Leaving America

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Thanks,

Ken Smith

Family moves to Sweden for medical care

Here is an interesting account by a science blogger for Scientific American. He was born in the USA and his wife is from Sweden. They have two children. He has struggled for years in graduate school and a variety of jobs. The family no longer has medical insurance and there are big worries that the six-year-old son might contract pneumonia again -- with medical bills totaling $50,000. So, the family is moving to the wife's home country of Sweden. This is well worth reading and I wonder how many Americans would do the same if given the opportunity.

I have lived a total of two years in Denmark and I have traveled in Sweden, mostly on the western side from Gothenburg to Malmo. I have a fairly good idea of what this family's new life will be. After learning the story, I believe the family is making the right move.

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By Kevin Zelnio

As I am getting to ready to begin a new chapter of my life in my wife’s homeland, I will keep a journal here to mark my thoughts and transitions to life as an expat American in Sweden. It will be marked, so those only interested in my science content can separate it out. I hope you enjoy!

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U.S. Immigrants’ Children Seek Jobs Abroad

This New York Times article tells about young, educated Americans returning to their ancestral home in India because of better job prospects. I have seen a similar trend here in Mexico. Young Mexican-Americans, US citizens, are moving to Mexico. In the past several years, I have met engineers, programmers, network administrators and a Cordon Bleu trained chef who are now working in Mexico. They are native speaker fluent in English, well educated and they most often learned Spanish in their families as children.

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Samir N. Kapadia seemed to be on the rise in Washington, moving from an internship on Capitol Hill to jobs at a major foundation and a consulting firm. Yet his days, he felt, had become routine.

By contrast, friends and relatives in India, his native country, were telling him about their lives in that newly surging nation. One was creating an e-commerce business, another a public relations company, still others a magazine, a business incubator and a gossip and events Web site.

“I’d sit there on Facebook and on the phone and hear about them starting all these companies and doing all these dynamic things,” recalled Mr. Kapadia, 25, who was born in India but grew up in the United States. “And I started feeling that my 9-to-5 wasn’t good enough anymore.”

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Americans give up U.S. citizenship over taxes

I don't make or have enough money to be included in the new IRS regulations for expats, but I have a general interest in the topic -- just in case the threshhold ever gets down to my level. As for Americans giving up their US citizenship, I believe that's a big step just to avoid paying taxes, even if those taxes are high. The world could indeed be facing an economic crisis and it might just be handy to be able to return home. Here is a good Reuters article about Americans leaving the USA.

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A year ago, in Action Comics, Superman declared plans to renounce his U.S. citizenship. "'Truth, justice, and the American way' -- it's not enough anymore," the comic book superhero said, after both the Iranian and American governments criticized him for joining a peaceful anti-government protest in Tehran. Last year, almost 1,800 people followed Superman's lead, renouncing their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards. That's a record number since the Internal Revenue Service began publishing a list of those who renounced in 1998. It's also almost eight times more than the number of citizens who renounced in 2008, and more than the total for 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined.

But not everyone's motivations are as lofty as Superman's. Many say they parted ways with America for tax reasons. The United States is one of the only countries to tax its citizens on income earned while they're living abroad. And just as Americans stateside must file tax returns each April (this year, the deadline is Tuesday) an estimated 6.3 million U.S. citizens living abroad brace for what they describe as an even tougher process of reporting their income and foreign accounts to the IRS. For them, the deadline is June.

Read the entire article . . .

U.S. filmmaker repeatedly detained at border

I have flown into the USA from a foreign country at least a dozen times since 9/11. I have never been hassled by TSA. But, I have read enough articles to believe the accounts by others of unconstitutional questioning and searching. Read this account by Glenn Greenwald (a journalist I trust) about Laura Poitras, an Oscar-and Emmy-nominated filmmaker.

 From Greenwald's article:

Poitras’ work has been hampered, and continues to be hampered, by the constant harassment, invasive searches, and intimidation tactics to which she is routinely subjected whenever she re-enters her own country. Since the 2006 release of “My Country, My Country,” Poitras has left and re-entered the U.S. roughly 40 times. Virtually every time during that six-year-period that she has returned to the U.S., her plane has been met by DHS agents who stand at the airplane door or tarmac and inspect the passports of every de-planing passenger until they find her (on the handful of occasions where they did not meet her at the plane, agents were called when she arrived at immigration). Each time, they detain her, and then interrogate her at length about where she went and with whom she met or spoke. They have exhibited a particular interest in finding out for whom she works.

