Canada and Puerto Rico: America or Foreign?

[syrakusos]

The arguments with JTS on audting the Federal Reserve raised a side issue: Why do you live in Canada when you could live in the USA?

To me, that raises some basic quetions about the relationship between the USA and Canada. Is Canada really more foreign than Puerto Rico? Not many people know that Puerto Rico fields its own Olympic teams, independent of the USA.

[BaalChatzaf]

Canada is as the elder Bush used to say, the kinder, gentler America.

The Canadians are like us, but not just like us (I refer to English speaking Canada). Province Quebec is an output from another planet.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[syrakusos]

Last September, I moved from Michigan to Texas. I have lived in South Carolina (two years) and New Mexico (two years). Working in automation, I spent 13 weeks in Minneapolis and few in Norfolk, Louisville, and Silicon Valley. Looking to relocate, my wife and checked out Portland, Oregon, Milwaukee, Green Bay, and Madison. Not much for the travail of getting there, I like to look around once I arrive. America is diverse. In fact, sociology knows an unproved theorem that there are more differences within any arbitrarily large group than exist across equivalent groups. We Americans think of Japan as homogenous, but they do not see themselves that way, certainly: town and country is still a big divide.

I have only been to Canada three times and not for very long. My first trip (1972) was a weekend on Pelee Island, off Sandusky, Ohio, not much different than the mainland. In 1999, I attended a numismatic convention in Kitchener, Ontario, a town with a lot of ethnic Germans, Oktoberfest, and all. If the flags were not Canadian, I could have been in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. Last time was Calgary (2004), when I spoke at a numismatic conference. It could have been Wyoming, for the landscape, but, culturally, it felt more like a mix of Fort Wayne and Tulsa: small midwestern city with cowboy and railroad history.

I think that the famous National Geographic map, Earth at Night, shows the true outline of the United States.

If Canada is the kinder and gentler United States, what, then, must Mexico say about who we really are. I think of the iconic cartoon with the person trying to make up their mind on a moral issue with a little angel on one shoulder and a little devil on the other.

[william.scherk]

The arguments with JTS on audting the Federal Reserve raised a side issue: Why do you live in Canada when you could live in the USA?

He can't live in the USA because the USA does not want him, maybe? Can't get a green card, is in the wrong profession for ease of border-crossing under NAFTA? If he is a successful teacher, nurse, engineer, doctor, or professional of other sort (save lawyer or jurist), it becomes easier, but is still no cakewalk.

Maybe Jerry likes where he lives except for the hellhole-isness.

As for your forays across the border figuring out how like the two entities are, were you able to participate in Canadian life as you would participate in American life? Did you bank, get a check-up, take your kid to French School, enroll in a Masters Programme, take out a student loan, have a spell of homelessness, walk a beat on campus, meet with non-numismatics?

A little bit further east is a land called Quebec. You would be unable to distinquish it from New England states until you opened your eyes and ears and picked up a newspaper. The Flags you see in Tulsa/Calgary usually mark some agency or symbol of the state, such as post office. In Quebec the blue flags mark manifestations of the Quebec nation. Is it foreign or is it American? When you stand in Quebec's national assembly, do you feel 'at home' following the legislative debate? Is it kinda like a blend of New Orleans and Boston?

As for Mexico, its many points of light compressed into a smear in the global image, what we also can compare is what is in the pocket. Little Mexico in America (illegals and Americans or landed immigrants) often operates through two pockets. In one is Mexican money, and runs on the Mexican economy, where cigarettes start at a dollar a pack and a dozen tortillas can be had for 30 pesos. The other pocket pays Yankee prices. Ask your nearest Mexican-American how much their dollar buys Auntie Teresa back in San Isidro de Pongo ...

You mentioned Puerto Rico in your header but did not carry your comparison. Puerto Rico, is it foreign or American? Is Alaska with its Palin more American than Hawaii with its Lingle? You can go live in Puerto Rico tomorrow, Michael, with no legal impediments, unlike the regime that would or would not welcome you to Canada.

