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Why I’m Leaving

Why I’m Leaving

Greetings Regular Joes,

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Life has been interesting and taken me down some paths I couldn’t have foreseen. All of them continue to have me pondering my options for the future, and I continue to desire to provide for my growing family of grandchildren. Number five is on the way.

Part of what I continue to investigate is where would be a better place to live. With this in mind, I’ve become involved with some expats, and am trying to get more involved through various projects. One is particularly attractive, but takes about $20k that I’m not sure I could must. So, I”m looking for an investor that might be interested in getting involved.

As I read, once in awhile I find an article that just hits the spot. This piece by Jay Fonseca is just such an article. He’s kind and gentle, without the vitriol that is so common when folks leave the US. More of these kinds of articles are needed. And, as I noted in my comments to this article, I think this may be the best written article on emigration from the US that I’ve ever seen. I hope you think so too.

Kind regards,
Another Joe

 

 

Why I’m Leaving

Jay Fonseca

This will be the fourth consecutive emigration of the last three generations of my immediate family. My grandparents emigrated from Portugal to Mozambique during the 1940s and 50s in search of a better life. The massive and undeveloped colony seemed like the land of milk and honey for those willing to get their hands dirty. A few decades later my parents-to-be immigrated to South Africa as Mozambique headed towards what would become a 10-year war for independence. Then when I was just 4 years old they decided that a fascist state fully enveloped with the evils of apartheid was no place to raise a child. My mother was fortunate enough to get a work visa into the United States and that’s where we’ve been ever since.

Now the time has come for me to follow in my family’s footsteps. Maybe it’s in our blood to not only yearn for change but to have the fortitude to go out into the unknown in search of it. But this time something is different. I’m leaving the United States of America, the shining city on the hill; a land where millions of people try to enter each year, often at great risk.

Upon learning of my wife and my decision to leave our friends, family, great jobs, and fantastic home, everyone immediately asks us: Why? It’s such a painfully awkward question to answer. How could the answer be anything but obvious? That said, we learned our lesson early and have stopped telling people the truth behind our exodus. Instead we’ve been answering with generic statements like “Oh, just for a change of pace” or “We’ve always wanted to experience another culture.”

I’m tired of holding my tongue. It’s not healthy to keep so much bottled up inside and it’s even more painful to watch those closest to me living a most ignorant and animal-like existence. So here are our real, unfiltered, and honest reasons for fleeing the land of the free.

1. I own my body and the initiation of force is always immoral. I don’t want to live in a society that has accepted violence as the answer to every question.

2. Privacy is dead. If the NSA wants my phone and email communications then I’m going to make them jump through some geopolitical hoops. Where I’m going you can buy a cellphone at any gas station anonymously and without a contract.

a. Five Misconceptions About US Cyber Espionage

b. The NSA: And Who Will Watch The Watchmen?

3. The Patriot Act.

via Why I’m Leaving.

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