Read the full article:

American expat artist in Mexico has died

MEXICO CITY (AP) – Sculptor and printmaker Elizabeth Catlett, a U.S. expatriate renowned for her dignified portrayals of African-American and Mexican women and who was barred from her home country for political activism during the McCarthy era, has died. She was 96.

Maria Antonieta Alvarez, Catlett's daughter-in-law, said the artist died Monday in a house in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she had lived since 1976.

Born in Washington, D.C., Catlett moved to Mexico in 1946, became friends with great Mexican muralist Diego Rivera and others in his circle, and married Mexican artist Francisco Mora.

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Introduction to book of Joe Bageant's essays

This is my introduction to Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball: The Best of Joe Bageant, a book released today and available through Amazon-US. It includes 25 of Joe's essays published online from 2004 through 2010.

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By Ken Smith
ken@kvsmith.com 

“I’m so damn average that what I write resonates with people”, Joe Bageant once told an interviewer in explaining how he had gained a global following for his essays published on the web. In 2004, at the age of 58, Joe sensed that the Internet could give him editorial freedom. Without gatekeepers, he began writing about what he was really thinking, and then submitted his essays to left-of-center websites.

Joe Bageant died in March 2011, having written two books, and 78 essays that were posted on his own website and also on many other sites. The 25 essays reproduced in this book were first published on the web. I’ve selected them based on many emails from readers, web traffic counts, and specific suggestions from his online colleagues. They appear here as Joe wrote them, apart from copyediting and light corrections agreed to between me and his book editor, Henry Rosenbloom, the publisher at Australia’s Scribe Publications.

The great disparity in airline fares

Why have airline fares increase so much in the past two years? Why is there such disparity from one country to the next for similar flights? For my travels, this is especially true in the USA and Mexico on both domestic and international flights. And yet, the budget airlines in Europe still have reasonable fares. Below are some sample prices.

I'm not a novice about the airline industry. I've been flying for decades. In the early 1990s, I owned a piece of a small travel agency (six agents). I had other business interests, but I sold enough to be certified as a travel agent by IATA (International Air Transport Association). I know how to find the lowest priced ticket.

French Candidates Seek Expat Votes

There are an estimated six million citizens of the USA living in other countries. These expats are scattered and so is there influence on Washington. If the expats were a state, they would have two members in the US Senate and maybe eight or so in the House of Representatives. There are important issues that are not being addressed, such as taxes, medical care, banking, and citizenship of spouses and children. It's not likely to improve in the near future because that would require a change in the Constitution. But, as this article from the Wall Street Journal points out, France is addressing the problem of representing French expats, and so is Italy.

Here in Mexico I've met a number of French citizens. Last week I was the co-host of the monthly meeting of Amitié francophones, a club of French speakers here at Lake Chapala and Guadalajara. My involvement in this meeting was certainly not because of my French language fluency, but rather because the apartment complex where I live has a pool, outdoor kitchen and a big party area that accommodates 50 people.

Here is an article from the Wall Street Journal about French expats.

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Julien Balkany, a jovial Frenchman who runs a hedge fund in New York, has spent four months tracking down French voters as far afield as Las Vegas and Quebec. His goal: become France's first congressman representing the French in the U.S. and Canada.

Come June, French people living abroad, for the first time, will have the opportunity to elect congressmen to represent them in France's Parliament. France has divided the world into 11 electoral districts, each with its own French congressman who will shuttle back and forth to Paris.

Highly prized is the first electoral district, North America, which is made up of the U.S. and Canada.

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Ecuador seen as new retirement hot spot

 

(Reuters) - When Connie and Mark Pombo decided in 2010 to retire abroad, they searched for locations online. Ecuador seemed to have everything they wanted, so Mark, who had recently retired from the United Parcel Service, flew south to visit.

He was impressed. Three months later, the couple sold their Lancaster, Pennsylvania, home and packed their suitcases. Two years later, the Pombos live on a $600 monthly budget, which includes their $200 two-bedroom rental overlooking the Tomebamba River in Cuenca, a town in the sierra of the Andes Mountains.

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