Foreign. Hello, and welcome to Live like the World Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today, Inman Narrowin. And today we are talking about some end times shit, because even if they aren't coming, it certainly feels like they're coming right now, at least in a certain regard. And today we're going to be talking with Carat Quinn about her essay. Where would you go if you left the US on having a plan just in case. And I'm really excited to have this conversation. We kind of been talking in our chat about the scale of approaching this, and it was overwhelming. And then Carrot just happened to write a really cool essay about it that frames it in a perfectly wonderful and accessible way. So here we are. But before we get to that, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts. And here is a jingle from another show on the network. Do do do do do do.

I know the kind of pain you're feeling, Alex. I once had it myself. You some kind of doctor? No, Alex, I am Magneto, and I have come to offer you sanctuary. Hello, this is our Jingo for our podcast, the Grounded Futures Show. This is the show where we discuss topics ra change to identity, to how youth can gain new skills to thrive amid current and ongoing disasters that we are collectively facing. We are your hosts, 1 gen Z, Liam, and 1 gen X, Carla, and we think we all deserve to thrive now and not in some distant utopian future. Yeah, but that's in the future. Oh, I hate the future. Yeah, we're with Bolin. Grounded Futures is a larger project, so check that out over@grounded futures.com.

Hey, everyone, it's Inman from Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, and we have a really exciting new book to tell you about. Uprising is an unapologetic chorus of mad voices that refuse to conform or cower in the shadows. It was born from a collaboration between two organizations rooted in community care. Workman Arts, a multidisciplinary arts organization supporting artists with lived experience of mental health and or addictions. And Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, a collectively run publisher of radical culture grounded in anarchist ideals. We invited writers with lived experience of mental health and or addiction issues from across Canada to send us their stories, poems, daydreams, imaginings and manifestos around all the things it can mean to rebel. What we received exceeded our expectations. While some pieces whisper rebellion through the quiet acts of survival, while others rage loudly against psychiatric incarceration, systemic violence, and various forms of injustice, many of the pieces stare you defiantly in the eye while rupturing sanist stereotypes. They subvert genre. They challenge traditional literary structures. They dare to crip time and space to be nonlinear. Some pieces queer what healing means and turn the notion of recovery on its head until it's too dizzy to stand. None of these works follow a straight path. They all twist and tangle into a messy but bold collection of rebellious imaginings. This collection isn't about overcoming madness. It's about thriving with our madness fully and fiercely on our own terms. You can pre order Uprising right [email protected] or or ratty in Kentaddy if you.

Are ordering from Canada. And we're back. Thanks so much for coming on the show today. Carrot, could you introduce yourself with your name pronouns? Even though I've already said your name multiple times and just a little bit about who you are in the world and what, what, what you do? What do you do?

Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. My name's Cara Quinn. I use she or they pronouns. I've written a couple books. My most recent, Bets is about a young person riding her bike across the country in like a post collapse us situation. I also own a backpacking guiding company. I take groups of women, trans and non binary people backpacking to teach them backp and backpacking related skills like navigation. I live in Alaska and yeah, I guess that's. I guess that's. I'm also a long distance hiker. I've hiked like 11,000 miles and I blogged every day of every one of those hikes. And that's on my website if you want to read it. And I have a substack.

Wow, I love that. That implies that. Wait, no, sorry, I can't. I can do math. I was going to say I love that that implies that you have 11,000 blog posts. And then I was like, that's not how days. And I wrote a. Yeah, like I.

Wrote a blog post every mile of every hike. That would be. That would be wild. I feel like Gen Z could do it. I can't, but a younger person can maybe do it for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Like I'm sure someone has like live streamed their entire like, like PCT trip. I don't know if that's possible. That's probably not possible.

Yeah. If it's not possible yet, it's not far in the future.

Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, it is delightful to have you back again and I love that you're becoming a little bit of a regular on the show because you have such wonderful things to say about terrible things. And that's gonna be my fun joke for the day. So we are here to mostly talk about your essay or your substack post. Essay. Substack post.

Article.

Blog post. What is this?

Let's call it a blog post. Let's. Let's throw it back to 2008. Great.

Great. Your live journal. Your live journal.

My live journal, yeah.

What inspired you to write this piece? I can't imagine a single thing that might inspire this train of thought.

