Expatriation: not what it used to be

After the American Century

A century ago being an expatriate had a certain cachet. Some major American writers once lived primarily in Britain, notably Henry James and T. S. Elliot. In the 1920s a raft of famous authors resided in Paris, as chronicled in Malcolm Cowley's Exile's Return. Central works of American literature were written while the authors were living in Europe, and they often take place there as well, notably Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises or F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. A sojourn in Europe was once thought essential for every sculptor, painter, musician, and writer. The American artist abroad then lived well due to a strong dollar. In that era, the terms commonly used for such people included "emigrant," "émigré," "expatriate," and "exile." These did not usually have a negative connotation.

Today, the image of the foreigner who lives abroad is somewhat different. Many terms referring to them do not have positive connotations, including "illegal immigrant," "refugee," "alien," "deportee," "evacuee," "migrant," "foreign national," "itinerant," "displaced person," and "gypsy." The term "expatriate" is not much used, and I do not recall being called that by anyone, at least not recently. These days, the dollar is strong but not as strong as in 1920. 

Stokholm, June, 2013

For many reasons it is getting more difficult to be an American expatriate (the older term) or foreign national. This is an unintended product of many factors, including greater mobility, the tightening of security in the face of terrorism, and the digitization of information. The long lines at airports are one obvious example, where on arrival the non-citizen must wait in the slower queue. 

Banking offers a second example. The Economist writes that "Worried about being hit by massive fines for unwittingly aiding money-laundering, sanctions-evasion or financing terrorism, banks have over the past few years dropped customers in countries or sectors deemed high-risk." Even in countries where risks are low, it is now far more difficult to open a banking account. I know this from personal experience. When abroad for more than a few months, it used to be routine to open a local bank account. This has become more difficult, and one is forced to use ATMs and the bank in one's home country, with all the currency exchange charges that come with it. Yet a foreign account cannot deal with every contingency, as local services often are based on having a local bank and credit card. Digital payment systems, for example in the London tube system, do not always work with foreign accounts.

Pensions are a third example. Work in several counties during your lifetime, and each will give only a partial pension on retirement. Nor is there much logic to how much one receives. A nation where one worked only two years may pay half as much as another country where one worked more than 25 years. Saving privately can compensate for this problem, but saving for a pension in one country may not be accepted as a tax deduction in another. These matters vary from one nation to another, and generalization is impossible beyond the fact that sorting it out takes time. A lot of time.

A fourth example is taxation. A decade ago I was temporarily in Britain for a semester, and agreed to give a lecture in Norway. I made the mistake of accepting a modest honorarium for this work. As a result, the honorarium was taxed in Norway, in Denmark (my permanent residence), in the UK (my temporary residence), and in the US (my citizenship). Taken together, these taxes amounted to more than 100% of the honorarium. Perhaps there was a way to avoid paying so much. If so, the rules are hard to make out, and the time demanded to find and fill out various forms made it impractical to contest it.  Since then, I have been far less interested in being paid for lecturing abroad, unless it is in Denmark or the US, which limits the taxes to "just" two countries. Double taxation demands time and produces anxiety.

The difficulties of being an American expatriate have measurable consequences. An increasing number of long-term residents abroad are renouncing their US citizenship. I am not considering this option, but I know people who have turned in their passports. Fortune magazine noted that more people are giving up American citizenship, with a 26% increase in 2016 alone. That was before Donald Trump became president.

Both political parties have long ignored the plight of expatriates, and it was the Democrats who in 2010 passed tax laws for Americans abroad that are more draconian and punitive. As at the airports, the targets of this legislation were smugglers and terrorists, and the intentions were laudable.  The absolute numbers renouncing citizenship are still small, but the trend is troubling. The increase in the last decade has been more than 100%.

We are continually told that the world is becoming more international. Were Hemingway to return, he might disagree. At times, it seems to be more nationalistic and xenophobic.

New Danish Government Breaks its Word and Slashes University Teaching Budgets

After the American Century                          

Many hoped that the new socialist-led government would offer a dramatic improvement over the previous right-wing coalition. But in many areas where they promised change, they have continued the old policies. Some of the promises they have broken were made with extreme clarity, and then forgotten immediately after they came to power.

One of the most notorious examples was the promise, given in writing as an unshakeable commitment, that the hospital emergency room in Svenborg would not be closed. It serves several islands and the southern part of the larger island where I live, This signed promise was broken as soon as they took office. Now they declare it will be closed. I firmly believe that some people will die because it will take them over an hour from the time an ambulance arrives until they can get to the only emergency room left on these islands, in Odense, where I live. This is a blow to a beleaguered area that already has trouble attracting residents. Before the election, the Socialists claimed they would help such outlying areas, and not continue the policy of centralization that is undermining them.

Likewise, the new Socialist-led government promised to roll back a large cut to the university budgets proposed by the old government before the election. In Denmark a certain amount is paid to each university for every student it matriculates. The old government proposed to cut this amount by 3000 kroner per student, and the new government now agrees. In 2012 Danish universities will find their teaching budgets reduced by c. 600 million kroner, or more than 100 million dollars. (Those who read Danish, see the news stories here, and here) To put this another way, support in most of the humanities will fall by 6.5% per student, but given rising costs the effect will feel like a 10% reduction. This decision will force universities to cut the number of teaching hours, put students into larger classes, fire some faculty, and slow down the purchase of essential equipment. UPDATE, October 2012. These things are all happening. There are now "language" classes, focused on improving oral proficiency, with more than 30 students, in some cases more than 40. This means that during an entire semester a student in such a class will only speak English for about 20 minutes each, at most about two minutes per week. It means that new BA programs are implemented without hiring any additional faculty or providing any additional money in the budget, while announcing goals that cannot possibly be met given the faculty and resources.

