Reply to A difficult truth to accept: Liberal democracy is not favored around the world

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Ok…..and?

Liberal democracy is a cornerstone of “American Exceptionalism.”

It’s why so many people clamor to come here every year, both legally and illegally. It’s why the annual visa lottery is oversubscribed many dozens of times over the annual allotment. [/quote]

People come here for our economy, not our democracy. [/quote]

Dp-… and they are fleeing anti democratic countries. Both. It’s both. [/quote]

Actually only 6 million people apply for green cards each year. That’s not that many people in a world with almost 8 billion people.

About 8 million American citizens live overseas. Apparently many people who could live here choose not to. [/quote]

Misrepresentation - just because people are working abroad for private sector/ non profit sector/ international government sector etc does not mean they are not happy at home or do not plan returning there. Many people from all over the world work as expats. [/quote]

Come on. The vast majority of those 8 million are not expats working overseas. Plenty of Americans choose to live overseas for a myriad of reasons including immigrants who took US citizenship but choose to move back to their home countries. It’s the same in the US - plenty of people come for work but do not intend to stay. 
[/quote]

Here is an estimated look (not including ex-military personnel) of American expats by country. Not surprisingly, neighboring Canada and Mexico top the list.

Authoritarian regimes in Middle East or elsewhere is not even in the top ten of places where 8 million US expats live. Often people move for either caring for family
Members who are sick or to retire comfortably in say Mexico or for work. Not because they don’t favor living in liberal democracies.

From world expat web site

Each Country's Number of US Expats

Mexico	799,248
Canada	273,226
United Kingdom	170,771
Puerto Rico	159,515
Germany	152,639
Australia	116,620
Israel	76,794
South Korea	68,050
France	61,668
Japan	58,340
[/quote]

What website? I couldn’t find anything called world expat website. Dual citizens returning to their home country don’t call themselves expats. Expats usually refer to people living in a country who don’t have that citizenship.

According to the State Department, 60,000 Americans live in Egypt. WaPo reported 86,000 live in Lebanon. [/quote]

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/american-expats-by-country[/quote]

It’s a pretty rubbish website. You can tell from the text. It also says there are 6,000 US expats living in Egypt while the US embassy’s own website estimates 60,000 US citizens. Assume it’s unreliable. [/quote]

What’s happening?
The U.S. government doesn’t formally track how many Americans leave the U.S. but the most recent estimate puts the figure at nearly nine million. This figure represents a doubling of the 1999 figure, placed at 4.1 million. The number of expats has more than doubled in the last fifteen years — a number growing faster than the rate of the U.S. population itself.
After the 2016 U.S. Presidential election many Americans said that they would leave the country, though no figures exist to show whether a significant up-tick has occurred.
Where are people going?
So where are these American expats going? According to the Association of American Residents Overseas (AARO), US expats can be found in more than 160 countries:
* 40% opt for the Western hemisphere — Canada, Central and South America.
* 26% move to Europe.
* 14% head to East Asia and the Pacific — think Australia and New Zealand as well as China and Japan.
* 14% head to the Middle East.
* 3% travel to Central or South Asia.
* 3% choose Africa.

https://www.aetnainternational.com/en/about-us/explore/living-abroad/culture-lifestyle/where-are-Americans-emigrating-to-and-why.html#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Association%20of,well%20as%20China%20and%20Japan.

Why have millions of Americans moved to these countries instead?
Analysis by Andrew Van Dam
Staff writer
December 23, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. ES

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/23/american-emigrants/

By almost any metric, Mexico is the top destination for Americans leaving the country. But there’s an unusual reason for that, which becomes apparent when you slice Mexico’s American population by age.
Typically, migrants from America are young adults — think students, Mormon missionaries and Marines — or middle-aged professionals. But American Mexicans are neither: Two-thirds are under 18 — children, in other words.

The vast majority of these young Americans have two Mexican parents, according to a demographic analysis of Mexico’s data by Claudia Masferrer (El Colegio de México), Erin Hamilton (University of California at Davis) and Nicole Denier (University of Alberta). Born in the United States as Mexican immigration peaked, they returned to Mexico with their parents as the U.S. Mexican population crested in 2007 and fell during the Obama and Trump administrations. Many parents returned voluntarily, but research shows about 1 in 6 were deported.

These young American Mexicans — some call them “accidental Americans” because they didn’t choose their American citizenship — tend to be concentrated in border states, particularly Baja California and Chihuahua.
In other top destinations — Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Israel, Australia and other advanced economies — most Americans arrive on purpose. Or at least that’s how it looks at first glance. But when you scratch the surface of almost any American emigrant, you often find a series of accidents.

….
Stereotypes of the idly rich or retired expat aside, research by FVAP, the voting agency, finds that the majority of American voters in every world region are also workers. (In most regions, retirees form a large minority, making up more than a quarter of the expat population in Southeast Asia and the Americas.)

There’s no data on what sort of work these Americans do. The Census Bureau’s surveys tracking Americans who return stateside show that they are much, much more likely to be active-duty military than most Americans. They’re also more likely to work in public administration or education, but less likely to work in health, manufacturing, retail or construction.

….

I haven’t met many Americans in Cairo, Damascus or Abu Dhabi who are truly motivated solely by money,” said Blatteis, who has lived in each. “It’s usually people that are pretty academically and intellectually curious. A good chunk of my friends end up marrying people from cultures completely different than their own.”
Caglar Ozden, World Bank lead economist and co-director of its upcoming World Development Report, has learned over two decades studying migration that immigrants defy categories. Whether they are asylum seekers or adventurers, Armenians or Americans, once they get settled, they all start to behave in similar ways: They look to study and work. They build social networks. They learn the language.
“As a scholar of mobility, that’s what I have learned,” Ozden told us, his voice urgent. “Our common traits are way, way bigger and more fundamental than our differences.”[/quote]

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