You know, I honestly, Life is so good. The world is so chill. I don't know why I fell down this rabbit hole. I guess I just like learning new things. But, you know, one day I was just skipping through a field of flowers with all my friends who felt equally unbothered by the state of the world. And then I just randomly was like, what if I researched leaving the U.S. so, something I thought about a lot over the years, as one does, is if there was a line, a sort of line in the sand that would happen, where I would be like, now is the time to leave the US And I never found a great line. I kept sort of picking things, and then that would come to pass, and I'd be like, no, I don't want to leave. But what I did realize once I started researching is it honestly doesn't matter what your line is, because the process of figuring out where to go and then getting things in order for where to go takes so long depending on where you want to go, that you should just get started now, because you might not ever want to leave the U.S. you might just be skipping through a field of flowers with your friends, forever happily happy. But if you do decide you want to leave the US if you start the process now, then you'll have a plan in place. So it's not actually about, like, whether or not to leave or when to leave. Although now I do have kind of a line in the sand. I've decided on that. I can share that. Who knows if I'll actually stick to. Maybe I won't. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what your line is. It doesn't matter if you decide you actually want to go. The process is complicated. And so everyone. It's like having a will, you know? Like, it's not fun to make a will. Yeah, we don't. But it's like. It's just. It's just smart, you know? So the idea, what I've stumbled upon is that the important thing is to just get started. And so we can talk about like, how, like, I don't know enough to be any kind of immigration expert at all at this point, but we can talk about what I've learned about how to get started and some questions you can ask yourself to get started.

Yeah, yeah. And for listeners, just to sort of. I think that pretty adequately defines the scope of what we're going to be talking about today. But to kind of say what we're not going to be going over is we're going to be talking about legal forms of immigration and we're going to be talking about. And we're not going to be talking about kind of like exact ways to do things. These are incredibly complicated processes and they're going to look different for every country. Carrot was joking that we could probably do a complete podcast on just any place that you might try to emigrate. So Carrot has really brought a series of framing questions and ideas that people should consider and ask themselves and then do your own research. There's entire law firms that are dedicated to this sort of thing. And we're not experts, but we are good at asking questions.

There are also lots and lots of content creators who dedicate their work to providing information on how to immigrate to certain countries as someone with a US passport. So as soon as you start this process and start thinking, you can go on TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, you can go all sorts of places and find people who actually have done the legwork. Like, if you picked like Australia, for example, that's like very specific with very specific, like, pathways and, you know, different things to take into considered. So then you could start like looking up content creators who are like, here's how to immigrate to Australia with the US passport. And you can like really get in the weeds. But every country is so different. And then depending on what you do for work is so different, depending on your needs, your abilities, your income, the languages you speak, like your criminal record, all sorts of things makes a difference. So you can. There are content creators who specialize in that and you can for free, like watch their stuff and learn a lot once you start narrowing it down and figuring out your options and your what's your number one choice, number two choice, etc.

Hell yeah. Just to maybe I feel like it would be unsurprising to the people who listen to this show to imagine why we might be talking about these things, but why might someone think about leaving? Is this purely for fun? Is it because people might be seeking political asylum at some point in the near future, kind of the why, why, why carrot.

So when one is thinking about why to leave. So the Trump admin would love to just be like a horribly repressive authoritarian government. They're really trying to do that right now, and they're mostly failing. They're trying. You know, in one case, it's reassuring. It's like, let's get this over with, you know, just fucking. They're just throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. And it's like, cool, well, this we'll know a lot in a few months, right? Like, it's gonna. We're really gonna figure out if Trump can be authoritarian, if he can successfully become an authoritarian. Obviously, if you're any of his target groups, which is almost everyone, it. You're gonna have a terrible time in the US So. So, for example, his act countering domestic terrorism and organized political violence, it's like the NSPM7 or whatever, you know, names almost everyone as his basic. Basically his enemy. Everyone except for, like, white Christian nationalists is his enemy.

So totally. I cannot get over how there are hyperlink sources to fucking Fox News on that.

It's ridiculous. What I personally, at the. I mean, things could change right now. I don't think he has the power to become an authoritarian, but he is trying. And whenever your government is trying to become a horrible fascist place, it makes sense to have a plan just in case. So it just makes sense. And the other thing is, you don't have to go, okay? So. So here's the. The sad and terrible truth. Human history is full of immigration and migration, and it is always very, very hard. It is so hard. It's so hard to leave your home. It's so hard to leave people and place. You know, we all have a connection to place, like community, your culture. It's. It's hard. Like, we, you know, everybody, worldwide, there's this massive human history of migration, immigration, and it's very, very hard. We don't want to do it. Very rarely do people want to leave everything they know and go somewhere new. But it is. And you don't ever have to go. Even if things descend into the worst imaginable, you can stay, you can fight, you can do it. Like, you don't have to go. It's a really, really personal choice whether or not to go. Like, if you're a targeted group right now, like, if you're trans, if you're being labeled antifa, like, if you feel like you're going to be one of the first people to be targeted, it Totally makes sense to get to safety. If anyone feels like they need to get to safety, they should absolutely do it. Like, we should not judge other people for wanting to leave. If you have kids, if you don't want to raise your kids here, like, it makes sense. It's a really personal decision on whether or not to go, and something only you can decide, and no one else gets to guilt you or shame you or make you feel bad. But you also don't have to go. But having a plan now will make it so that if you do decide to go or if you do need to go, you can go. So that's the angle I'm coming at it from. Because knowing whether to go is just such a really hard question that's just really hard for us to answer for ourselves.

