Abandoning the USA (or your home country)

It's not as easy as you would think ... or maybe not as difficult.

I’d like to thank the twenty of you for believing in me enough, or being interested in wha I’m writing about enough to have subscribed. All of you will have your names inscribed on the door of Satoshi Manor where I’ve written the Indignified Manifesto. You are akin to the original signers of the Declaration of Independence.

And that sort of brings me to today’s topic - abandoning your home country - which in my case is the United States of America, the country that declared independence from monarchy and dictatorship in 1776 and 250 years later is quickly falling into bed with both once again. I’ve had issues with the reality of the USA for most of my adult life. This dissatisfaction came about from the confluence of several factors in my life. A sense of American idealism and exceptionalism, a highly dissatisfactory experience in the US Marines, and an embracing of critical thinking skills and theory.

For free subscribers, this post will talk about the impracticalities of leaving your home country that most people never think about along with a few strategies for overcoming those things. For paid subscribers - below the paywall, I’ll dig into the nitty gritty how how I have left the USA and lived abroad multiple times. I’ve been almost a year in Japan where I plan to stay because the only house I own is here. My home, Satoshi Manor.

Now in the words of the literally immortal Doctor Who - “Allons-y!”

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Most people never consider the fact that your country doesn’t want you to leave. People are a resource and citizens not only provide taxes and the man-power to fight wars, they also give the country its vitality through their labor, consumption, and output energy. There’s a reason you get checked on both sides of the border. As with most things, if you have wealth - everything is easier.

What would a world with no borders look like? We will never know because governments don’t want you to leave and they use a wide range of control systems to hold you in place. Taxes, bank accounts, social security. These are hard control systems but there are others - family, assets and possessions, language, culture, hell even the internet. Each country has their own app stores, their own Netflix, their own anything else that serves to tie people to a place.

So, let’s imagine for a moment that you are American and you want to leave the USA forever. So, you get your passport (because you can’t just walk across the border without one), you sell all your possessions, you say your goodbyes, and you go to your country of choice to live forever. Once there, you burn your passport, get rid of all your identity as an American, and you wash your hands of it all. Done!

Except now you are screwed. Even countries that are the most friendly with the USA (not as common as they used to be) have rules about how long you can stay. You might have an automatic visa but there is still a time limit. Even Canada (especially now) requires that you go through their immigration process if you want to stay. And guess what? You will need to show that you have money (bank accounts), that you have a job, that you have a place to live and can continue to pay for it, and to prove your identity (oops, you burned your passport and identity card). So, unless you’ve already done all of that, you can’t build a life because you will have the constant threat of being deported.

If you have married (hopefully for love!) a citizen of the country you want to move to, there is a path forward, but you will have to provide lots of documentation, go through a lengthy process, and you still run the risk of being denied if they deem you to be unfit or your marriage is suspect for some reason. The process of bringing my ex-wife to the USA and getting her citizenship took years and required huge amounts of paperwork and navigating bureaucracy. We didn’t marry for the visa - but they treated us as if we had. That’s the default. Unless, of course, you have money.

As an illegal, you can probably find illegal work that will pay you a much lessor amount than the same legal work would. This is literally wage slavery. In 1998, I intended to stay in the UK instead of returning to the USA. I found a job busting up concrete driveways with a band of Irish gypsies in Rugby, England. They literally locked me in a caravan at night to keep me from escaping. After a week of back breaking work, I left a job site to go take a pee and just kept walking. The boss had wanted to take control of my passport when he hired me, but I told him I had lost it. So, you face that- and much worse - in particular if you are female and attractive. I couldn’t exactly call the police on the gypsies because I was working illegally and would have been deported.

In Japan (and China and many other countries) you can’t get a mobile phone contract without having a visa, valid residence documents, and a bank account. You also can’t get a bank account without a valid residency visa. You certainly can’t get a job. You can’t start a business. As a digital nomad, you may be able to earn enough to not need it but I’ve heard horror stories about people earning through their online work and then being caught by Japanese authorities and deported because they were working illegally in Japan. I think this is rare, but it happens.

And let’s consider that aspect. What if you run afoul of the law? Guess what? Deported back to your ‘home country’ even if you’ve decided that it's not your home at all.

You would think that owning a home would make a difference, but in Japan it doesn’t. As a foreigner, I’m allowed to own my home, but that doesn’t give me the right to live or work in it. I need a visa to stay here longer than the 90 days a. tourist visa allows. And as a tourist, I’m not allowed to work while I’m here. I pay property taxes, I live here, but technically, I’m not allowed to live here unless I have the proper permission - a visa. Other countries might be more strict or less - it depends on the country but unfortunately - the easier it is to stay somewhere, the less likely that you want to stay.

So how do you stay?

• a spousal visa

• a working visa (in Japan and many other countries you must be sponsored by a company with enough $$$ to back you)

• a religious activities, cultural, or other visa (hard to get and require $$$ behind you)

• a refugee visa (not an option for me…yet)

There are a wide variety of visas but they all require two things - proof of income and lots of paperwork that needs to be filled out the right way. Again, if you have $$$ you can do this easier. Many countries offer the golden passport where all you need to do is pay big bucks, make a significant investment, or prove you are wealthy.

So to wrap up this section - how do you leave your home country and stay somewhere else and what do you need to consider before you do?

• You can do it illegally. Ignoring rules and running the risk of being caught.

• You can go through the process requiring time, money, bureaucracy

• You can be wealthy

Things to consider:

• Don’t burn the bridge back to your home country. You may need to go back. In fact, it’s likely that you will need to for some reason.

• How will you get phone, internet, health insurance?

• Language and culture - the differences are bigger than you expect before you live there a significant time

• Work - what will you do for money?

I hope that this has made you think about a few factors you might not have otherwise. Leaving your country is a process. I wonder how many people would walk away if DJT said “We’ll pay. you $xxxxx and assist with resettlement”? Would I? Honestly, not yet.

Please share this post - let’s get thirty more signers for the Indignified Manifesto at Satoshi Manor.

~CD Familias

Satoshi Manor

Otaru, Japan