Things Don't Go Well In Other Countries, However, They Also Don't In The US!

Sunday,April 06, 2014

[Editor’s Note: The following post is by TDV contributor, Jay Fonseca]

Is it human nature to always believe the grass is greener on the other side? Or is that just the nature of the depressed and heavily medicated? Having emigrated from the USSA six months ago, I am incredibly happy and content with my decision and my new life…there must be something wrong with me.

Like any place, Mexico has its pros and cons. I appreciate the kindness and happiness of strangers. The lower cost of living often makes me feel like a king. I can count the number of times I’ve been asked for identification in the last three months on one hand and boarding a flight or purchasing alcohol are not one of them. The climate makes me wonder why anyone would live anywhere else while making me thankful that they do. When I see a police officer I don’t feel scared or paranoid and shockingly, sometimes I even feel a bit protected.

Having come from the silence of American suburbia, Mexico seems like the loudest place on earth. I’ve yet to spot a window or door with weatherstripping. Mail service is a crapshoot which makes shopping online quite challenging. If you are a gringo you will get “gringo prices” and a local trying to screw you over is a completely acceptable practice. The foreignness of the language and culture means that the most ordinary of errands often morph into long and arduous tasks complete with a fair amount of pantomime. Mexican time, aka “mañana, mañana”, exists and no matter how hard you try, you are not going to be able to change it.

Maybe this tradeoff can be described as Convenience for Freedom, Familiarity for Opportunity, or Quantity and Quality for Sanity. If you choose to emigrate and make the tradeoffs then there is one more thing that I must warn you of. By becoming an expat your chances of contracting a particular disease go up 100%. At some point you will most likely suffer from the occasional bout, or perhaps become fully infected, with Expat Blindness.

The root of this affliction centers on a patient’s inability to reconcile the reality that they no longer live in their home country. Expat Blindness is extremely common during an expatriate’s first year abroad and can easily be identified through their speech.

Symptoms include:

• When annoyed, Expat Blindness will often cause a person to compare their current situation to their previous habitat: “What do you mean you don’t accept returns on opened products? In the USA stores accept returns no questions asked!” “If this was the USA, you would understand that the customer is always right.”
• Fault is immediately attributed to their new country or countrymen without any actual review or investigation: “This guy drove his car too close to mine and scratched up the side of my Pontiac. Fuckin’ Mexicans.” “I had to wait in line for 15 minutes at the store. Hasn’t Mexico ever heard of having more than one cashier!?"
• Excessive Hyperbole: “This is the dirtiest place on earth.” “This would never in a million years happen in America.” “Nothing works here.”

I have always found Expat Blindness to be an interesting phenomenon but especially so when it affects free-minded, liberty-loving people. It is simply amazing how a champion of individual rights will begin assigning blame to the collective as soon as they cross an imaginary line. How is it possible that simply being in another country causes one to forget all of the reasons that they moved to that country in the first place?

I had a huge problem with my new cell phone carrier that literally took weeks to resolve. I had to call them about 12 times before the issue was fixed. Expat Blindness came on fast and quickly overcame me. I transformed into some kind of amalgamation of the angry Hulk and Uncle Sam as I lashed out at Mexico. Somehow I forgot about the frustrations that I and every American I’ve ever known have been through with Verizon, AT&T, and all the other cell phone companies back home.

At a little family run restaurant in a small and dusty pueblo somewhat off the tourist path, one of my friends found that the produce sticker was still attached to the grilled bell pepper on his plate. We all had a good laugh at Mexico’s expense. Strange that when the exact same thing happened to me at a fancy Italian restaurant in Scottsdale a few years back (whose entrees were several times more expensive) I effortlessly brushed it off as a simple human mistake without degrading all 310 million Americans.

Last month at the immigration office, all those painful memories from the long lines and brain-dead bureaucrats at the Post Office or Department of Motor Vehicles vanished from my memory bank just when I needed their perspective the most.

Also worth noting is that a severe case of Expat Blindness can have the opposite effect, where everything in your new land is flawless and everything in your past country was a nightmare. In truth, every day, every place, every situation, and every person are unique. It’s important to let experience be our guide but also to allow exploration and discovery build upon that experience.

So while I too have struggled with a case of Expat Blindness, with the help of some common sense, honest introspection, and some good ol’ anarchist logic and deduction it seems to be clearing up. As for the endemic statist induced slavery infecting so many of my friends and family up north, they should really have that checked out.

Like love, true freedom is a goal worth a lifetime of pursuit and sacrifice even if only to experience it for a mere moment. We are long past the point of inconveniences and small erosions of liberty. Today, the choice is between slavery and freedom. I’m leaving.

Questions or comments? Visit us at The Dollar Vigilante

Jay Fonseca is a Dollar Vigilante contributor and modern day Renaissance man; always learning a new skill, cultivating a different interest, and searching for untapped opportunities. He comes from a long line of immigrants and has chosen to follow in their footsteps. Unwilling to cope with the anti-capitalist environment and dangers of the USSA, emigration has allowed Jay to pursue his ventures in freer markets alongside freer peoples.