Yeah. Yeah, it is. And it's like the idea of immigration is like. It's. It's complex, it's complicated, especially depending on who you are in the world. It's wild to think about, like. Like I've spent a considerable amount of my time doing border aid work, and the idea that there is a future in which I might consider leaving the US because of political persecution, it's startling. And it's not startling because it's like, obviously authoritarianism has existed since long before the formation of this country. It's just that it's easy to think that something won't apply to you, and it might.

Yeah, yeah. It's also, you know, if you live in this country and you're not indigenous, your ancestors statistically probably came here fleeing something. Yeah, some people just came here because they were rich, but the majority of people came here because they were fleeing something. And then if you are Native American, you were forced off your land mostly, I think almost everyone onto different land, less good land, a lot of people, and you were made to move. And then that also, if you are Native American and you have to leave the US that is, like, doubly heartbreaking. But we all have, like, a history of immigration, migration, being forest off land, leaving because of desperation. Like it is, you know, I haven't experienced in my lifetime. But a lot of people are recent U.S. immigrants. And then even the people who aren't, it's not that many generations ago that they were recent US immigrants, you know, unless they were indigenous. So, yeah, it's a thing. I mean, it's a huge bummer, but it is a thing. And so, yeah, it's like having a will. It's just good to know where. Where you would go and how you would go there.

Yeah, yeah. It's also, you know, I'm just putting this out there as a historical fact. After the Spanish Civil War ended, it was like, I think like hundreds of thousands of people fled Spain as Franco took power because of out of the fear of what would be intense political persecution.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I. I don't know if the Trump admin is going to do its fun thing it wants to do where it represses everyone. I don't know. But just to get, you know, it's just good. It's just good to have a plan.

Yeah, it is, it is.

And it's also, you know, this podcast is called Live like the World Is Dying. It is about end times. But I would argue that, you know, it is a good time to start looking into this. But I realize that this is something even in the best of times that it's good to know about because you never know. You honestly never know what could happen. So.

Yeah, yeah, it's good to be prepared and like, a lot of preparedness things that we talk about on the show, you know, whether it's like freeze drying years worth of food and putting it in your basement or wherever, it's like the hope is to never use it.

Yeah.

But it's sure nice to have a plan in case you do need to use it.

Yeah. And as you start learning, you can talk to your loved ones and help educate them too. Like, as you start asking yourself these questions, like, is my career one that I can do in another country? Which countries? If. If it's not a career I can do in the country I want to move to, Can I switch careers? Like, all these questions, you can start talking to your loved ones and help them ask themselves those questions. Because we're not going to want to go alone. Like, we want to go with our loved ones. We want to take care of the people around us. Not everyone can support themselves the same way. You know, not everyone is good at nerdy research. And so just asking these questions helps you prepare not just yourself, but the people around you too, so you can all make a plan together. Because one thing, immigration is like, incredibly psychologically, like, destructive, for lack of a better word, being uprooted from everything. And so being able to do it with your loved ones, you have a much higher chance of being okay, being able to, like, create a life that is okay. And so. And also, some people are allergic to research. You know, some people can't work. Like, some people need to be taken care of. And so as we start Having these conversations, if you like research, if you like nerding out as you start doing it, you can also help the people around you. And that helps take care of other people.

Yeah. And you know, if it helps deal with some of like guilt feelings that can come up when it, when thinking about leaving. Just as another fun, just historical anecdote that has nothing to do with the current world we live in. There's a lot of really heartwarming stories, heartwarming and crushing at the same time, of people who were trapped in places like the Vilna or Warsaw ghettos and who smuggled themselves out. And then when those places decided to do an uprising, a lot of people smuggled themselves back in.

Yeah, like you can make choices. You don't have to decide right now whether or not to stand, fight. You can make choices in the moment. You can change your mind every day. Like, yeah, you can come. Yeah. So this is. Yeah, this is just about the plan for sure.

Just about the plan. And the first thing I want to ask you about is as we hit like 20 minutes into this show is kind of the limbo of. You talked about drawing lines in the sand around when will I leave? If such and such happens. And I want to talk about defining that and how they can sometimes erode.

