Ask HN: How many of you are actively making contingency plans to leave the U.S.? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How many of you are actively making contingency plans to leave the U.S.?

21 pointstpurves21 comments

My wife and I are looking into living in Mexico, if we sold our home in the US, we could afford a small place in Mazatlan for the winter, and in one of the mountain villages for the summer.

Recently inherited a condo in Mazatlan. We're not sure if it's a good place to escape to - at this point we're planning on selling it. What's your case for escaping to Mexico other than much lower cost?

Are you worried about the Cartels? Mexico is a very dangerous place.

Have soft job offer in Canada and a general timeline to move if we decide to go. My wife would retire. Job is remote so can live anywhere in Canada

We have applied for long term residency in Portugal. They have a very generous system if you’re well healed as an immigrant.

Could you be more specific? What is the system? Details? Links?

Type 1 Visa.

https://www.vistos.mne.pt/en/national-visas/general-informat...

There’s a “Golden Visa” which is a bit more fancy, but requires you invest at least €500k in a property in Portugal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portugal_Golden_Visa

Thanks!

Hope it helps!

Active? No. But I keep our passports up to date as a passive contingency.

Contingent upon what?

Pick a point anywhere on the spectrum from an unfavourable election result to a full blown civil war and there will be people for whom that is the point of no return.

This nonsense talk about civil war has gotten ridiculous. What is going to be the impetus for this war? Who are the belligerents? The "law and order" party has a monopoly on gun ownership and our police force is militarized. I guess there may be riots and civil unrest but the idea that we're going to witness a "civil war" is just silly.

> What is going to be the impetus for this war? Who are the belligerents?

Probably white nationalists. I'm not a subscriber to the idea of a full-scale civil war either but with the trends in growth for extremist groups and continued polarization I'd be surprised if violence DIDN'T erupt.

I don't think your wholesale condemnation that it's "nonsense" is helpful. I live in a rural area and, anecdotally, I've been seeing more and more open belligerence as Trump's prospects for reelection wane, fwiw

I think there's probably going to be violence and rioting, no matter who wins.

If Trump wins, and the left/antifa thinks he "shouldn't have" (which they almost certainly will, because voter suppression or electoral college or foreign interference or racism or whatever), then they're going to riot, maybe for a while. Maybe for a fairly long time if the race winds up in the Supreme Court, and is Justice Barrett casts the deciding vote. Big, left-leaning cities could get hot for a while, especially if the Proud Boys or whoever decide that it's their duty to put a stop to the rioting. That's not civil war, though. That's street brawling with a little bit of shooting.

If Biden wins, though, and Trump says that the results are invalid, because of mail fraud, or shenanigans by ballot counters, or whatever, and if he really sticks to that, then I could see an actual civil war - the "authorities" (minus Trump and his circle) vs the red states and Trump's circle. The closer the race, the more likely this scenario is. (It could be circumvented if Trump for once had a moment of decency and conceded the race. I'm not holding my breath for that to happen...)

Not necessarily leave, but evacuate from a zone with unreliable government towards a zone that has recently shown itself able to resist federal incursions.

Zones that resist federal incursions[0] have significant overlap with riot zones[1].

[0] https://www.voanews.com/usa/race-america/mayors-major-us-cit...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_racial_unre...

I'd argue that it depends on the incursion.

The federal government has it's hands in every state. Most states seem to resist one or more of those programs/directives. It's based on the state government's disposition which was chosen by the people. This is most evident in divisive topics like gun control and abortion.

That's one of the reasons the US is cool. If you don't like the cultural environment in one place you can go to another and people do.

No place is beyond the reach of the feds though, I'm not sure where you get that idea.

Portland told the DHS goons to stay on federal land. That's already good enough for me.

And now they have deputized regular Portland police so rioters will face federal charges.

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