A few survivalists have considered migration as a way of getting out from under the impending doom of the American system. R. Hodkinson of Australia recommends his country as a place for Americans to settle. He means well but he obviously has known few Americans.For most American migrants to Australia, the place is a miserable experience, both for them and the Australians they deal with. I will go into detail about this, but first, let me point out the general impracticality of migration.
Most Americans believe the world is their oyster. They feel their influence, their products, their trade, makes them welcome anywhere. This is true only when they go to other countries as tourists. They take money which they intend to leave behind when they go home.
All tourists are welcome, anywhere, by those who make their living off tourists. Tourists are usually insulated from anti-American sentiments, as the authorities and those living off the tourist trade are verbally and even physically rough on their nationals who accost tourists with belligerence.
So Americans who have traveled to other countries, spent all their money and left, come home with much praise for the polite and quaint natives they met. In most cases, the natives were polite only because they expected payment and also because they knew the arrogant, cloddish Yanks would soon go home.
But when an American migrates to another country, the mask of politeness is off. He is a competitor and, as a national from a country with a higher standard of living, is considered a loser and a fool.
Since he has little money, except what he might earn there, he is no better than the natives. He is also astonished by the realization that he is now in the same position as the Puerto Ricans in New York or the Caribbean blacks and East Indians in England. For the first time in his life, he is a dependent foreigner and is treated as such.
I migrated to Australia in late 1962 for various reasons; the main one being a quest for adventure in what I considered to be a new frontier. Also, I believed America was going socialist and didn't know Australia was much further along the same road than we were.
You must realize that Australia has obviously changed in the last 17 years, but, as a migrant, I'm sure I would run into the same general problems I confronted then. Although the standard of living might be somewhat higher, the people and their attitudes toward foreigners cannot have changed much.
Furthermore, although the following may seem very critical of Australians, I would probably have had just as hard a time anywhere else I migrated to. For it is their country and their ways. And their attitudes against Americans were mainly formed by Americans who had been looting Australia for years. Also, I have never gotten along with Americans so why should I get along with Australians?
Even so, most of the Americans I met there were just as hostile to the Australians as I was and they were also just as obnoxious as I was and I didn't like them any more than did the Australians. Few of the other Americans were migrants. Most of them were businessmen taking unfair advantage of the Australians. It wasn't that the Australians were stupid. It was just that they were less sophisticated than the sharper Americans. The term "Robber Barons", as applied to our 19th and early 20th century millionaires would be mild in comparison to the crooks I saw bilking the Australians.
As a near penniless migrant, though, I didn't feel that I should be treated with the same scorn as the Americans who deserved it. But I got it anyway, even though I had gone there with the idea of being an asset to the country.
The reason that I had so little money was that I didn't take advantage of the Australian government's "assisted Passage". Assisted passage was a government con whereby they paid about three quarters of a migrant's passage. The ripoff was that one couldn't leave the country until the assisted passage, amounting to several hundred dollars, was paid back. Since few migrants could get decent jobs, and if they did, the pay was barely enough to live on, one could not hope to save the money, so was trapped. I paid my full passage, so left when I'd had enough.
Wages then were one-third for the same job an American got over here. The average wage in New South Wales was 18 pounds a week at $2.25 per pound. Food and rent were cheaper than here but manufactured products averaged three times higher, due to high tariffs on imports to compare with the naturally higher prices of Australia's smaller industrial output.
Resentment of Americans was deep-seated and mainly originated from the Second World War when hundreds of thousands of Americans were stationed in Australia as a base for attacking the Japanese. The Australian serviceman was paid very little and the American G.I. was comparatively rich. They literally bought up all the women, which enraged the Australian men. Like the British, the Australians complained of the G.I.'s that they were "over paid, over sexed and over here".
The Australians seemed to think they could beat the Japanese all by themselves, or at least the ones that attacked Australia. They may have been right, as the Australian soldiers are among the best in the world; as good or better than American Marines.
Anyhow, much of the anti-American sentiment is male-oriented. Australian women are very nice and very pretty, on the average. They never gave me any problems, I think because since their desirability was a big part of the conflict, they were too flattered to get into the Yank-baiting game.
As a reporter, I decided to get work in that line. I had rented a TV and read all their newspapers before making any applications. Although most of their news about America was from U.S. news films beamed over there, their papers were biased to the point of outright lies. They have freedom of the press, as do we. But freedom of the press is all too often a license to defraud the intellects of the reading public.
I watched the account of the blacks kneeling on the steps of a Southern courthouse at a civil rights demonstration. This was against the law so the cops, with dogs, moved them off and there was a riot. One black was flicking his jacket at a dog, got too close and was bitten.
The news film plainly showed that the dog was leashed and the black just had no judgment of distance. Next morning, the Sydney Morning Herald showed a picture of the black being bitten but they had blocked out the leash, giving the impression that the dog had been set loose against demonstrators.
There were, and are, enough things wrong with America that one doesn't need to lie to point out U. S. defects. I decided to get even by going to work for the Sydney Morning Herald.
When I applied for work as a reporter I was turned down with the explanation that they didn't need any help. Maybe they didn't, but I found later that they wouldn't have hired me anyway. Later, in Cairns, Queensland, I applied at their paper and the editor told me bluntly that he needed a reporter but he wouldn't hire a Yank.
The Sydney editor was nice enough to refer me to the women's weekly supplement of the Herald. I went upstairs and talked to the editor there. He didn't want to hire me either, although he did need someone. I persisted and asked him to at least let me show what I could do so he could see that I could write.
He dug into a drawer and got a pile of rejects which were the worst garbage I'd ever read. I then went to a spare typewriter and rewrote several of the articles. I reworked them into some highly readable stuff and he was so impressed he hired me as a sub-editor.