Yeah. So I, I realized I needed like a pretty clear line in the sand. Cause these things kept happening that were like pretty terrible on the surface. And then I would be like, I don't know, you know. Cuz immigration is no joke, it's like a big deal. So I decided for me that my biggest fear was not being able to leave. So that I would watch for signs of immigration restriction for people with U.S. passports. And then that would be. That's my current line in the sand. I tell myself that if people start being unable to leave, that that's when I'll go. I don't know if that's true, but so then I looked up historically what some signs are that there are starting to be restrictions on people leaving. And I can read those because I thought that was really interesting too. But one is there are these rules around how passports can be denied. And if bills are introduced in Congress expanding what can cause denial of a passport, that's a red flag. Like if things like political extremism, if there's like a bill introduced in Congress saying like political extremists can have their passport denied, that's a huge red flag if there starts to be limits on moving money abroad. Because if you immigrate, you need to Be able to take your money with you, obviously, to make it most doable to move. And so one way countries keep people from leaving is by limiting their ability to move money out of the country. So if that starts happening, that's a huge red flag. If there starts being requirements, so right now we can just leave, and then the country we're going to has requirements about entering. But if there starts being a requirement around getting an exit visa to leave, that's a huge red flag. Like, I know Russia does that. Some other places do it. Because right now it's just. We can just leave and then it's the visa requirement for the country we're going to. But if there starts to being an exit visa requirement for the U.S. for us, that's a red flag. And if they start criminalizing immigration for certain groups like engineers, doctors, things like that, because they're trying to prevent, you know, brain drain, professionals are going to start leaving. And so if it becomes a crime to leave, if you're of certain professions, that's a big red flag. Unusual delays in passport renewals beyond normal backlogs. Sometimes there's regular backlogs, but so far there have not been other unusual delays. Things. Passports are still getting renewed. Mandatory interviews for routine passport applications, that's a red flag, making it harder to get a passport. Travel bans for dissidents or activists, political framing. Immigration is unpatriotic. Like, if public rhetoric starts saying that leaving the US Is betrayal or helping enemies, that's a red flag. And then also if people start talking about brain drain or protecting national talent, that might start. People might start using that to justify exit restrictions. So those are. I sort of looked up some signs and I'm going to watch for those. And if any of those things start to happen, then I have told myself that is when I will leave. But I don't know if I actually would. So. But just for my own, that's sort of like the benchmark I set. That's one that works for me. Because, you know, anything else, it's like, well, I can decide whether to go if this happens. I can decide whether to go if this happens. But if we're not allowed to go, I can't actually go. So I've given that sort of line in the sand for myself.

Yeah, yeah, I think these are good lines in the sand. And it's like, I feel like I would probably draw similar ones. And something that's also scary to me is that I feel like. It's like if stuff like that is happening, I'M like, is it already too late at that point to leave legally? You know.

If, if those things have happened, you can still leave. Unless you're one of the groups that is being restricted. Yeah, but if it's something that doesn't, those are just signs that exit restrictions are beginning to happen. So hopefully when they start to happen, there'll still be a window when you can leave. And that's where having your plan already figured out comes in, comes into play. Because then you can leave really fast. You can just go.

Yeah, that's very, that's very true.

But of course there's always, there's always a chance that it could be like you, Inman, are not allowed to leave. And then you're like, you know, and then it's like plan B, which we're not going to talk about on this podcast for legality reasons, but. And also because I don't know that much about it, but, you know, hopefully you can start to see the writing on the wall while you can still leave.

Yeah, and I think that is the big question with all of this stuff. I think when considering to leave is imagining yourself as the proverbial frog in the pot. That's the thing I think we all worry about when considering this stuff. And maybe there's an article about it that I haven't seen, or maybe he's talked about it. But were you following the Mark Bray thing last week?

I think, yeah, totally, yeah.

Yeah. Which again, if you haven't heard, Mark Bray is this scholar on anti fascism, wrote books about anti fascism historically and was receiving death threats, him and his family. And so they decided to leave, which I feel like getting, like you and your family getting death threats, specifically targeted death threats is like a good reason to leave. That should, that should probably be a line in the sand for a lot of people. And upon trying to leave, when they got to their gate, their flight had been canceled.

Yeah, their reservations. So they, so they checked in at the airport, went through security, and when they got to the gate, their reservations will just. Were just gone from the system, I will say, because I was like, oh, no, they were able to rebook for a flight the next day. And there's a lot of weird chaos and delays happening right now at airports. So that instance, that is the one instance I have heard of that could be someone being low key, half blocked. But I'm sort of shelving that until there's a more clear indication. Because, for example, I flew back from Las Vegas the other day because I was there guiding a trip and the airline messed up my reservation in the most chaotic way I have ever experienced at an airline. So I was like. I was like, okay, maybe that is just the airline being wild, you know.

Totally.

But as soon. Yeah. So I sort of shelved that as like a maybe. But. Yeah, that is the first thing I've seen that could be something like that.

Yeah, I think it's like one of those. Just. It's a really bad, weird time for something weird and unexpected to happen. And it's important for us to pay attention to those things. And it is also important to, I think, not take confusing things happening as like, the curtain is dropping, you know?

Yeah, I think there will be more clear signs for sure, like that could be something. But I think there will be more clear signs if there are restrictions. And yeah, he was able to get out. He made it to Spain. So thank goodness.

Yeah, thank goodness.

Let's talk about some factors because. Okay, so when to leave? That's a question. It's almost impossible to answer. I feel like maybe when we'll know, we'll know, you know. But what we do know is what the current situation is with, say you have a U.S. passport, you want to move out of the U.S. what do you do? A really cool thing. Okay, this is something that's really cool.

Yeah.

