American Expatriates: An Unexploited Mother Lode
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Author: Reprinted with premission from Douglas McGill, Editor-in-Chief of The McGill Report
Released 12 June 2003
We have met the foreigner, and he is us.
In Saudi Arabia, a strange and foreign land if ever there was, a terrorist
attack two weeks ago was aimed not primarily at Saudi citizens but rather at
European and American citizens who have chosen to live large portions of their
lives, often raising children into their teen years, in Saudi Arabia.
Some 35,000 Americans live in Saudi Arabia, many working for American oil and
consulting companies, some for the U.S. military and some for the 100 percent
Saudi-owned oil production company, Saudi Aramco. Expatriates are an unusual
breed of American citizen who, after living for years in a foreign country,
might think and act more like a "foreigner" than an American. When they come
back to the United States, they might feel culture shock as strongly as they
felt when they first moved abroad.
Between 3 million and 6 million Americans, or up to 2 percent of the U.S.
population, live as "expatriates" around the world, shopping and socializing and
paying bills in foreign currencies, adopting foreign customs, making foreign
friends, often speaking in adopted foreign tongues. Even in highly protected
enclaves such as those in Saudi Arabia, expatriates brush up directly against
the disorienting strangeness of the "other" and thus quickly learn the skills
needed to adapt, to make peace and to thrive.
In other words, this special 2 percent of the U.S. population has become
expert at a set of skills the entire United States is badly in need of learning,
and fast. They are a rich but entirely untapped resource. As the sole global
superpower and one that is not shy, under President Bush, about pushing its
military weight around, those skills will be even more needed in the years
ahead. We need to make friends as we try to increase the odds that democratic
habits and institutions are adopted worldwide.
I received this Internet joke in my e-mail the other day from a friend in
Hong Kong: "In New York City, the United Nations adopted a resolution to study
the food shortage in the rest of the world. But three delegates raised
objections. The delegate from Africa did not understand the word 'food.' The
delegate from Europe did not understand the word 'shortage.' And the U.S.
delegate did not understand what was meant by 'the rest of the world.'"
Is this how we want to be known by our global neighbors? Expatriate Americans
are like honey bees who buzz around the world collecting rich nectars and
pollens. They are a valuable source of understanding of the very countries we
are culturally, economically and militarily invading -- if only we would use
that resource. But we don't. When American expatriates return to the U.S., they
usually run smack into a stone wall of ignorance and indifference among most
Americans about the places they spent much of their lives.
Last week, I visited with a former Rochester, Minnesota kindergarten teacher
who now teaches in Saudi Arabia for Saudi Aramco in an oil town near the Arabian
Gulf. She is furloughed in St. Paul with her three children, waiting for
tensions to subside so she and her kids can rejoin her husband in the Gulf. Is
she incredibly relieved to be back safely in the United States?
Nope. She can't wait to get back to the Gulf. "It's our home," she said. "Our
friends are there. We like it there, and I still feel safe there." She asked
that her name not be used in order to avoid any political or visa
entanglements.
Her eagerness to return seemed in part fueled by the lack of interest
Minnesotans have shown in learning what she knows firsthand about Saudi Arabia,
Arabic culture and Islam. One of her youngsters rolled his eyes as he said:
"When kids here find out I live in Saudi Arabia, they say 'Do you go to school
on a camel?' 'Have you ever ridden a camel?' It's always camels, camels,
camels." When the camel questions stop, conversation shifts to more compelling
matters such as skateboarding and the Minnesota Twins.
Nothing wrong with the Twins, mind you. (Keep the streak alive, guys!)
But in these days of a global war on terrorism and homeland security alerts
and suspicious sideways glances going to foreigners, especially Middle Eastern
ones, doesn't it make sense to sit down with the true experts in our midst and
to learn from them?
And who really is a foreigner these days, anyway?
TMR