This consisted of proof-reading, rewriting hideous romantic drivel sent in by semi-literate women, and writing captions to pictures. Actually, the whole staff practically wrote all the stories sent in, they were that bad.
Although socialists, the half dozen staff were intelligent and witty and I liked them. I got along alright for a couple of months until the editor asked me to write lying articles about America.
First, he asked me to write an article on how American women celebrated May Day. I told him American Women didn't even know what May Day was. He said he knew it and I knew it but the Australian women didn't. I refused.
Later, he wanted me to write about the subjugation of the American Negro. Instead, I wrote an article entitled, "Don't Pity the American Negro". In it, I pointed out that American blacks owned more cars, homes, businesses, etc. than all the Australians put together. Also, that blacks on welfare got more than the average Australian worker.
I then pointed out that the Australian blacks, the Aborigines, could not cross state lines without police permission, got half the pay of whites doing the same jobs and had no political representation. I don't think they could even vote. Also, at that time, they couldn't buy liquor. My boss then transferred me to another department, gave me hardly anything to do, and when the quarterly layoff period came around, I was out.
As much as Australians despised Americans, I believe they hated the English more. While I was still a sub-editor, Queen Elizabeth and Philip visited Australia. They came over in a small ship and Liz was very seasick and as I remember, she had the trots.
The staff women went to the dock to interview them. When they came back they joked about the Queen's condition. One said, "Poor bitch; I hope she dies". Another went on about the foul language used by Philip to the press and said he was a homosexual. I didn't believe the last part but could imagine his reasons for swearing at Australian journalists.
The next evening I watched Liz on TV. Although I care nothing for the monarchy, I was angered by the Australians' treatment of her. For three hours they kept the cameras on her while every Australian politician got up and gave a stupid speech. They were no better nor worse than American politicians. Totally degenerate. They each droned on for from five to ten minutes.
But even worse than forcing her to listen to all those clods, that camera was on her the whole time. She couldn't scratch, yawn, stretch or do anything one would normally do sitting in a chair for three hours. So for three hours, she posed like a graceful statue, showing as much poise and class as the Australian government-owned TV station showed their incredible rudeness and inconsideration. That woman is a real lady.
As if to outdo the press and TV, that section of the government bureaucracy in charge of protocol, not only made fools of themselves, but did their best to kill her. First, they had her tour a hospital. Around the hospital were some piles of coal. They sprayed the coal piles white.
Then there was this patient named Townsend. The English Captain Peter Townsend was a commoner who had had an ill-fated affair with Princess Margaret. Believing Liz might happen upon this Townsend, ask his name and become embarrassed, they sent the poor devil home prematurely. Even if she had talked to him, the similarity of names wouldn't have phased her.
Following this idiocy, they sent her up to Darwin, a tropical hell in Northern Australia, to watch a rodeo. It was over a hundred degrees in the shade and the humidity was unbelievable. She was out in the open with only a canopy for shade. Seven bulls died of heat prostration before her eyes. I don't think she's been back to Australia since.
After being laid off, I took several temporary jobs and, with some money from home, I bummed around New South Wales and Queensland for a few months. Then I went back to Sydney and applied for workaway passage on any ship leaving for home. Workaway means only food, a cabin and passage, but no pay.
While waiting for a ship, I hung around observing and talking to Australians. I liked them, generally, but they had a bad habit which I don't think is shared by Americans. Upon meeting an American, the average Australian would rattle off a string of real and fancied defects in the American system. This would be prefaced with, "You Yanks", as if an American immigrant had any control over the country's policies.
When this happened in a group, the bystanders would not tell the insulting boor to shut up, as most Americans would in a reverse situation. That put the American in the indelicate position of returning the insult to the whole group, although he would prefer to repay only the individual.
I got so tired of being ganged up on like this that I became an expert on insulting Australians. If they hated Americans and wanted to take it out on me, to hell with them. One Sunday in a Sydney park, a communist was speaking to a group of wharfies (stevedores). He opened up by saying that an eagle was flying over the ocean and crapped and they called it "America". He didn't know there were any Americans in the audience. They just all went on like that.
I asked him what putrid vulture tore loose and created Australia. He started yelling at me, "If you bloody Yanks would get your thieving hands out of our pockets, we could use our science to make a paradise here."
Not having my hands in any Australians' pockets, I replied, "Are you so stupid as to think that these moronic wharf rats could make use of any science? They can't even read, except the cricket scores and what broken-down, doped-up Australian horse crawls across the finish line first."
The quarreling became so loud the cops hustled me out of the park. Actually, we were sort of enjoying ourselves. I was never punched, nor did I ever punch in an argument. There was no danger. But these constant, uncalled for, misdirected insults against America to Americans was a kind of national rudeness which made me want to leave.
When I got my ship, the Goonawara owned by Sweden, I was assigned to the hold seeing that the wharfies didn't pilfer. At my first friendly comment, one of the wharfies took me to task for lynching Negro workers. The rest chimed in with equally absurd charges and I told them they were a bunch of goddamned communist parasites who would starve if they weren't loading American cargo.
When the bosun heard the yelling, he ordered me elsewhere and put a Swede who couldn't speak enough English to understand or return any of their insults. I then took the job of second cook and got back home with fifteen cents in my pocket.
Today I'm less quick-tempered and would just consider the source when confronted by such rudeness. I could succeed in Australia now. But I'll make my stand here. I would not be beholden to people who despised me, especially for things I was not responsible for.
Americans just don't make good immigrants. Our ancestors left worse conditions. As bad as you might consider things here, Americans can only migrate to places with lower living standards. Australia and New Zealand are largely dominated by American interests and their nationals naturally resent this. As decent as most of them are, all too many wish nothing but the worst for Americans, whether we deserve it or not.