Frankly, to accept you as an immigrant, we would need to assess you on a point system, from age to health to language to profession. If you have a job in Tulsa/Calgary that only you can fill (except in the listed professions), and you otherwise fit the profile of a decent would-be immigrant (money in the bank, investment plan for Canadian jobs), you never can tell, you might be successful.

Who knows, maybe we need a numismatist/security professsional. Worth a try, if you even get tired of Texan charms.

Unlike Canadians, Puerto Ricans are USA citizens, so I invite you to figure out those implications for 'foreigness.'

All the talk about the differences and similarities in winner-take-all categories of thought can obscure simple and telling facts. Our impressions of our neighbours can be incomplete, and comparisons between Canada, USA and Mexico can be

smudged into irrelevance only when you are 500 miles above the surface of the continent at night. That vague eye-in-the-sky comparison serves no useful purpose if it only serves to confirm vague notions. Worse, it is like telling us The Mexicans Ate My Homework. If you want to answer the question without getting off the couch, you are doing great so far, but haven't yet considered and enumerated possible objections to the smudge. Even from the couch in the sky, I think you can come up with a few, beyond what I have noted here.

+++++++++++++++

I do think Jerry has some interesting things to tell us about the differences between the USA and Canada. But at the moment he exists in some transnational coma, and may think he really lives in Objectivist County.

I forgot to answer the question, Michael, sorry. Yes, both.

Edited July 4, 2012 by william.scherk

[jts]

The arguments with JTS on audting the Federal Reserve raised a side issue: Why do you live in Canada when you could live in the USA?

He can't live in the USA because the USA does not want him, maybe?

Who said I want to live in the USA? I didn't say that.

The question might be better directed to william.scherk who lives in Canada and calls Canada a hellhole.

[syrakusos]

William Scherk, thanks for the cogent summary. You are right about experiencing a place as a local versus as a tourist. As for green cards and all that, my experience is that they are a convenience. True, being a public school teacher or barber (often licensed at the state level) might be hard. I once met a young woman who lived in Europe for a few years, working here and there. "How do you do that without papers?" I asked. "You go to the owner of the restaurant and ask him if he need a waitress," she said. Greece was hard because of the cues and clues for Yes and No, but she got used to it.

I went to school K-12 with a lot of Puerto Ricans, some as American as apple pie when they got here and others not. For many of my schoolmates, the path from Europe to the USA was via another country, such as Venezuela. Not sure how that worked. Like many libertarians, I thought about emigrating, but the simple library research never convinced me that any place was better. (Entrepreneurship in Hong Kong might ring John Stossel's chimes, but, you are, then, after all in Hong Kong.) I spent five days in Switzerland in 2000. Nice place. Easy to acculturate to, but, all settled in and spoken for: not much feel of opportunity there. Nice place, though.

[william.scherk]

hy do you live in Canada when you could live in the USA?

He can't live in the USA because the USA does not want him, maybe?

Who said I want to live in the USA? I didn't say that.

The question might be better directed to william.scherk who lives in Canada and calls Canada a hellhole.

I have been referring, ironically, to Canada as a socialist hellhole to put in relief the wackiness of claims that Obama is a Marxist, who wants to enslave the USA to the scarey Canadian model: one-payer health-care, socialized up the wazoo, multicultural, French, yadda yadda. I have said that as Marxists go, if Obama is a Marxist, I become a Hardial Bains. You know what I mean, Jerry -- the sense of proportion is lacking. As Ba'al seems to say, of all the major industrialized democracies, the USA too has a panoply of socialism, often of the same stripe as Canada, from pensions to Medicare, without perhaps the universality of Canada, but in some places (Massachusetts, DC, Oregon) the vile Marxism of Canada largely looks familar.

