On emigration

I recently spoke to some emigrants who left Malaysia for Australia about five years ago. They are settled in, and have given up their Malaysian citizenship so are no longer voters. Many friends that I know whom have started families end up giving up their Malaysian citizenship to become Australian.

So Malaysia has over a million emigrants. How many of them are still Malaysian?

This all came back to me when I read: The Best Hope for France’s Young? Get Out.

THE French aren’t used to the idea that their country, like so many others in Europe, might be one of emigration – that people might actually want to leave. To many French people, it’s a completely foreign notion that, around the world and throughout history, voting with one’s feet has been the most widely available means to vote at all.

Leave that kind of voting to others, they think, to the Portuguese, the Italians, the Spaniards and the Africans – to all those waves of immigrants who came to France over the course of the last century. France has always been a land to which people dream of coming. Not leaving.


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