iMigration
THE
END OF IMMIGRATION AND THE RISE OF A NEW GLOBAL PHENOMENON
By Andrei Gavrilov
Smashwords Edition, February 2012
Copyright
2012 Andrei Gavrilov All rights reserved.
“So, Where Are You From?”
I’ve struggled with this question and resulting self-identity issues for the larger portion of my life. Am I from Russia, Canada, USA, or China? Who am I and where is home? I’ve been through hell to find an answer that satisfied me. Then suddenly, something started clicking. The puzzle was finally solved and everything in the past made sense. Through sheer luck, coincidence, intuition, and events beyond my control, I have stumbled upon an idea that resolved it all. The Solution. Many of you will not accept it, but at least I want you to be aware of it. No matter what, it will not be kept secret.
PART I: iMIGRATION
Chapter 1: iMigration
The purpose of this book is to present a new framework of thinking regarding global human migration patterns. The concept of immigration is quickly becoming outdated and a new concept, iMigration, is necessary to capture the important changes taking place.
iMigration can be seen as an evolution of migration trends on our planet over the past several centuries, the next step after immigration. There are, however, big differences and distinctions between those two concepts. iMigration is not merely an add-on, it is a whole new game.
Why am I, of all the people, writing this book? Well, having been an immigrant several times as both a child and an adult, I have experienced immigration and all that comes with it from the inside.
Pursuing the global lifestyle, however, forced me to be faced with contradictions between my thinking and my experiences. Simply put, a lot of things stopped making sense, and it took years to resolve those conflicts.
iMigration presents solutions to many problems faced by truly global citizens by introducing a radically new belief system. It’s a view of the world that is quite different from what is commonly accepted. This belief system assumes that my present mobile lifestyle is not unique and “bad” in any way, but rather is normal and perfectly suited for my personality.
How did this belief system come about? What made the stars align?
Rather simply, this change in thinking was a result of a year of smashing success that comes not from money or fame, but from finding my own place in this world and experiencing all life has to offer. Suddenly, all of the dots in my past were connected.
iMigration demolishes the old beliefs and dogmas that were hurting and haunting me, that made my life miserable, and replaces them with concepts that empower and motivate me. I hope this book can do the same for you.
There was a time I felt ashamed of my flip-flopping behavior and an apparent inability to “settle-down”. Not anymore.
I have been extremely lucky to have experienced the difficulties that I had, to be able to resolve them for myself and to share these solutions with others.
Others might call us, iMigrants, unstable, even crazy, and that’s understandable. Instead of stability, our identity is rooted in shifts. We live and breathe change since repeated change is the only thing we ever experienced. I am convinced that I would be a completely different person had I lived in the same small town all my life. My whole “worldview” would have been a “small-town view” instead. I can’t even imagine it. Who would that person, the “small-town” Andrei be? Someone else, but definitely not who I am right now.
Besides iMigration, this book introduces some other original concepts that I hope you will find helpful. If they seem too utopian, abstract, or theoretical, please forgive me. Let me assure you that I enjoy not just building castles in the sky, but also building sand castles on the beach. I try to remain grounded and only entertain thoughts that are useful in the present moment, not simply engineering a mental monstrosity.
Why has this new iMigration framework been so empowering for me? To me, power is the ability to first, see options, and second, to be able to choose among them.
It all comes down to thinking about yourself. If you think you are “abnormal”, that will have a disempowering effect on you. Everything else being constant, if you instead think you are the “new normal”, that will have an empowering effect on you. Why think negatively when you can think positively?
It is my strong belief that iMigrants are the prototypical citizens of the future, even though they comprise only a tiny fraction of the typical citizens of the present.
There is a warning I have to make here though. iMigration is not for everyone. Unless you fully embrace this lifestyle, there is a big risk your present beliefs will not only hold you back from maximum achievement, but will actually make your life miserable. I have seen people who are bitter and resentful instead of being happy and fulfilled, simply because they choose focus on the negative aspects of this kind of life. There was a time I was one of them.
They blame everything and everyone for their suffering while being stuck in a downward spiral of negativity. Attitude is everything, and if you’re familiar with the Law of Attraction, you know that negative attitude attracts negative circumstances.
Yes, it can and does get quite rough sometimes, but that’s part of the adventure. One of the goals of this book is to give you solutions for dealing with difficult periods, minimizing the pain, and moving on.
<Identity Shift
As the plane begins its final decent into Chicago’s O’Hare airport, I begin to change my identity.
