The expat community is already a strange breed. First of all, they insist on calling themselves “expats” instead of “immigrants,” even though they are immigrants. Also, in a place like Peru, that is pretty lax on its immigration, a lot of these expats are in the country illegally. I remember meeting a guy who had been on a tourist visa for 30+ years. Nevertheless, when you got this guy on the topic of US immigration, he’d rant and rave about people “stealing his tax dollars,” which he probably wasn’t even paying since he lived abroad and could claim the expat tax exemption (perhaps that’s why they insist on calling themselves “expats”…imagine if they called it an “immigrant” tax exemption). The list of things that makes expats offended is long and perplexing.
The other day I published the article entitled, Peru Superior to the USA in Language Tolerance. This article is simply an objective statement of fact. If you walk around in Peru speaking English, nobody (except for the occasional expat) is going to rant and rave at you for not speaking Spanish. They’re not going to take a video of you, they’re not going to threaten to call immigration on you. It just doesn’t happen. However, the second I posted this article, I started to get all these bizarre comments. One guy even mentioned how much more tolerant they are in Mexico than in Lima, which made absolutely no sense since I was comparing Peru and the USA…Mexico had nothing to do with anything. Yet in this guy’s addled mind, that was somehow a valid counter argument.
I just find it strange how certain (not all) members of the expat community spend their whole time ranting and raving about Peru. I’ve seen threads where Peruvians come on and challenge the complaints only to have the expats shut them down with comments like, “if you don’t listen to any suggestions, your country will never improve.” However, the second you dare to offer a criticism of the USA, these same people totally flip out (they threaten to call ICE and have you deported even though they’re living abroad, it’s comical). Or if you mention how Peru has better health care or internet service, the expat community goes straight to Defcon 11.
I mentioned this strange occurrence to a friend of mine, and he thought that perhaps it was all part of American entitlement. Most US citizens are raised to believe that the US is the greatest, most perfect, most wonderful government, nation, etc. that has ever been conceived and refuse to listen to even the slightest change that could make things better. To me, that seems like a recipe for disaster since how can a country improve if they don’t admit their own faults? But, again, these people think the US is already perfect, and then if you mention the 20 trillion dollar debt, they just go quiet and pretend like they’re alone in the room.
Seriously, though, it seems to cause many in the expat community physical pain to make even a backhand compliment about Peru. If you say, “Peruvian Pisco Sours are the best in the world,” the best the entitled expat can do is not comment. But they’re more likely to go on a twelve minute rant about how their own altercations to the traditional Pisco Sour recipe (AKA, their “American” contributions), have improved it dramatically.
I think the real reason is that there’s a certain breed of expat that occupies a foreign country like a cyst occupies a human body. They kind of wriggle into a pore or something and then encase themselves with a hard outer surface which is suspended in a bag of pus. This allows them to funnel in an approximation of American culture, but it’s not the “real” American culture because it’s been filtered in this scenario into some idealized, nostalgic, artificial reality. These expats aren’t really engaging with the USA, and they aren’t engaging with Peru. Some of them live for decades in Peru without ever even learning Spanish. So they have no real connection to the Peruvian culture, and they’re cut off from American culture, so all they can do is go onto the internet and become hysterical if you go onto Facebook and say, “Peru has a better soccer team than the USA” even though that’s another objective fact (Peru is in the World Cup, the USA is not, case closed).
But the one phrase that really gets expats riled up is the following, “If you hate it here so much, why don’t you move somewhere else?” The next time you’re on an expat thread, drop that bomb and see what happens. The end result will be responses consisting of such a bizarre twisting of logic that they threaten to rend the fabric of space time. Don’t read them because you’ll get a headache, but do mention the phrase loudly and often because it must cause these unreasonable expats some distress to make these arguments and post them on silent chat rooms to be read by Russian bots.
Again, not all expats are crazy and unreasonable, to quote Mr. Trump, “I’m sure some of them are good people.” But they do exhibit the behavior of a hornet’s nest when you hit them with a trigger phrase like, “gee, this ceviche sure is good.” You know, like saying anything nice about the country they’ve chosen to inhabit illegally for three or four decades. I guess something must have kept them there…maybe they’re facing legal problems back home. Oh, and one last thing, they only respond to article titles, they don’t read the actual articles, so if you got this far, congratulations, you’re probably one of the reasonable ones.