So, Jerry, I underline again, irony. If Obama wants to take American to the dead-end cul-de-sac of socialized yeehaw, it might get to be as bad as Vancouver. And what is Vancouver but a sexier, younger, dope-smoking-er, free-er Seattle?

William Scherk, thanks for the cogent summary. You are right about experiencing a place as a local versus as a tourist. As for green cards and all that, my experience is that they are a convenience.

Nope. If you want to wait tables or do yardwork or construction, maybe, in the UK open to the rest of the European hordes. A cash economy can have margins for work like this. But contrast to Architect or Doctor Veejay or Engineer / Scholar McCorkey or Teacher VanDusen or Chemist Choi: how many US schools/labs/factories have Canadian teachers recruited by or welcomed by generous provisions of NAFTA, in which states? One way, the legal way, is much more than convenience. If you really wanted to emigrate to Canada, of course, you could claim refugee status ...like Randy Quaid.

As for Switzerland, they are anal to the maximum in regard to citizenship. In at least one canton, prospective immigrants are voted up or down in a public meeting. Me or you are not even on the dance card, Michael, unless zillionaires.

I went to school K-12 with a lot of Puerto Ricans, some as American as apple pie when they got here and others not. For many of my schoolmates, the path from Europe to the USA was via another country, such as Venezuela. Not sure how that worked. Like many libertarians, I thought about emigrating, but the simple library research never convinced me that any place was better. (Entrepreneurship in Hong Kong might ring John Stossel's chimes, but, you are, then, after all in Hong Kong.) I spent five days in Switzerland in 2000. Nice place. Easy to acculturate to, but, all settled in and spoken for: not much feel of opportunity there. Nice place, though.

I have a feeling you would do fine in Mexico, where you can build your own house, grown your own beans, roll your own tortillas and sell grandma's handicrafts in the market. You can also dig your own grave, and although the Mexican bureaucracy is not as smooth for a business owner as Canada's, many Norteamericanos of either stripe do plentiful south-of-the-border business, whether export/import, foodstuffs, mining, industrial development, transportation, real estate, what have you. In my forays to the Spanish lands, I find Mexicans most like Canadians next to Costa Ricans -- friendly, sober, family-oriented, fixed on survival and getting ahead and prospering in the southern version of El Dorado.

Puerto Ricans are blessed by full citizenship and civil peace and inter-migration to America. No ties to the island need ever be entirely broken. Like Quebec but further from the main highway of things.

In any case, Americans, 'real Americans,' are a varied lot, yes. And Puerto Rico (and Canada) are both foreign and home at the same time, though not in the same proportion, and not in every corner. The borders, despite Jerry's looney suggestions, are real between our three north American regimes, still stand tall and strong and keep us from being mutual citizens.

Meanwhite:

INSEAD's Global Innovation Index 2012: Switzerland retains first-place position in innovation

Switzerland, Sweden, and Singapore lead in overall innovation performance according to the Global Innovation Index 2012

Top 10 Leaders in the Global Innovation Index

• Switzerland
• Sweden
• Singapore
• Finland
• United Kingdom
• Netherlands
• Denmark
• Hong Kong (China)
• Ireland
• United States of America

The list of overall GII top 10 performers has changed little from last year. Switzerland, Sweden, and Singapore are followed in the top ten by Finland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, Hong Kong (China), Ireland, and the United States of America. Canada is the only country leaving the top 10 this year, mirroring weakening positions on all main GII innovation input and output pillars. The report shows that the U.S.A. continues to be an innovation leader but also cites relative shortfalls in areas such as education, human resources and innovation outputs as causing a drop in its innovation ranking.

Regional leaders and the BRIC countries

The leaders in their regions are: Switzerland in Europe, the US in Northern America, Singapore in South East Asia and Oceania, Israel in Northern Africa and Western Asia, Chile in Latin America and the Caribbean, India in Central and Southern Asia, and Mauritius in Sub-Saharan Africa. Among low-income economies the leader is Kenya.

Edited July 6, 2012 by william.scherk