We do have US Passport holders as far as just move going out of the country. We have two other countries as far as going to other countries. We're in the top 10 as. As far as the power our passport holds. We can go to so many more countries in the world than so many other passport holders, even just on a tourist visa. It doesn't mean we can stay forever or move there. But if you're just trying to get out fast, we have insane privilege as US Passport holders. So that's really great because that means even if you don't know where you're going to move to or how you're going to immigrate, how you're going to transfer your job, how you're going to make a living, where you're going to, you know, whatever you can. We can get out really easily compared to a lot of nationalities on this earth. So that's really cool. We're like in the top 10 as far as countries. We can just show up, they will give you a tourist visa, no questions asked. And some places you can stay for a month or three months, some places you can stay for a year right off the bat, no questions asked. So that's cool. So that's the first thing I feel like we should all have a place we know we can go to tomorrow and they will let us in. And from there we can make a plan, figure out long term stuff in case we need to get out fast.

Yeah.

And then within that, it's important to know the place you're moving to, how much it costs to go there initially. If you're just trying to get out initially and go to someplace safe where you can make a plan from knowing what the cost of living is there and how much money you need and whether or not you can afford that temporarily. So that's sort of like the first step is having an emergency place.

Yeah, yeah. And I want to hone in on a couple things that you just mentioned. One is it's emerging. Who knows what's going to happen with it? But I think it's important to recognize the privilege of a US passport. I also have been wondering if how US passports are regarded and treated will change, which there's no indication, but it's just a question on my mind sometimes that I think is worth having in.

The back of our minds. Yeah, totally. As things are, as things stand, they're still very well regarded. Yeah. I will say as far as actually moving somewhere and immigrating, a number of countries are opening up more immigration pathways for US Passport holders. They might be anticipating, as things destabilize, there might be a brain drain and they are more than happy to absorb people from the US who do certain kinds of jobs that they have a scarcity of. And so there are actually more and more immigration pathways for us globally. So that's cool. But as far as tourist visas. Yeah, who knows?

That could change. Yeah. And it's also important to note that precursor traveling within Mexico is confusing and has its own situations. But currently I like, yeah, currently as of now, there's places where you can cross into Mexico without interacting with any customs officials at all.

So Mexico is actually. So I'll talk about my own personal kind of research I've done for myself. So my first choice, if I'm thinking about where to move to, like not just go on a tourist visa but eventually, you know, become a resident. Canada would be my first choice just because I already live in the subarctic in Alaska. And if I could just bop across the border into the Canadian subarctic, it would feel like a very lateral move. Like culturally it wouldn't change much. It would be so chill. But Canada is not an option for me because one particular thing on my criminal record in my in 2003 I was arrested at a protest against the Iraq war in Portland. And Canada does not. It was just a misdemeanor charge and then the charges were dropped. And Canada does not like that. And I'm in the slow process of trying to figure out how I can deal with that. But that, that. So if you have something on your criminal record that Canada doesn't like, like if you have a dui, a drug charge or, I don't know, whatever else they decide they don't like, to get them to allow you in is a process called rehabilitation. And that alone takes years, a ton of paperwork and money, and then they can still say no. And then after that is when you can start looking into immigration. So I can start that process, but realistically I'm not going to be able to move to Canada because even if I didn't have that strike against me, Canada is actually pretty hard to immigrate to. They have like a point system. My age counts against me, I'm 43. I don't work in a profession that they prioritize. Like, I'm not a health care worker, I don't work in the trades, I'm not a teacher. So Canada's probably off the table. Mexico, if you have a US + passport, you can go into Mexico, no questions asked for 180 days. 180 days right off the bat. So that gives you a lot of time to like just get out of the US and have a place you can go and make a plan and then if you want to stay, I would personally love to live in Mexico. The path to residency with a US passport is very straightforward. So yeah, Mexico is a great option. I will say so there. So there's kind of two types of countries in the world is the way I look at it. There's places you can go and make the local currency and pay your living expenses and there's places you can go and it's actually really hard to pay your living expenses with the local currency. And Mexico, a lot of areas in Mexico are like that. Like people are poor as shit because their wages are really low. So if I was going to move to Mexico right now, there's a few areas you can go where if you work in tech or a few different things, your wages are high enough to pay your living expenses. It's not Mexico City, it's like these mid tier cities in the interior. But if you don't do those things, you'll want to be making US dollars remotely in order to pay your living expenses. Unless you, you are down to just be poor, which you totally can. You know, if things get really scary, we're just trying to get safe, you know, you'll, you know, you'll be okay. But. So that's a thing to take into consideration. If I were to move to Canada, I could work making the local currency and pay my living expenses. If I were to move to Australia, same. If I were to move to a lot of countries in Latin America, some of them I would not be able to pay my living wages. My living expenses, making local wages. Some places I could. So that's a really important consideration is like how are you going to make a living? Are you going to work remotely making USD? If you are working remotely making USD, one thing to take into consideration is that if the US continues to destabilize, like if you are leaving because the US is falling apart, odds are USD is not going to be great for that long. So it's always good as you like really think long term to think how you can make a living making the local currency wherever you're moving to. And sometimes that means changing your career. Like for example, I've been thinking about going to nursing school because nurses are wanted the world over. If you're a nurse or a teacher or you work in the trades, you can immigrate to anywhere on this planet they want you. If I switch careers and became a nurse, there's a lot of countries I could move to and work locally and pay my living expenses. Those are some things to take into consideration. Also if you move to Mexico and you're working remotely making US dollars, you will have a detrimental effect on the local economy in the place you're living because your dollars will have higher buy, higher buying power and that drives up the cost of housing and the cost of goods and that is very bad for local economies. And this happens all over the world, especially since remote work has become popular. People from countries with higher value currencies like European countries, the uk, the US Moving abroad and working remotely drive up local costs. So that's, that's a big deal. Even if we feel like refugees.

