Despite the fact that the United States has remained a Mecca of sorts for immigrants from all of the world for hundreds of years now, Americans themselves have been leaving their own country and moving abroad.
According to various assessments, at present 3-6 million US citizens permanently reside outside of the United States (in 2018, the population of the USA was estimated to be 327.2 million). There are no accurate statistics about this because attempts to count American citizens living abroad are fraught with difficulties.
The reasons why Americans leave the United States vary. Due to improving economic links and business development, in recent decades American businessmen and other professionals started actively moving abroad. Later on, US pensioners followed suit, often relocating to countries where it was cheaper to live. As certain research studies on this issue show, nowadays, Americans move abroad in search, in large part, of appealing economic opportunities and a better life. A substantial number of such immigrants are highly educated and fairly well-to-do people.
Although US statistics deliberately conceal official information about shameful periods in the nation’s history (linked to domestic policies at the time), quite a few Americans were forced to leave the country because of the American ‘Holodomor’ in the middle of the previous century, and also due to increasingly worsening socio-economic conditions experienced by average American. Several US media outlets, such as AlterNet, End Of American Dream (an independent American portal) and some alternative media sources, have been reporting on these issues on a regular basis.
In addition, there is a relatively small but prominent group of American immigrants who left their home for political reasons. Robert Fischer, one of the greatest chess players of all time and a harsh critic of US policies, left the United States at the end of the 1970s never to return again. A lawsuit was filed against him in the USA in absentia. At that time, musician and actor Dean Reed, a staunch opponent of American imperialism, also immigrated from the United States.
In the US, Americans who move abroad for political reasons are typically viewed as conscientious objectors. In the 1960s, during the war with Vietnam, such immigration was fairly common, according to certain estimates, the number of people leaving the USA reached 40,000 at the time. Young Americans ‘escaped’ to Canada and Europe, where pacifist organizations then provided aid to them. After the war with Iraq had started, several US military servicemen also left for Canada so as not to take part in this unlawful, in their opinion, conflict.
However, due to the increasing geoclimatic disaster risk, in recent years, the current political elite had to start thinking about the issue of relocating its citizens. At the end of 2011, the London School of Economics and the Brookings Institution (USA) even created The Internal Displacement Project. It was quite symbolic that Washington joined forces with London to work on this initiative, as this showed that relocation of vast numbers of people from the North Atlantic region to Northern Eurasia was a real possibility. It is probably not worth elaborating that the term Northern Eurasia refers to modern-day Russia. According to forecasts by experts, even in the event of a serious geoclimatic disaster, for the next 200 to 300 years, Russia should remain a stable and resource-rich, and, therefore, attractive place to move to not only for Americans but also citizens of a number of Western European nations. It is believed that the United States and Great Britain will be most affected by a geoclimatic disaster.
It is also worth mentioning that the territory of Russia has long been a source of inquietude for the frenzied representatives of the Western ‘elite’, ranging from Adolf Hitler to Madeleine Albright. The latter even stated that it was unfair Russians had such vast territories at their disposal. However, one could respond to her words and those of similar ‘politicians’ as follows. How fair is it that Americans, who constitute 4% of the Earth’s population, consume 40 percent of the global domestic product? And this is all due to their unfair trading practices with the rest of the world and their dollar that is not backed up by any commodities.
Recently, the possibility of relocation has received greater attention because of the increasing likelihood of a global catastrophe that could be triggered by the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano in the USA in the nearest future. Official media outlets in the United States have been trying to ease tensions in the US society, caused by this issue, by any possible means. They have been publishing reports with ‘expert opinions’ that rule out the possibility of this catastrophe unless an earthquake occurs in that area.
However, actual recent events paint quite a different picture. Recently, the Daily Express has published an opinion, expressed by a number of American scientists, that according to their estimates the Yellowstone supervolcano eruption could even be triggered by a few not particularly strong tremors, approximately 6.0 in magnitude.
On 4 July 2019, one of the most powerful earthquakes struck California resulting in fires, fallen power lines, damage to water supply systems and the formation of cracks in building walls. After declaring a state of emergency, seismologists, who study what causes earthquakes, recorded 3,000 more underground tremors in the space of several days. In their opinion, there will be 30,000 more earthquakes in the United States in the nearest future.
Over the month of June 2019, the Yellowstone National Park in the USA experienced 81 underground temblors. The Daily Express reported that Dr. Scott Burns, a professor in the Department of Geology at Portland State University, told them the increased incidence of underground tremors, as a rule, meant that magma and associated gases were moving closer towards their exit.
Aside from the underground temblors, another anomaly occurred in the Yellowstone National Park last month. One of the larger geysers, Steamboat, erupted twice within the space of 4 days, on 12 and 15 of July. This was one of the shortest intervals between its eruptions since it had become common practice to record observations of this phenomenon.
According to a new study, the volume of hot liquid rock under the Yellowstone National Park is 2.5 times higher than previously estimated. This means that the eruption of the supervolcano may be 2,000 times stronger than that of Mount St. Helens, which occurred in 1980 in Washington state. It resulted in 57 casualties and in the spread of ash over 11 states and 5 Canadian provinces. According to estimates, the eruption at the Yellowstone National Park will be 6,000 times more powerful than that at Mount St. Helens. If the supervolcano in the Yellowstone region was to erupt, all the living creatures within a 100 km radius of it would be annihilated. Some predict that the United States would disappear from the face of the Earth and the continent of America would become uninhabitable.
In such circumstances, the issue of relocating (on an emergency basis) Americans to other parts of the world would become more relevant and warranted. Incidentally, as far back as 2014, there were reports the US government was researching the possibility of a percentage of Americans moving to South Africa. And apparently, there were even discussions about the likelihood that Washington would finance this preparation work. According to unconfirmed sources, Hillary Clinton and a number of other members of the US Democratic Party had earlier expressed increased interest in relocating Americans to Ukraine.
Hence, it is impossible to exclude the possibility that instead of hearing the Ukrainian language in Ukraine and Chinese in Siberia, we would be more and more exposed to voices of American settlers in these regions. And this would lead to improved relations between the United States and Russia.
Vladimir Platov, an expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
