To explain first, I would like to say that I’m not asking about temps, local flavor, ease of transfer or the like.
My wife and I are stuck in the US while caring for her father. When the inevitable happens, however, we would like to be prepared to head out ASAP. We’ve done a lot of searching but I thought I’d ask here in case someone’s done some legwork for the same goals as us. I traveled a bunch as a kid in the military but that was a very long time ago and I wouldn’t trust my notions of the countries in question to have remained the same.
Basically, a lot of our goals will be achieved just by not being in the US any longer but we’d hate to end up in a spot that’s working hard to emulate the current social and political climate here. Just as an example, we don’t consider a large portion of Europe to be feasible for us due to the widespread tracking, online verification, etc. These aren’t huge points by themselves but does lead one to believe that it’s similar enough in it’s trajectory to warrant concern.
I can answer any questions you might have that may be able to help guide suggestions but I’ll leave it at this for now so I don’t throw too many wrenches in the conversation.
Thanks for your time!
In the interest of addressing stereotypes - I’m Midwestern, and “don’t drink the water!” is still something associated with Mexico in my head. Granted, parts of the US could have the same warning apply! Has this improved over the last decade or two? I remember on a recent trip to San Diego, we had to be careful what beaches we visited because the southern beaches periodically got sewage from dumping south of the border.
I also recall stories of white people (especially obvious foreigners) being targeted for kidnappings, with the assumption that they’re rich - is this rare, then? Or limited to certain parts of the country?
So I looked it up and, no surprise, it seems to be a lot of propaganda. In the last 5 years there has been a handful of cases. This year a couple was kidnapped by unaffiliated criminals on the confirmation that they had several internal accounts. The perpetrators killed them and impersonated them to drain their accounts. An influencer with dual citizenship was kidnapped at gunpoint from her custom lavender cyber truck. Assumibly to ransom her or extort her for for money hased on her incredibly lavish Instagram lifestyle.
Those are spot on. The part where it gets dodgy is the reports of cartel involvement and targeting US citizens indiscriminately. The two cases in the last year that targeted Americans that weren’t flaunting their wealth were actually both associated with immigration. The father of 4 immigrated and married a citizen and was kidnapped to extort that. The young woman was kidnapped by the smuggling group her fiance paid to bring her to the US. Both cases, it was locala targeting locals that had americans in the splash zone so the news spun it as “targeting the whites”
The one cartel situation involved 4 kidnapped tourists. The cartel outright stated that it was their agents who were working outside of their orders. It’s speculated that the 4 were mistaken for rival drug traffickers. Knowing the news here rarely admits that white people are common mules and I didn’t see a lot of info about their personal lives, I’d speculate they were either there to transport drugs or were poking around where they shouldn’t.
All in all, stay away from drugs, don’t look rich, and avoid bad neighborhoods. It’s the same stranger danger we use here. The only reason kidnapping for ransom isn’t equally strong here is because we live in a surveillance state that only cares about money. You attack a rich person and the rich people pay their politicians to make an example of you.