Pardon my ignorance here. Putting the US or other five eyes countries on the same plane as China is a false equivalency. People can at least take it to streets and demand facts, which is not possible when we are talking about China. Hypothetically, if Apple and Samsung made their phones in the US or other five eyes countries we can assume some level of oversight on their practices , which is not quite possible in China.
Second this. GRR is not too far from AnnArbor, Kalamazoo, BigRapids,Lansing. Which are all college towns. All of them are may be an hour away or two hour tops. GRR has an incredible beer scene,midwestern non-chalance,salaries are not too great, but it is cheap to live there. My buddy used to work for Atomic Object-in GRR and he never had anything bad to say about them.
I am oblivious to some or many aspects of Tech. business. It is probably going to cringe a lot of people, but the question in my mind is, Why cant Dell or other OEM's pay for developing or customizing Linux to their specs, so it is more reliable. That way they don't have to depend on Microsoft for OS and can optimize their hardware performance, just like Apple does with OSX? I know it sounds like a dumb question, but I don't know any other place on internet that provides a better answer than here.
I don't know if that can be generalised. I lived in GR and went to Grand Valley. I saw few churches with rainbow flag raised on them. Grand Valley is also very big on protecting LGBTQ. Had gay friends knew gay bars. For an immigrant like me, GR has been nothing but warm and nice. Sorry to hear about your experience.