It all starts by emptying the contents of my wallet. Let’s see, what do I have there this time, after a year spent in China? Several red one hundred RMB bills, Jiao Tong University photo ID card, ICBC UnionPay debit card, Shanghai Public Transit Card, and even a Yoga membership card. I replace the papers one by one. Chinese money needs to be replaced with several twenty dollar bills. Got to have some cash just in case! University ID needs to be replaced with my Missouri Driver’s License, which acts both as an ID and a “private” transit card in this land. My single debit card needs to be replaced with two alternatives: a US Bank Visa debit card and a Capital One credit card. And finally, my Yoga card needs to be replaced with an Anthem Blue Cross health insurance card.
All right, done with the wallet! Now is a good time to take out my cell phone, and replace the China Mobile SIM card with a T-Mobile one.
As soon as I am done with the physical stuff, I have to get to work on the mental stuff. It’s extremely important to make sure I don’t say anything that might get me in trouble with the immigration officials.
First, I have to remember where I live right now. After all, I have to play a role of the US Permanent Resident, so I have to actually reside at some US address. I make sure to freshly review and memorize my former address in St. Louis, the apartment I moved out of last year, and also the address on my driver’s license.
The fact that I didn’t get any sleep during the fourteen hour trans-pacific flight doesn’t help the matter. I don’ t know whether the feelings of anxiety and depression come from sleep deprivation or from the anticipation of having to go through checkpoints.
After the plane lands and I go through endless hallways, I am greeted by huge lines at the immigration clearance. As usual, I try to guess, based just on looks, which immigration official is the friendliest and is in good mood today.
The line is moving very slowly, and soon the loudspeakers announce that the IT system is misbehaving, having some kind of networking problems, slowing down the whole process to a crawl. People get nervous, with some worried about missing connecting flights. I have a connecting flight to St. Louis too, in just an hour, but I don’t care about that. As long as I can get past this immigration obstacle, I will be a happy guy. Finally, after what seems like forever, it’s my turn. I’ve got to stay calm and confident now, and not screw this up.
I walk up to the booth and present my Canadian passport and US Permanent Resident card, aka the Green Card.
“How long have you been outside the USA?” asks the bored official in a customarily authoritative voice. “Since April”, I answer truthfully. What I don’t mention, of course, is that my last visit only lasted around a week.
“What have you been doing in China?” – “Studying Mandarin”, I answer truthfully again. “Do you have a job here in USA?” – “No, I am not working right now”.
It’s the fault of that darn slow IT system, I keep thinking to myself, that’s why he keeps asking me those endless questions, dragging out the interrogation. “How did you receive your Green Card?” – “My parents came over on an H1B visa, and I got it through them.”
“So you were born in Russia, then got to Canada, then came over to United States, and now you’re studying Chinese? Crazy…”.
With these words he finally puts an “Admitted – Department of Homeland Security – U.S. Customs and Border Protection” stamp in my passport and I am free to go. Got through, let the new adventure begin!
<What is iMigration?
iMigration is a cross-cultural global phenomenon, not confined to any single country, a group of countries, or a continent. People who experience immigration are called immigrants. By the same token, people experiencing and living the iMigration lifestyle are called iMigrants.
iMigrants are not defined by any single race, age, culture, religion, education level, or nationality groups. Their best unifying traits are mobility, a hunger to learn, open-mindedness, and a desire for action. They want to get the most out of life, to experience it to the fullest. They are the new breed, a new generation of truly global citizens, citizens of the world.
Perhaps the best way to define iMigration and understand what it’s all about is to compare and contrast it to the centuries-old trend of immigration while introducing new helpful terms along the way. Let’s look at common traits of individuals actively engaged in iMigration.
< iMigrant Common Traits
You could say iMigrants are just serial immigrants, in the sense that they repeatedly experience immigration. But in actuality their beliefs are so different that while moving their whole perception of reality is quite different. They don’t experience immigration, but rather iMigration.
What other trends are common in the growing tribe of iMigrants relative to the general population? Even more importantly, which traits do potential iMigrants exhibit? Who is likely to become an iMigrant in the future, based on present character, behavior and values?
Action. iMigrants thrive on action. People with the action habit don’t complain, don’t criticize, don’t over-analyze, they just do. They don’t expect knowledge, or anything else, to be just handed down to them, or for a system to take care of them. They are pro-active and take responsibility for their lives. And the results just flow.
A guy from Australia in my Chinese class at Jiao Tong University comes to mind. He just moved to Shanghai with his wife, started a new job, bought a car (quickly learning to navigate chaotic traffic) and was really excited about learning Mandarin. In fact, he was so serious about it he dropped out during the first month! Why so? Not because he was a bad student, it’s just that he was learning much faster on his own, independently. I remember him telling how in just one day filled with conversations with locals he filled sheets of paper with dozens of frequently used words that he was now studying. He is precisely the kind of a guy who has the action habit that generates results.
