this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2025
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I wonder if all the sane Americans did a mass exodus to Canada, Europe, UK, Australia etc, what effect that would have
A lot of us would need financial sponsorship. So there'd be a literal financial drain on those economies.
I still would like to sign up.
Not if you stayed, then it’s an investment. Money doesn’t just disappear when goes to poor people, they use it to buy things like food and stuff. It would only be a financial drain if you were sending that money back home.
The North American mind cannot comprehend the benefits of supporting the poor.
UBI should be ubiquitous.
UBI = Universal Basic Income
Amazing Americans say with their full chest this is socialism
Perhaps strain would be a better word than drain - it would still be a short-mid term financial burden to take even a tiny fraction of the sane population from the US, it's a big country. Sure would be nice if it could be arranged though...
True.
Don’t worry, there aren’t that many sane people in the US. A lot of them are under the impression that they’re sane because they take the “balanced” position, though, which is to say that they just choose whatever’s in between fascism and barely progressive policy while they call themselves intelligent.
Frankly I’m not sure I’d want a bunch of people who cannot take accountability and who have such main-character energy they think that they would be allowed in while “bad” people wouldn’t be. We have enough problems with similar mindsets here in Canada and I really don’t want more of that except now they’re making it even harder to get away from our useless, conservative, Liberal(capital L) party.
Ah yes - subjecting ideological refugeess to arbitrary purity tests, a true classic.
Well that’s the thing, it wouldn’t be possible so the entire idea of “let us sane people come” is flawed from the start unless they truly believe that there should be a purity test and that they would pass it. Anyone who genuinely thinks that way should be immediately disqualified from immigrating based on their own idea of an ideological test.
“I’m different though and there should be actual, real laws to permit to do particular things!” is not the position of someone who considers their community at large to any particularly special degree. And to be clear I’m all for banning hate speech and stuff because that’s a specific banned behaviour and not a specific allowed behaviour, and we have evidence to show that it can be as harmful as any physically violent attack.
And a hell of a good one. Adults will have already passed through education, so we would save on that part.
I get that, the initial investment would be pretty significant.
I'm not against it of course, I just think it's necessary to understand the risks of any gamble.
Only if you limit your view to your nation. 'Back home' across the border it would most likely also buy food etc. And that would be fine.
The real drain is the infinite black hole of the rich guys pockets. That is where all the money is. Don't blame people who send money to their loved ones to help, just because there is a border.
This is correct, though the initial drain might still be too much if there was literally a big exodus all at once. Maybe if the refugees from the US distributed fairly evenly across the various countries it could work?
Have you looked into what it takes to get a permanent visa to one of those countries? It’s not easy.
Its prohibitively impossible.
Its not that hard especially for an American.
It is that hard, I’ve looked. You typically need to rank highly on a skill list AND have a relatively well-paying job offer. And if you think it’s hard interviewing in your own country, it’s far worse interviewing outside of it.
What are you comparing it to? Americans have a much easier path to permanent residency than a vast majority of the world.
Take a look at the skills lists they aren't that insane. Also you dont need to go straight for permanent residency you can start with a working visa which is easy to get.
In comparison yes, it’s easy. In practice it’s far outside the means of the average American. Hell, more than a quarter of all households in the US are living paycheck to paycheck right now. That’s effectively impossible.
I did it a while ago, would recommend.
Aren't you still paying taxes to the USA? Just curious.
You have to earn over something like 100k+ for the US to tax you. Salaries are lower here.
Ohhhh that's interesting.
You still have to file, but you don’t need to pay taxes unless you’re earning enough that the visa won’t be a problem.
But, like, if you close everything out and never go back…
The IRS will still find you lol
But then what?
Is a foreign government going to extradite you for missing paperwork and no outstanding tax debts (especially because everyone else thinks it’s nuts that we require nonresident citizens to file taxes)? I guess it’s possible, but it strikes me as very unlikely.
But if you’re still financially attached to the US/likely to visit, they’ve got some power over you.
I’m not a lawyer or an accountant (obviously. This is not best practices)
Why would that strike you as unlikely? It's extremely likely because most countries that people would want to flee to already have extradition agreements with the US.
All the US has to do is declare you a fugitive and those countries will pick you up and ship you back.
Especially with how petty this administration has been.
It's usually too expensive to justify pursuing international cases, nevertheless don't fuck with the IRS lol. That being said, people moving abroad to escape debt, such as student loans is not altogether uncommon.
As things stand now yeah I agree with you. However I think if more people were to start leaving the US to escape things here they would clamp down.
What do they get out of it? It’s expensive and you don’t even actually owe money. Plus, extradition agreements only cover either things that both countries consider illegal, or a set of very serious crimes, like murder, afaik.
I hear ya but I wouldn't put it past the government. You're now a bargaining chip in future negotiations
If you don't mind sharing, did you have to pay the exit tax? Actually, what was your way out?
No exit tax. Academia/skilled worker route, I've been beelining an out since I was a teenager and I qualify for EU citizenship on heritage, working on that. I would like to thank my now irl friends from thousands of hours on EU MMORPG servers for unintentionally guiding me out. 👾❤️👾 Love my girlies.
Exit tax is only if you give up your US citizenship, which you definitely can't do if you don't have another citizenship and even then it's very often not required
It's already happening, there's been a deluge of affluent people leaving the US.
We're still at the stage where it takes considerable privilege to just leave everything behind and pay the exit extortion (40% of all your shit).
Once things get worse and people have nothing to leave behind you'll start seeing the engineers/doctors escaping.
the one that have money to migrate to another country have done it already. buts mostly PHD level professionals, rather difficult for people who only have a ms or bs with no established career already. unless you well off enough to be able to move.
it would probably have to be millions, or 10s of millions (around 40ish million) suddenly moving out of the us, then the usa and that would would see real impact on brain drain and economy(especially the ones in key stem sectors, at some point it will affect israel pipelines(weapons tech and research, like MIT) from university), but then again most people are too content in the usa, and the massively propagandized people us has practically pacified them, and essentially made a cultural bubble of selfishness(hate taxes, guns,,,etc. propaganda)
Please no, there's already people rioting over 3rd world citizens immigrating here, we don't need to add Yanks to that group too