it's gotten in the U.S. The devastating and interconnected effects of hyper-capitalism, massive inequality, racism, political polarization, the militarization of the Police State, and overt fascist Christian Nationalism isn't the kind of news that makes it out of the U.S. and into mainstream news here. Most Europeans get their ideas about Americans based on what they see coming out of Hollywood.
And the thing is, what happens in the United States doesn't stay in the United States. The U.S. has sent its tentacles into the rest of the world so far and so deep, that if it collapses, the rest of the world will be affected (and arguably many or most places would be a lot better off without those meddlesome tentacles, but not without some major political, economic, and social upheaval while the dust settles).
I reasoned that since I can't help make the world a better place if I'm dead, the best way to help those suffering was to get myself to a place where I have a better shot at staying alive awhile longer.
Okay, reel it in JD…
Clearing up misconceptions
I want to address a few of the misconceptions I’ve heard expressed about who has the ability to move out of the U.S., because I hope to help people who might not see themselves as potential immigrants realize it might not be as impossible as you think. It's true some people won't be able to for various reasons, some of which I touched on in The American Diaspora, or will face far more difficult barriers that may be greater than the barriers of staying put, but I’ve talked to a lot of people who had discounted the possibility who realized by the end of our conversation that maybe it wasn't so impossible after all.
No, you don't have to be wealthy to move abroad
Obviously, having a lot of money at your disposal makes an international move significantly easier, but wealth is not necessarily a requirement. If wealth was a requirement for people to immigrate, all the bitching and moaning from politicians about migrants in the U.S., the U.K., and many other more affluent nations wouldn't even make sense. (And really, it doesn't make sense, but that's a post for another time, perhaps.)
One misconception related to that, which I want to clear up, is a belief that you must have a lot of money to hire an immigration attorney. False.
None of the other immigrants I’ve met in Portugal hired an immigration attorney, as far as I know. In fact, I got chastised by one admin of a Facebook group for hiring one because the point of the group was to provide free DIY immigration resources and crowdsourced answers to questions. Unfortunately, none of the available resources in the group were helpful for figuring our way around our primary hurdle, which was figuring out how to bring an unrelated trans man with us (my son's partner) and deal with discrepancies in his official documentation due to his name change.
I want to keep this from getting too much longer, so I won't go into all the other valid reasons we had in our situation to hire a professional, but the point is most people don't, and even though we did, he accepted payments for his services over time.
Another misconception was so wild I'm going to only address it very briefly: the cost of air fare as a barrier to immigration.
Yeah, we needed to purchase air fare… because we moved across the ocean. Most people leaving the U.S. move to Mexico though, so no air fare required. And also, Canada exists (though is more difficult to move to than Mexico).
Also, if you watch for deals or buy far enough out, sometimes air fare is surprisingly cheap, even to fly across the pond. “Cheap” is relative, of course. If you're one of the people being targeted by ads enticing you in America's end-stage capitalist hellscape to finance a pizza for dinner, air fare is probably out of reach for you. And that genuinely sucks. (As I mentioned in The American Diaspora, if you are transgender or gender non-conforming and seeking help in relocating, either within the U.S. or out of the country, there are nonprofits trying to assist with that. For help moving internationally, check out TRANSport.)
It's also the kind of desperate situation I worried I'd end up in myself if I stuck around. You know what they say about Americans—that the vast majority of us are just one major health issue away from homelessness… yeah, that's literally where I was headed if I didn't do everything in my power to get us the hell out.
Also, the argument about needing to be wealthy really falls apart when you consider the cost of living is relatively lower in much of the rest of the world. Locals receiving local income will probably disagree, and it's true that in some places, immigration from higher-income countries to lower-income countries is causing some problems for locals, but there are ways you can try to minimize and/or maybe offset the harm. And of course there are cities in countries that are much more expensive than most cities in the U.S., so we didn't consider those ones.
But once you factor in the money you probably won't have to spend on things like expensive utilities, healthcare, transportation, etc., even if apartment rent was higher (which, where I live, it's definitely not), you would still have a lot more money left in your account at the end of the month.
