Frightened by shootings, appalled at Trump, Americans are voting with their feet — to leave via lisabelkin
Eleanor Pelta has secured Polish passports for herself and her two sons. Stephanie Schwab is planning an escape route via Spain. Elie Jacobs has begun to keep enough cash on hand to buy last-minute plane tickets to Israel for his family. Alex and Aussa Lorens are applying for work visas in Australia, while Josh Lewin is aiming for New Zealand.
“The text-message threads and FB message threads have surged with questions about how and when to leave,” said Jacobs, a 41-year-old public affairs consultant who lives in New Jersey with his wife and toddler, and who began looking to Israel as an “escape hatch” as soon as Donald Trump was elected, but whose stockpiling of cash took on new urgency this week.
“First it was a shooting once a year, then once every six months, then once a month, and now it’s every day,” he says. “We don’t even bat an eye as a country now. I would like to move somewhere where that isn’t true and my kids don’t have to be afraid.” Those who say they are serious about leaving are quick to add that they recognize the privilege that allows them to consider such a move at all.
Under the program, they are entitled to all the country’s benefits, including universal health care, a payment from the government of about 250 euros per child per month, and admission to a “Newcomer” school that costs 3 euros per month and helps children learn Dutch and transition to their new country.
“Yes, some of this is tinfoil-hat crazy, but some of it makes a lot of sense,” says Jacobs of those on his left-leaning newsgroups, many of whom are former national security bureaucrats, who are learning Krav Maga self-defense and buying guns. “But the fact is we live under a government that has instituted some terrifying policies.”
Still, the “old country” is the place most likely to welcome Americans nowadays, making it a logical choice. Poland counts anyone with a Polish parent or grandparent as a de facto citizen, which is why Eleanor Pelta, whose parents fled Jewish persecution there, has a Polish passport in addition to her American one, as do her children, who derive Polish citizenship automatically through her.
It is that line of thinking that keeps Pam Fradkin, an administrative assistant at a Boston area university, from going anywhere. “Being queer is a danger to me everywhere,” she says. “I’ll fight to maintain my humanity and my rights in the country in which I was born. I will also fight to see and be the change I wish for.”
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