To Emigrate or Not to Emigrate?
An FAQ
Should you emigrate? Here’s an FAQ to help you make a reasonable decision.
Is it legal to emigrate?
Yes!
Unless you belong to a small group of people who are legally not permitted to leave the country.
Is it moral to emigrate?
Morality is a collection of principles that society deems right or wrong. Society is notoriously inconsistent, ambiguous, fickle and self-serving in how it chooses to define morals and morality.
So, for practical purposes, you can ignore morality.
And you can ignore anyone who gives you moral sermons on whether or not you should emigrate.
Is it ethical to emigrate?
(See Is it moral to emigrate?)
Is it unpatriotic to emigrate?
(See Is it moral to emigrate?)
Is it reasonable to emigrate?
This is the only question that really matters.
Whether or not it is reasonable to emigrate depends on the answers to two questions:
- Do you want to emigrate?
- Can you emigrate?
Do you want to emigrate?
There is a list of things we expect from where we live. For example, my list of things would include the following:
- Access to Friends and Family
- Food, Health, and Healthcare
- Employment, Nature of Work
- Income and Economic Stability
- Education
- Lifestyle and Travel
- Culture and Identity
- …
Your list may include the same items, different items or the same or different items in different orders.
When a different country checks more boxes than your current country, it would be reasonable to emigrate.
This would be the rational or “head” approach to deciding what you want. Sadly, many completely ignore this and go with the emotion or “heart” approach. “Peer Pressure” and “Herd Mentality” tend to bias towards emotional decisions.
Can you emigrate?
This is a far more practical question. Moving country is costly, and if you can’t afford the move, then you can’t emigrate.
Some of the costs involved include:
- Cost of liquidating assets in the old country. Usually, the more time you have, the lower the cost. And counter-intuitively it is poorer people who lose out the most on this factor.
- Cost of visas, air tickets
- Cost of getting settled in the new country, including temporary housing, less-temporary housing, permanent housing, schooling, and finding jobs
- Cost of being a newbie in a new country (additional costs due to inadequate information and education)
- Cost of racism, xenophobia, unfamiliar-face syndrome etc.
- …
As before, if you do the accounting and you find that you can indeed bear the cost, then you can emigrate.
If you answer “yes” to both the above questions, then it is reasonable for you to emigrate.
