The Not-So-Great American Migration

The Power of Media

Remember journalism? You know, when media reported on the facts as best they could find them and if they were wrong, they issued a correction. Remember when journalists were allowed to work on a story for weeks and months to do real investigative reporting? That doesn’t happen anymore. Or at least it doesn’t happen all that often.

I blame CNN and the 24 hour news cycle. Do you know how hard it is to fill up 24 hours with news? Every day? (For that matter, have you ever found yourself watching cricket or college womens’ field hockey on one of the lesser ESPN channels?) Instead of “all that time to fill” allowing media outlets to take deep dives into breaking stories, the story behind the story, and anything else that would result in a well-thought out, comprehensively researched view of a topic, we got… Headline news. Sound bites. Kim Kardashian sideboob shots.

It’s all about getting the eyeballs and so something that is basically a small thing gets made up into something bigger. (Why the really important things get swept under the rug is a bigger question. Perhaps they think the subject matter is too boring or complex for Americans to sit through a five minute segment. They probably have stats to back this up.) So, making something unimportant become a big TREND is a go-to eyeball catching device.

Hmmm. Sourdough bread anyone? Remember at the beginning of lockdown when EVERYONE was making sourdough? Hands up—how many of you made sourdough? Or kept the starter alive? And, if you did bake several loaves of delicious bread, how often are you doing that now? That’s what I thought. Apparently not EVERYONE was doing it. But the media made it seem like a thing.

Basically, the media is filling time and pages. So, a slight uptick becomes a whole movement for as long as people will click to read or watch. When y’all stop clicking on those articles about Americans moving to Portugal, they’ll stop writing them. And move on to the benefits of cinnamon rolls in the fight against high cholesterol. (I can dream, can’t I?)

Even Americans Don’t Want to Run into Americans

This is kind of fun because many of the people who move to another country are leaving the States behind for a reason. It may be political, could be a security issue, cost of living (especially in retirement), better weather, or any number of things. But the one thing we don’t want is to be represented by the Ugly American. In Florida, snowbirds (winter residents) are widely disparaged, but their seasonal money keeps a lot of people in business. The important thing to know is that most of the people speaking disparagingly about the winter influx moved to Florida from other areas. It’s the idea of closing the borders once you’re safely inside.

That is sometimes the vibe here, an unspoken undercurrent, though few of us will admit it. We left certain things behind for a reason and we don’t want to see them showing up here. I cringe every time I see a McDonalds or Burger King here. Fortunately, many of the streets here are so narrow that it makes those huge Hummers and oversized SUVs and pickup trucks impractical. I have met one or two “Karens” here, but they are few and far between. There’s a reason for this.

The entitled Americans either don’t stick or they’re all living behind the gates of some luxury development and I don’t interact with them. In fact, I meet very few people from the States. There are so few of us here that the Portuguese will often ask if I’m British. (A lot of British here.)

The Americans I have met want very much to become part of the Portuguese culture and they appreciate the way of life here. That means that we learn to hang out our laundry instead of having dryers. We don’t need giant economy sizes of consumer goods. (You can go to Costco, but there’s no place to put those huge amounts of whatever when you get back to your Portuguese size kitchen.) We can sit patiently through the occasional power outage without screaming about our constitutional right to electricity. The ones who aren’t able to adapt to the culture and the realities of living in a foreign country don’t stay. They may go back to the US or try another country (or several) before finding one that is the right “fit” for them.

In short, most of the Americans I have met here are progressive, easy-going, and respectful. And hard to find. They broach the subject of more US citizens moving here with a bit of caution and regret. We are very aware that we are guests in our new country and we don’t want anyone to jeopardize that. But a quick review of the facts usually calms out little butts down.

In these conversations, the general consensus was that once you looked at the real numbers, there just isn’t a huge influx of Americans going on. There are approximately 7,000 US nationals out of 10,000,000 people. There will be even fewer because the government is closing down the Golden Visa option. Even then, not that many US citizens took advantage of it, especially compared to the Chinese, Brazilians, South Africans, and Turks. According to Nomadgate (who got their figures from SEF), only 558 Golden Visas were issued to US citizens… over the period of January 2012 to January 2023.

Next year (or the year after), the media will find a new darling country to make everyone crazy about and Portugal will drop to number four or five on the Top Ten lists and you’ll see headlines like “Americans are Flocking to Romania in Droves!” and other such twaddle. Take it with a grain of salt. I mean, when was the last time you baked a loaf of sourdough?