This article is our participation in the protest against the Democratic Party’s abandonment of Trans people in the USA proposed by Julia Serano.
Many of these articles will be, I’m sure, angry rejoinders at the Democrats’ cowardice, or angry Jeremiads against the genocide of trans people.
We instead invite patriots from anywhere in the political spectrum, Democrats who see beyond cowering at the fascist and those few Republicans still clinging to the ideals of the party of Lincoln, to consider what long term impact the second administration of the 47th President will have on the USA.
We’re in the business of making migration happen. We think about what effect migration, especially refuge driven migration, has on the countries left and the countries they have gone to.
Far from “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses longing to breath free”, emigrants are often the most industrious people of their society. Consider the stereotypical immigrant of the early 20th century. To emigrate to America required the cost of passage, more than an individual was likely to have. So often the extended family or local community acted collectively, pooling their funds, then picked one of their best to go first. With greater earning power in America, he (occasionally she) could send back funds to bring another. Carlo brings his cousin, then they bring two more men from their village, then they all bring their wives and children.
Even when it is refuge that is driving the migration, it is those with the most personal resources – money, power, brains, or sheer gumption – that get out. Hitler tried to make an atomic bomb. A reading of Richard Rhodes’ “The Making of The Atomic Bomb” makes it abundantly clear that the US succeeded in creating the atomic bomb and Germany did not largely because the privileged, PhD educated physicists who did it were precisely the same people, many of them Jewish, who were able to leave Germany. To this day the stereotype of a New York academic includes being Jewish.
In 1972 Idi Amin expelled the ethnic Indian minority out of Uganda. They had been the bulk of the merchant class in Uganda – the cause of the resentment against them. Uganda’s commercial economy has never really recovered. British friends, on the other hand, tell us the 27000 who went to Britain form an important part of her trading class.
Minorities are the usual target for expulsion. And minorities often are more entrepreneurial than the majority population. The soft jobs, the cushy government job, the rent seeking landlord, belong to those with social capital. The woman with the small business is more likely to be a recent immigrant.
Our director is from a small town in Kansas. With few opportunities, Kansas drives out the people who were too smart, too ambitious, or too creative to stay. And that means the ambitious woman starts that successful business in San Francisco. The mathematically gifted kid goes to MIT and never returns. And the remaining people are slightly less ambitious. The mean, the messed up, the dullards remain. They do as poor a job of parenting and genetics as they do everything else, and after a few generations, it becomes noticeable.
We have seen a fifty times jump in requests for our assistance from trans people leaving the USA since Nov 5. We believe almost every American trans person can get out, regardless of circumstance, if they go about it in a businesslike way. But contacting us first requires believing one can get out, somehow. So it will shock no one that among the trans people we are hearing from, a staggering 15% is from a single occupational group, software engineers, and another 5% have other occupations in STEM. Precisely the labor group most in demand. Our passengers from the Arab world include a doctor, three software engineers, a lawyer, and a social worker – all skilled workers their home countries desperately need. The same phenomenon applies. The able get out.
Emigrant groups don’t go back. They take with them their skills and their productivity, and leave their former country the poorer. “Brain Drain”, it’s sometimes called. They also take their capital.
If you are very, very wealthy it quickly becomes well worth going to extremes to keep the government from taking it as taxes. So the uber wealthy often change their citizenship to decrease their tax burden. We watch a small consultancy, Nomad Capitalist, that specializes in helping them do it. The day after the election we found this pop up on their website –
Clearly they were being overwhelmed by inquiries from wealthy people suddenly wanting to move away from the USA. (the popup disappeared a few days later). We have to wonder how much money will flee the US with them.
So now we ask what shall happen in the future to the USA. Fascism is forcing the unpopular – trans people, ethnic minorities, and immigrants among them – to consider out migration in unprecedented numbers. But who else won’t go back?
The wealthy, apparently. Witness our popup. Who else requires a bit more of a crystal ball. But not too much. “Elites” is a slur the new fascists love to sling around. And when it’s a synonym for the rich and powerful, that’s reasonable. But for the fascists it often means anyone of any accomplishment – “Hollywood elites”, “academic elites”. Umberto Eco, in his seminal “Ur-fascism” includes intolerance of difference as a trait of fascists. Not intolerance of minorities, or of specific groups, but simply of difference. And it’s the different who are, per person, the most valuable members of society. Freddy Mercury (or Farouk Balsarah if you prefer) certainly was different. The accomplished must inherently always be different from the mass of us. And the accomplished are likely to be the people who have the resources to flee.
So we sadly conclude that we will see a future America, if such exists, that is poorer for losing its best people. An America that moves towards its worst. A kakistocracy. Florida man forever and ever. America too won’t go back.
This article was written by a Kansas town kid in a cold flat in Enschede Overijssel in The Netherlands. She won’t be going back.