为什么越来越多美国人正在“逃离”美国？

【文章转载自经济学人】

背景介绍：

提到移民，许多国家的人第一时间都会想到美国，这个全球经济最发达、也是最强大的国家，无论发展空间还是教育水平，都无比吸引着全球的移民者。因此每年都有大批人向美国提出移民申请，另外还有许多非法移民者，冒着被抓的风险试图从边境偷渡到美国境内。然而，美国又如一座围城，城外的人想进去，城里的人想出来，越来越多的美国人正在“逃离”美国。

Why Europe is a magnet for more Americans

为什么越来越多美国人被欧洲所吸引

The number seeking to escape violence and political strife in the United States is small but growing

寻求逃离美国暴力和政治纷争的人数不多，但在不断增加

“What I envy you is your liberty,” says Count Valentin de Bellegarde to Christopher Newman, the protagonist of Henry James’s novel “The American”. Rich, self-made and free of class prejudice, Newman moves to Paris for fun, only to be sucked into the intrigues of the French aristocracy.

亨利·詹姆斯的小说《美国人》里的瓦伦丁·德·贝勒加德伯爵对主人公克里斯托弗·纽曼说：“我羡慕的是你的自由。” 纽曼富有、白手起家、不受阶级偏见的影响，他到巴黎寻欢作乐，却被卷入法国贵族的阴谋之中。

The template still describes one type of American expat: the well-off innocent who comes to Europe for amusement or edification. Another sort, however, comes not to enjoy the old world but to escape the new one.

这个情节套路描述的仍然是一类美国侨民：为娱乐或教育而来到欧洲的富裕的无辜者。然而，另一类人来这里不是为了享受旧世界，而是为了逃避新世界。

“I didn’t know what would happen to me in France,” said James Baldwin, a black writer, of his decision to emigrate in 1948, “but I knew what would happen to me in New York.”

黑人作家詹姆斯·鲍德温在谈到他1948年移民的决定时说：“我不知道在法国会发生什么，但我知道在纽约会发生什么。”

More Americans are moving to Europe lately, and many are fleers rather than seekers. The statistics are messy, but in some countries the trend is clear. In 2013-22 the number of Americans in the Netherlands increased from about 15,500 to 24,000; in Portugal it tripled to almost 10,000; and in Spain it rose from about 20,000 to nearly 34,000.

最近，越来越多的美国人移居欧洲，其中许多人是逃离者，而不是寻求者。统计数据很杂乱，但在一些国家，趋势很明显。2013年至2022年，在荷兰的美国人从大约1.55万人增加到2.4万人；葡萄牙增加了两倍，达到近1万人；西班牙从大约2万人增加到近3.4万人。

In other places, such as France, Germany and the Nordic countries, the number grew moderately or held steady. Britain thinks the number of resident Americans rose from 137,000 in 2013 to 166,000 in 2021 (the latest estimate).

在其他地方（如法国、德国和北欧国家），人数略有增长或保持稳定。英国认为，居住在英国的美国人从2013年的13.7万人增加到2021年的16.6万人(最新估计)。

Meanwhile, more and more Americans say they want out of their own country. Few of those who vowed to leave if Donald Trump were elected in 2016 actually did so. But Gallup, a pollster, found in 2018 that the share of Americans who said they would like to move permanently to another country had risen from 11% under Barack Obama to 16% under Mr Trump; by 2022 it was 17%, Joe Biden’s election notwithstanding.

与此同时，越来越多的美国人表示希望离开自己的国家。那些在2016年发誓如果唐纳德·特朗普当选就离开的人中，很少有人真的这么做了。但民意调查机构盖洛普在2018年发现，尽管乔·拜登赢得大选，但表示愿意永久移居他国的美国人比例已从奥巴马执政时的11%上升至特朗普执政时的16%；到2022年，这一比例已达17%。

The follow-through rate remains tiny: a few tens of thousands of émigrés out of a population of 330m. But many recent expats say they left partly out of despair at where the United States is heading.

后续移民率仍然很低：3.3 亿人口中只有几万人移民。但许多最近移居海外的人表示，他们离开美国的部分原因是对美国的发展方向感到绝望。

Some émigrés are drawn to Europe’s robust social safety-nets. Heather Caldwell Urquhart, a writer who moved to Lisbon in 2021, had taken a clerical job in Massachusetts simply to get health insurance.

一些人被欧洲健全的社会保障网所吸引。希瑟·考德威尔·厄克特是一名作家，2021年移居里斯本。

In Portugal she and her family pay for coverage a fraction of what an equivalent American plan would cost. “We didn’t realise how shredded the United States’ social fabric was until we got here,” she says.

在葡萄牙，她和她的家人支付的保险费用只是美国同等保障费用的一小部分。她说：“直到来到这里，我们才意识到美国的社会结构是多么支离破碎。”

“We felt the tension lift” within weeks of leaving America, agrees Sylvia Johnson, a psychiatrist who moved to Lisbon in 2022. For Ms Johnson and her family, who are black, the central issues were racism and violence. She had been trying for years to persuade her husband Stanley, a lawyer, to move abroad.

2022 年移居里斯本的精神病学家西尔维娅·约翰逊也认为，在离开美国的几周内，“我们就感觉到紧张的气氛有所缓解”。对于约翰逊女士和她的黑人家庭来说，核心问题是种族主义和暴力。多年来，她一直试图说服身为律师的丈夫斯坦利移居国外。

The strife after the murder of George Floyd in 2021 brought him around. He recalls saying: “‘I think we need to get a gun.’ When I said that out loud, I was like, if I have to live in a country where I need a gun to protect my family, then this is not the country for me.”

2021年乔治·弗洛伊德被谋杀后的纷争让他改变了主意。他回忆说：“‘我想我们需要一把枪。’当我大声说出这句话时，我就想，如果我必须生活在一个需要枪来保护家人的国家，那么这个国家不适合我。”

(加粗词为重难点词汇)

重难点词汇：

strife [straɪf] n. 冲突；争吵；纷争

protagonist [prəˈtæɡənɪst] n. 主人公；重要人物

aristocracy [ˌærɪˈstɑːkrəsi] n. 贵族；贵族统治