These cuts are twice as large as the increases announced for research, amounting to c. 300 million kroner for 2012. These funds are not all funneled to the universities, however. For example, some research money will go to hospitals or other institutions. In any case, the research funds that do go to universities cannot be used for teaching. The plans for 2013 call for even larger reductions for teaching, which will create a severe crisis.

Before the election the Socialists said (or rather they pretended to believe) that increased funding for education was essential, because the only real asset Denmark has is its people. A highly educated and skilled population will be needed to compete in the global market. But this new government, like the old one, now is unwilling to pay for it.  SDU's Rektor Dr. Jens Oddershed, speaking for the rektors of all the universities, declared that the government had broken its word. He was being diplomatic. A more objective view would be that the Socialists are cynical prevaricators.

Readers inside Denmark know that these are just two of many examples of the socialist-led government's unapologetic refusal to honor campaign promises. Like the previous government, the Socialists lack integrity. They proclaim one thing, but do quite another. In a few areas they are better, but in general it seems that, as George Orwell put it in the conclusion to Animal Farm, "The pigs have become men."

Where might the money come from to support hospitals and education? This government has refused to roll back tax cuts given to the wealthy by the previous right-wing government. Anyone can now see that the cuts were based on miscalculations and that they were un-financed.

Why should universities and hospitals be cut instead of rolling back the tax cuts for the wealthy? This is not even remotely a socialist program. It is not even an intelligent capitalist program. The new government has been a severe disappointment.

What Can Denmark Learn from the United States?

In my last blog I pointed to some areas where the United States might learn from Denmark. Now it is only fair to do the reverse: what can Denmark learn from the US? Quite a lot, actually. I want to point to four areas.

First, Danes have only a generation of recent experience in living with minorities from other cultures, and they have not done a good job of integrating them into their society. Refugees and immigrants have come to Denmark from more than 100 nations, but Danes speak of them as if they were a singe group, with few nuances. They speak of them collectively as "new Danes," which is code phrase that signals that these are people that are not really accepted as full members of society, even if they were born in the country and speak Danish as their first language. Politicians on the Danish right angrily demand that foreigners give up their own cultures and assimilate. They talk much like the anti-immigration leaders in the United States c. 1910. I personally know a lovely young women whose parents came to Denmark from Sri Lanka. She got an engineering education and speaks the language like a native - and Denmark is screaming for engineers - but nevertheless she never got a decent job offer inside the country. Instead, she has a terrific position in London. That is crazy, of course, but there are all too many examples of such discrimination and failed integration. The unemployment rate for "new Danes" is much higher than for the rest of the population. So, Danes should go to school to Canada and the US to see better models of how to welcome and integrate new citizens. The need is great, because Denmark has an unemployment rate that is now under 3%. Not only do they need to retain their own minorities, but they desperately want to recruit and then retain skilled people from abroad.

Second, Danes are losing some of their cultural heritage every year, particularly books and paintings, but also other important cultural objects. This is because of tax laws that do not encourage donations. In the United States, of course, donations are a tax write-off, so someone with a valuable painting can both be benevolent and also get full value for philanthropy. Another example is close to my heart. When a university professor retires in the US, he or she might well donate valuable books and collections to the library, again in exchange for a tax write-off. But in Denmark, no such rules apply. I know of one case of a man who had a valuable personal library, which almost was broken up and sold. Finally, the family did agree to sell it to the university for a fraction of its total worth. But in most cases, nothing of the sort happens. This would not matter so much if Danish libraries were well stocked. However, there is little tradition of building up good research libraries in Denmark, because this sort of thing is left to the State. But national governments, in my observation, are irregular in supporting libraries and museums. So, the Danish nation could benefit from changing the tax laws, because for a pittance they could preserve far more of their cultural heritage. The United States has some amazing libraries and museum collections built up by knowledgeable collectors. There is little monetary incentive for Danes to do the same.

Third, while I praised the Danish socialized medical system in my last Blog because it is free and works pretty well, it could be improved if it adopted a more proactive approach. In the US doctors give their patients an annual medical exam, and so can track their weight, blood pressure, and other vital indicators. Danish doctors only see a patient when something goes wrong. In other words, they wait, often until it is a bit late in the game. Preventive medicine would raise life expectancy, which currently is a bit lower than the US, and quite a bit lower than next door Sweden. I mention Sweden to indicate that this is not a problem with socialized medicine per se, but rather a specifically Danish problem.

Fourth, and finally for today, the Danes could learn from Americans how to meet new people. They are a rather shy lot, hanging back in the corner of the room if they find themselves in a group of strangers. In the US people are quite ready to mix it up at a cocktail party, the more the merrier. Danes feel most comfortable at a smaller gathering, preferably where they know everyone else in advance, and ideally where there is a seating plan. Spontaneity is not the Danish strong point, in other words. Most of my Danish students who take a term in the US are able to make this adjustment, so there is a chance that the country can and will open up a little.

If both nations have something to learn from the other, however, I am not advocating cultural homogeneity. Fortunately, in my view, the Danes are not becoming Americanized, but that is a subject for another blog.