Yeah.

You know, at some point we need to be really aware of how if we migrate somewhere, how we are affecting local economies. And I'm not sure what the answer to that is, but I think there's gotta be a way to not just move somewhere and destroy local economies by making US dollars. I like to think there is. Maybe the answer is that you just need to work making the local currency. I don't know what it is, but that's something that we also have to figure out when we think about this stuff.

Yeah, absolutely. It's like thinking about where you go, what your impact is going to be, and just like some of the broader complexities of where you're going I think are really, really important things to think about. The reason that I bring up kind of like a current low barrier to entry to Mexico is that it's like, it's potentially a place to be able to go to interact with airports in a different way, you know?

Yeah, totally. Like you can. The way things are currently, if you have a US Passport, I haven't flown into Mexico, but you can just drive across the border. It's kind of no questions asked. You can bring your dogs. There's not a lot. Like some countries, if you bring your dog, you have to put your dog in quarantine. There's various requirements. Mexico, you can just bring your dog. It's. It's a place that we share a land border with and you can go there fast. And they're currently very. It's very favorable if you have a U.S. passport. So that's a great sort of like emergency, get out, quick answer. And then you can either look into residency pathways in Mexico and how to live there without destroying local economies, or you can use it as a safe home base while you plan where you want to move. I will say I looked up, so all the countries ranked globally for stability. Out of 160 countries, I think the US is currently 138 and Mexico is 128. So Mexico is currently more stable than the US for what it's worth.

Yeah, that checks out. What other kind of factors would you bring in? And I say this as you have a list of very lovely questions in your substack posts that you suggest people ask themselves.

Yeah, first, what I would do. What I would do first, as you're on this process is just in your brain, sort of in your imaginings, in your dreams. Where would you like to live? Obviously we can't immigrate everywhere. Like, I'm not allowed in Canada. They literally don't let me in at the border. You know, would love to go to Canada. They don't want me.

But that's complicated, living where you live.

I know, it's so sad. I am going to start the process of that dumb rehabilitation stuff, but it's just, oh my God, it's maybe in like 10 years and like thousands of dollars and so much paperwork they'll like, let you know what I mean. But Anyway, so just where sounds nice. You know, you're like, oh, I visited Columbia once, loved the fruit. I like the vibe in Germany. You know, just whatever, just brainstorming, you know, if there, if everywhere was an option, where would you live? And then you want to ask yourself, what do I do for work? Like, how do I pay the bills? Do I do something? So there, like I mentioned, there are certain jobs that everybody in the world is having a shortage of, like teachers, nurses, anything in the healthcare profession, the trades, engineers. Like there's these things that everybody wants more of. Do you already do something like that? Oh, tech. People want tech. If you do, that opens so many immigration pathways for you. So many if you don't. For example, I'm self employed and I looked into immigrating to Canada as a business owner. They're open to it as long as your business is worth at least half a million dollars. My business is worth like 50 bucks, so that's not an option for me. If you don't already work a job that other countries need, can you change careers? When you were fantasizing, dreaming, brainstorming about where you want to live, you're like, germany has good vibes. Then I would look up content creators who make content about moving to those countries with a US passport. So find some people talking about immigrating to Germany with a U.S. passport. You'll have no problem finding these people. I like learning this way, especially about stressful topics because it's so easy to focus for me on just like a TikTok video, especially if I'm like stressed about something. So it's very, it's a very accessible way to learn and there are lots of people making this content.

So yeah, we'll see if that changes with TikTok. Sorry, this is an interruption, but the new ownership of TikTok. Holy shit. What is going on? I. Well, they liked it better when they were trying to outlaw TikTok in the.