In the interest of keeping this already long post shorter, I'm not going to go into the many different countries and visa types to explore to find a place that might work best for you, but no, you don't necessarily have to be able to remote work to move. There are countries seeking people with many different skill sets, countries with job-seeking visas and student visas (and many foreign colleges have entire degree programs in English). Basically, you won't know if you don't start looking into it. The Internet has pretty much all the information you need if you're willing to put the time and effort in, and there are dozens of online groups full of people at various stages on the immigration path helping each other out.
Now, if you're hoping to bring all your belongings with you and to maintain the same lifestyle some luckier people may be accustomed to in the U.S., like living in a big house and having a couple of cars, yeah, you're going to need to be pretty wealthy to achieve that. Overseas shipping is very expensive, which is why we didn't bring anything but some clothes in suitcases with us. (We did leave a few dear possessions behind to be stored in a relative's house, and we hope to be reunited with those sentimental pieces one day.)
So, how much money it takes might mostly boil down to a matter of assessing what really matters to you and adjusting your expectations. For us, possessions and cars and a nice house weren't sources of happiness or freedom, but rather the consumer capitalist trappings that stole happiness and freedom.
One of the ways we sourced money to help us get here, by the way, was selling extra cars and all of us getting by with a single vehicle until the very end.
We live in a modest apartment here, use public transportation and our feet to get where we need to go, and own nothing more than what we actually need and use, and we are so much more happy and free now.
I am not going to sugar coat how stressful an international move can be, too. We went through some harrowing, unforeseen circumstances. I have cried so much. We got to a point last month where our bank account was so dangerously low that I broke down and asked for a donation in a mutual aid group (thank you to the random stranger who sent $25 on Venmo!). A big part of that was we did not foresee I'd lose my job less than 2 months after moving. But I would have lost it if I’d stayed in the U.S. anyhow and would have been in an infinitely more dangerous situation there. Here, it's not the end of the world.
All the struggles and pain have been sooooo worth it. I have zero regrets and I'd go through all of it again, because our quality of life is dramatically better, and we are safe and surrounded with amazing, talented, caring people from all over the world. I think there's something about Portugal, in particular, that draws our kind of people to it—the kind of people you want to have as friends as WWIII is breaking out and the climate emergency threatens humanity.
Naysayers gonna naysay, but if you are in a situation where you also calculate that the dangers of staying are greater than the dangers of taking a chance on the unknown, don't let other people's fear and jealousy prevent you from doing what's best for you.
You have a right to seek safety. You have a right to seek freedom. I hope you do, and I hope you find it. You just have to push open that door and cross the threshold…
I have anecdotal evidence from a few others that they have also been the recipients of negative feedback like I’ve described when they announced their move. I've also heard similar stories about people assuming the emigrating person was doing it for fun and not because they were fleeing. Have you had an experience like this? Tell me about it!
Although we deliberately chose to live in distant places, on the occasions when we visited our families and friends back home, we always felt an undertow of disapproval from several. My own father frankly said I was wasting my life doing what I did. I finally reminded him that it was my life to waste, if what he said was true, and I would continue until I was satisfied that it was as completely wasted as I could make it by his standard. He was bitter that my life was no longer his to control. It’s a hard thing to hear words like those from loved ones, because deliberately hurting anyone was never one of my reasons for living abroad, but as Tara Westover wrote, ““You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them. You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.”
We must follow our own muse, our guiding star, the beat of our own drum no matter how measured or far away. It’s who we are.
This is so interesting! While I never would post the kind of angry retort you describe here, I am guilty of suffering many of the misconceptions you clear up here. Thank you for educating me! It's so sad that the US zeitgeist encourages reactive judgement and admonishment instead of self-examination into our own fear-based impulses. For myself, your choice to move abroad invokes in me fears of the unknown, my own sense of feeling trapped/doomed in a society that doesn't give a shit about people like me and seems to be circling the drain anyway, and yes, I'll admit it - some envy, too, at your successful escape. For both your sake and the sakes of all those who lash out or judge you, I sincerely wish that we, culturally, were better at supporting and encouraging people to examine their own unpleasant emotional responses, and hopefully learn something from them, rather than knee-jerking. I know that I, for one, am humbly learning from both you and myself in this moment, and I thank you for that! 💚