The Advantages of Being Foreign

Position: DRUG-INDUCED AMBULATORY COMA

I have been a foreigner for much of my life. It has its advantages. Let me clarify. By the time my dad landed a decent job with tenure at the University of Chicago, he had dragged his young family around the UK for a dozen years. My mum being an American added more fuel to his peripatetic fire.

Visits to the United States rolled around every few years. In the 1950s that meant piling everyone into an ocean liner and crossing the Atlantic for at least a couple of months. Such commitments of time suit academics better than bricklayers. After all, you don’t have to be in Barnsley to research a manuscript. Back then you could do that as easily from the poop deck of the SS America. Crossing the Atlantic by airplane in 1959 was an activity reserved for the jet-set. It was that halcyon time when air travel was still exotic and the dominion of movie stars^[1].

Pitching up eight months pregnant at my grandparent’s summer house on Cape Cod, my mother duly enshrined my rights to US citizenship. Having been born into an American family herself, in a fit of youthful exuberance she renounced her American citizenship in protest of McCarthy’s witch hunts^[2]. Only a couple of degrees separated her parents from folks like Alger Hiss who were accused of being communists. My mum took umbrage on her parent’s behalf.

Like a hasty marriage, however, it was a decision that she came to regret once my dad got his gig at the U of C, and they moved back to the States permanently. She lived out her days on her green card, because, no surprise, once you renounce your citizenship there is no road back. The UK, still in the throes of its post-colonial generosity, offered citizenship to first generation offspring regardless of where they were born. As a dual national, then, I had two of the best passports one could desire. An American one (to pursue the eponymous dream) and a pre-Brexit British one (allowing for an infinitely long Grand Tour, should one so desire).

Time Served

From those modest beginnings, I spent years living in countries that were neither England nor America, including Germany (3 years), Holland (1 year), Spain/Italy (1 year apiece), Turkey (almost a year), Singapore/Asia Pacific (3 years). I spent enough time in the UK that at one time my American passport was issued to me in London and my UK passport issued to me in Chicago.

PCE

With that background and, having discussed at length the disadvantages of being a foreigner in previous posts, let us for a moment consider the benefits:

• Politics – who cares about politics? For good or bad, when you live abroad you can observe your home country’s politics from a safe distance. That distance keeps you out of the repressive news cycle that your friends and loved ones live with every day. Lack of fluency in your host country’s language helps inure you from local politics, too. Imagine turning off the news for months, even years, and instead heading to the café with a copy of Betjeman or Frost under your arm. Take a seat and order a café con leche and a pastéis de nata. Crack your thin, well-worn volume and wander vicariously through the streets and trails of your native land as you savour the bitter-sweet joys of your adoptive one. Trust me – it doesn’t suck.
• Culture – your new country is different. Embrace it. Once you do, your context changes and you can approach your native culture with the subtlety it deserves. More importantly, you can begin to see your country through the eyes of your hosts. Things that drive you crazy may be seen as quirky attractions or aspirational goals. The myth of America (less so the UK these days) is powerful. Everyone wants to visit America. Many want to emigrate there, and everyone wants dollars. For now it is the way of the world. As your perspective changes, so will your frustrations. Given enough time abroad, you may end up wishing all your fellow countryfolk could see things as clearly as you do.
• Economics – once you’ve left New York, London, or Singapore you can breathe a sigh of relief: nowhere else in the world is as expensive to live in. The least expensive cities in the world carry a good deal of personal risk, marred by poverty and war as they are. But there are hundreds of perfectly nice places to hang your hat. Many of them have beaches you can afford to shore dive from. Almost all of them have decent, accessible health care for pennies on the U.S. dollar. If your savings are denominated in dollars, so much the better for you. The greenback has been on a tear for the past eight years and that’s unlikely to stop anytime soon.

Buckaroo

Would I recommend upping stakes and moving to a new country? Absolutely! Provided of course you have done your homework and leave your emotional baggage behind. After all, as our old buddy Buckaroo Bonzai said, “…remember: no matter where you go, there you are.”

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[1] I believe the Beatles arrival at La Guardia in 1964 was the final death knell for transatlantic ocean liners. The Fab Four gave implicit permission for millions to consider air travel as an option.

[2] She took a British passport when she married my dad.

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