U.S. yeah, well, there's also YouTube, there's Reddit. So yeah, find someone writing about this. There's lots of people who make content around it and say you want to move to Germany and Germany wants you. I haven't looked into Germany at all, so I don't know. But say Germany wants certain jobs. You don't do any of those jobs. Can you change careers? You know, it's 2025. We can have multiple careers in our life. That's fun. You know, that's fine if you're moving to a country. Like if you're moving to Mexico. And you are going to be working remotely or if the best way to pay your living expenses in Mexico is working remotely. Do you already work remotely? Can you work remotely? Can you either switch your current career to remote work or can you get a different job? That's a remote job. So I would. Yeah. List the places you want to move and start looking into their immigration requirements and think really realistically about what you can do, what you're capable of. Some people say you're retired and you live off Social Security and you have a fixed income. Say you live off Social Security that pays you $1,500 a month. There are countries that you can move to, like Albania right now is offering people with US Passports a one year visa, no questions asked, and then you can become a resident. So it's currently a popular place for people with like because the cost of living there is low. So people on like a fixed income are retiring there. Yeah. And just like start looking into it and start brainstorming those sorts of things. One thing to take into account is wherever you move to, you're going to need to eventually make a living. So there are restrictions around how and when you can work. Like some places you can go to right away fast with a tourist visa. But then if you want to work, that's a whole other thing. So that's an important thing to look into too. Like say Germany. You want to move to Germany. This hypothetical thing, if you went there initially on a tourist visa, how would you work there? What kind of is it a special visa to work and find out that also some places you can go to as a student. So could you go back to school? Every country has like different pathways and it's not easy. Generally the countries that are quote, unquote, easiest for us are the ones who are trying to attract remote workers making US Dollars because they want us to spend money there. Which does make it, quote, unquote easy for us. But also A, we need to be able to work remotely and B, that destroys the local economy, which some countries will happily do to their own citizens in the name of bringing in foreign dollars.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, it's complicated. One of the things I thought about when I was thinking about this big question was it reminded me of the. Which I'm not advocating anyone do this, but it's funny, but it's fun that people did and I've heard they're cracking down on it is I immediately thought of punks that I knew who'd squatted in Spain for 10 years just without any I'm sure they had troubles, but with like, relatively like, little complications. But. But squat. Squ. Squatting. Squatting in, in Spain as a, as a broke punk is probably not what most people are trying to do with their lives, you know?

Yeah, yeah. And yeah, yeah. Your standard of living is, Is a factor here. Like, what kind of standard of living do you want or need? Like, right now I live in a cabin without running water. I would do that in the Canadian subarctic. Canada has rejected me, but I would be okay with that. Do you need to live in a city? Are you down to live rurally? Yeah.

Do you need to live somewhere where your. I'm just bringing this up because it's in your thing where your demographic of who you are is equally or like a consideration, you know, equally repressed. Or is a consideration to think about possible repression?

That's a great question. I mean, as things devolve here, it'll be easier and easier to find places where one's demographic is less oppressed. But yes, exactly. Like, do you, if you're queer, do you want to live someplace where queer people are out? Are you okay. Okay with living someplace where queer, queer people are not out, but they're still a queer community? If you are black, if you like, whatever your demographic is, you can find Reddit threads talking about your demographic moving to the country you're considering and people talking about whether or not they were able to find community and whether or not they felt safe. As things continue, more and more countries, already more, most countries are more stable than the US and probably safer. So it's just going to get easier and easier to find countries that are safer than the U.S. yeah. And I wouldn't be surprised if some countries opened more immigrant pathways for, like, trans people or different groups who might be targeted. But yeah, you can find that out. Whatever country you're considering, you can find that out online. Because not just safety, but it's important to have community. So, yeah, whatever your demographic is, making sure that people of your demographic are able to build community in the place you move to. Because if you're trying to successfully move to someplace and have some quality life and be okay, like, you need community. And then the other side of that is it's really important to move to a place where you like and respect the local culture. Because if you're moving to someplace where you don't like or respect the local culture, you're not going to be happy there and you're going to have. It's. It's just that's just rude. Also, like, we shouldn't move to places where we don't like or respect the local culture. Um, like, I really like Mexican culture. You know, I don't like the culture of some places in Europe. You know, I. I feel very. Europeans are. No, I mean, I know that's like a broad generalization, but they're not necessarily my vibe, you know, I'm very American. I'm very, like, loud. I. I like telling jokes. I'm very, like, I smile at strangers, you know. So globally, there's countries where I would feel I would like the vibe better. So that's important. Like, can you make friends? I have. I have seen some accounts of people immigrating to, like, the Netherlands, Norway, some different places where, like, people are very cold and you will literally never be able to immigrate for the rest of. Or. Or integrate. Sorry, you will never be able to integrate into the community for the rest of your natural life. So you will be just. You will just have to make friends with other immigrants, which could be fine, but that's an important thing to take into account.

Yeah, community is important. Yeah. I don't know. I think these are all really great, really great considerations. Just to speedrun a couple other things because we're fiercely running out of time. That I saw in your substack post at least is like considerations for your pets, considerations for your loved ones, whether.

You'Re.

