People often seem to assume that immigrants leave their countries because they want to improve their lives financially. If we are talking about those who emigrate out of a situation of dire poverty, that assertion is true. However, a person who has a middle class existence in their own country mostly loses out financially as a result of emigration.
I lost a lot in terms of my economic status when I emigrated. I was very aware when I made the decision to emigrate that I would never achieve a comparable level of economic well-being in North America. It didn’t matter to me because I’m not materialistic, so I emigrated anyways.
Anybody who emigrates from a middle-class (or higher) existence in their own country with the express purpose of enriching themselves is very unintelligent.
P.S. If you are an immigrant from an FSU country and you want to make an argument that you are better off financially in North America, please ask yourself the following: Who owns the place where you live? How much do you owe on your mortgage? On your car? On your credit cards? And how much did you owe back in your country?
I rest my case.
Clarissa's Blog 
I don’t know about the FSU, but the middle and upper-middle class of several former colonies still see moving to the ‘white’ West — even to countries which were technically not their colonisers — as a mark of prestige. And they are willing to make great sacrifices financially and in personal comfort for this.
The elite few, however, prefer to live in the countries of their birth, because their social capital is simply too immense to give up. However, precisely because of this social and financial capital, they travel abroad frequently, and these travels become a prominent symbol of their superiority. This runs bone-deep in the culture of the subcontinent, at least, where rich people who do not travel to Europe or the US will always be several notches below in prestige to those that do.
The postcolonial mentality is a strange mix of adoration and resentment.
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I am afraid one should make a distinction between pre-perestroika and post-perestroika SU.
Before perestroika only the famous dissidents and Jews were allowed to emigrate, and both categories were persecuted or at least discriminated against. So economic reasons were not primary or at least not the only ones.
With respect to who owned a place where someone lived – in most cases state owned your apartment, you did not own it. Yes, one was very unlikely to get evicted, so you could argue that for practical purposes one owned his or her apartment. But it is not completely true. One could not legally sell an apartment and buy another one in a different city. In many cases one had to wait for many years to get the state-owned apartment (and live with your parents meanwhile). Many people had children for the purpose of getting an apartment (poor children), as having children increased your chances and you also could get a bigger apartment.
Another option was to buy a coop apartment. For respectable size apartment it did cost about 3 year average salary. And something resembling mortgage was possible. The only difference between that and here and now is that one was less likely to lose one’s job and default on the payments. Which is important, of course, but should we turn into Marxists? 🙂
By the way, the cars also did cost roughly three-year average salary. Officially, I mean, and more on the black market. Most people were not in a position to buy a car, and those who bought cars saved first, I do not think there was an option to lease a car… And state decided if you get a permission to buy a car or not, the quota’s were distributed through the so called unions. Same for vacation packages.
And credit cards did not exist.
What’s the point in comparing apples with not even oranges, but … pens? 🙂
And after perestroika (when anybody who wished to emigrate could do so) it turned into relatively wild-west style market, with credit being so expensive that most would not consider it. And 20$/month average salaries… (OK, I admit, according to standard of living parity these 20$ were equal to probably 500-600$ a month in the US). By the time average salary reached 500$, it was equivalent to probably 1000-1200 $ in the States. Thus, I totally believe that most immigrants from FSU did increase their standard of living. Especially if they did not have any real estate inherited from parents back home. Professional immigrants (scientists, programmers, etc) who got jobs matching their education right away could increase their standard of living rather dramatically.
I agree, though, that immigrating only for financial reasons is not worth it.
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My great-grandparents were better off financially in the US than when they were chased out of the Soviet Union (there’s a story behind that, but it’s been lost to generations of embellishment). A few years after immigration to the US, they owned their own home, had no bad credit, may or may not have owned a car, and had no credit cards (mostly because they hadn’t been invented yet).
Of course, because they were chased out of the Soviet Union (or sneaked out), one gets the feeling that they did it for more than just financial reasons. I think this was in the late 1920’s, and the much-embellished story mentions some kind of purge. They just happened to gain a lot in the United States. I don’t know anything about their lives before the Soviet Union, though. For all I know they could have been pretty well-off.
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This is an unreasonably rigid and general statement. I think, for example that Rupert Murdoch improved his already very high level of wealth by emigrating. I have colleagues from Poland who felt they did, also.
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*I agree, though, that immigrating only for financial reasons is not worth it.*
Unless one is afraid of losing one’s job and from low middle class be very-very poor in the original country. I know Clarissa hates it, but your sentence is either priviledge or not thinking.
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Sorry, “privilege”, not “priviledge”.
My family is indeed much richer in Israel than we would’ve been in Ukraine. Because in Ukraine I honestly don’t know what we would live on at all. Our small town there turned in a pit after USSR collapsed. May be people from bigger cities had it better. I am almost sure they did.
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El, maybe it is a privilege, I sincerely do not know. I guess where privilege ends and attitude begins depends on the person. For some people non-material things, like living within one’s culture and language environment, or living close to one’s family, are more important than for others. In which case people may prefer moving to a big city within the same country to improve their life financially. .
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