Willing or able to learn local languages. And I think, as a really big consideration possibly is, I think it's good to make these plans and it's good to make lists and these criteria and stuff like that. And I also think it's important for us to recognize that it's one with the speed at which things could happen. Even if you have the perfect plan in place, that for some people, that if you're considering leaving, that it might be fleeing and that if we're fleeing, it might mean that our lives are changing in drastic and irrevocable ways and that that might happen and that whatever your new life is might be very different than the life that you're currently living. And I hate to kind of bring in a gloomy thing at the end, but I think it's worth working through.

Yeah. Immigration is actually incredibly difficult. Not just paperwork logistical wise, but psychologically, it's actually really hard. Even best case scenario, even if you and every person you loved all moved as a group to whatever hypothetical country, it's still heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking. Um, it's really hard on people's mental health it's, it's really, really hard. So, yeah, it's not there. There's no, like, easy, light way to go about it. This plan is sort of like having a go bag, you know, like, it's not. We don't know what's going to happen or how things are going to happen, but just nice to have a go bag, I guess. A few other things I want to talk about real quick is housing. So some countries have been trying to lure remote workers or immigrants. Like Ireland, for example, currently has this list where they're like, if your job is on this list, you can move here. And it has every job in existence, including like online influencer, tattoo artist, yoga teacher, literally everything. But Ireland for years has ranked as like the worst housing crisis in the world. So you can't move to a place even if they really, they're open to you immigrating there if you don't have a place to live. So that's something really important to take into consideration. A lot of countries globally are having really bad housing crises right now, which I think is. I think we're at a moment where people are starting to like, brainstorm some solutions to that, which is cool and hopefully things will get better. But that's something to take into account. Like I've heard like the Netherlands, there's like no housing. And then on the other half, the other side of that coin, some countries historically have had a really low cost of living. So if you're making USD, it's really easy to find housing. For example, Portugal for years has been luring remote workers from countries with, from other European countries where wages are higher, or from like the US because the US dollar is strong. Historically, housing in Portugal is super cheap because their local minimum salary is like €700amonth, which I think the euro is kind of close to the USD. So like 700amonth? Ish. So super low. So rent has historically been really low because wages are so low. And then they started luring remote workers, many of them from other parts of Europe and also people from the us and those people will pay more for housing because they have their more money. And so some places in Portugal, like Lisbon, which is like a big city where you might want to live, say if you wanted, like queer community, you might want to live in Lisbon. It has, in just a few short years, it's become one of the most expensive housing markets in the world. So. So those are some things like if you, if you find a place that does have housing and for your currency, the housing is Cheap. You're like, oh, with USD, this housing is really cheap. It might only be temporary because if you are part of an influx of remote workers, in a few short years you might actually be priced out. So it's important to think about, to take housing into consideration, be like, what is the housing situation now? What might it be in a few years? How are local governments dealing with housing and how do I factor into all of that?

Yeah, yeah, great considerations.

One other thing I think is important to consider is when I've been looking at tech talks or whatever about this, like people, content creators who talk about this, like, where to move to if you have a US password. There's a lot of comments, people saying like, well, I can't leave the U.S. i can't leave the U.S. like I'm going to get left behind. And on one hand we have, with US passports, we have so much more privilege than so many other countries that we, we don't really get to complain about whether or not currently we can leave. On the other hand, people's feelings are valid because a lot of people don't have savings or they might not work a job that is in demand around the world, or they might not be able to work at all, they might be disabled, Various situations. So it's really important as we're making a plan to consider our loved ones and to figure out how we can like take care of them. And if you are one of those people, if you are afraid you're going to get left behind, if you are afraid you don't make enough money, if you're disabled, it's important to have this conversation with your loved ones and be like, let's make a plan together. Where can we go together? I'm afraid of being left behind. Let's figure this out together because there are options. There are so many options with a US passport, for better or worse. Better meaning it's easier to leave. Worse meaning we can have a negative impact on economies where we go.

So yeah, yeah, you beat me to it. Yeah. And I love that. Just bringing in this kind of community aspect, which is that you don't have to make these decisions alone and you can get with people in your life, in your community and talk about these things, figure out plans together, help each other brainstorm limitations that different people in your communities might be having and figure some of these things out together. Even if you can't all leave together, you can plan together. And that's what I gotta say.

Yeah, like we. Yeah, I, I know it can feel scary thinking about all this and feeling like you don't have the resources, but people have immigrated in the most insanely difficult situations. Like, we can do this. If we need to do this, we can do it. You can do it, everybody. We can do it. So, yeah, it's not impossible.

Yeah. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show today, Carrot. Where can people find you in the places where you want to be found and any parting words?

Thanks for having me. It was great. I'm on Instagram, Carrot Quinn or my substack. If you just Google Carrot Quinn. Substack. I think it's substack.com carrot quinn or carrotcoin.com. yeah, those places are good, Zach.

Well, thanks so much for coming on and I'm excited for you to come back on hopefully soon to talk about living places where it's really cold.

Oh, yeah. I live in the coldest city in North America. Yeah. So we can talk about the cold.

Hell, yeah. We'll see you next time, Carrot.

Yeah. Thanks, Inman.

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