Adventure. iMigrants don’t like to settle because settling down inevitably leads to a lifestyle of routine and boredom. If actions become repetitive it’s time for change, it’s time to get moving. Being constantly on the move certainly adds elements of unpredictability to one’s life, but it is this spirit of adventure, of diving into the unknown, that keeps us alive and thriving.
The day I quit my job at an advertising agency in St. Louis one of the managers asked me: “So what exactly are you going to be doing once you get to China? Do you have a job lined up?” As you can guess, my answers to these two questions were “Don’t know” and “Nope”. If I knew what was going to happen next, it wouldn’t be an adventure anymore. Over-planning is the worst enemy of creativity and spontaneity.
You’ve probably heard a thousand times that the journey is more important than the destination. iMigrants take it one step further: The journey is all there is. The destination doesn’t matter. Only the journey does.
Being Pluggable vs. Plugged-In. iMigrants can easily get a job in most locations around the world. But just because they can, doesn’t mean they do.
Change. iMigrants embrace change and thrive on change.
Comfort. iMigrants prefer the conscious discomfort that comes along with learning and growth rather than the cushy comfort that comes along with stability and stagnation. They realize that comfort also equals vulnerability to change.
The more you get used to present conditions, the more painful any change in circumstances will be. The more you embrace change, the less comfort you will require.
Culture Shock. What immigrants often face after the initial euphoria of reaching the new land is a long transition and assimilation period, a time filled with confusion, self-doubt, and fear of the unknown. Unlike most immigrants, during the cultural transition period iMigrants do not fall into depression. In fact, the transition period is the best time of their life.
Experiencing. iMigrants value experiencing reality over understanding it. They experience life unfolding around them without trying, in vain, to understand the infinite complexity of chaos. They don’t waste their time trying to fit-in and conform to social norms, choosing instead to enjoy the experience of a unique environment, unique location, unique moment in time, and a unique stage of their life, never to be repeated again. They also don’t waste their time accumulating material possessions, preferring to rent rather than own.
iMigrants realize they can never really own anything, since they cannot own time itself. They value time above money. Having time, it is always possible to earn money. But having money, it is impossible to create time. Billionaires die too. Time becomes the most precious, invaluable resource. Time that can either be used to experience life to the fullest, or squandered without notice. As a Chinese proverb solemnly states, “Time and Tide wait for no man”.
Home Base. iMigrants consider the whole planet Earth as their home, and view the world as their oyster. Instead of having a single “home”, they have several home bases they can always return to. Keeping the bare minimum of material possessions at their home bases allows them the freedom to keep exploring, without the burden of extra baggage.
Independence. iMigrants are never ordered where to go. That makes them quite different from “Expats” and “Military Brats” who place faith and authority in the system (corporate or government) and expect the system to take care of them. iMigrant don’t like to be assigned, they prefer to be the seekers. Individual, and not the system call the shots.
Living. iMigrants differentiate living as opposed to merely existing. It is hard to explicitly define the difference between the two, but you know you’re really alive when you feel it. The same way you can tell when life slowly slides into a predictable routine, when it stops being an adventure, when days become chores that have to be done, the same way you can tell when life becomes uncertain, shrouded in mystery of the unknown, full of surprises every step of the way. It takes effort and courage to stop merely existing and start living, to get out of habitual loops of complacency, but it is absolutely worth it.
Money & Work. To an iMigrant it is an axiom that it is possible to live on half of your salary or less with creative money-saving solutions that are realistic and easy to implement (read more on these solutions in the Tools and Skills section of the book). Saving money is a guaranteed way to escape the rat race and gain time, freedom, and mobility which are priceless.
iMigrants don’t assign work the god-like status so common in modern workaholic societies. They realize that work is nothing but an exchange of social value, and choose not to exchange all of their time for money and material possessions. They exchange the minimum required and then enjoy an abundance of free time to make the most out of their lives.
Settling Down. iMigrants don’t settle and don’t set settling down as a goal. They challenge the basic assumption that selecting one place and settling there is the best way to live. iMigrants fully enjoy their present location but don’t get tied down to it. They relocate based on changing life circumstances and better opportunities. Over a lifetime, They live in many awesome places.
In essence, iMigrants thrive on change and mobility, not being content with stability and comfort of modern civilization. They don’t like to be tied down to a single location or anything that resembles a life-long commitment. They also question the traditional expectations that society places on them.
iMigrants have to get creative when answering meaningless questions like “Where are you from?” or my personal favorite “When will you go back home?” For people who are not iMigrants, these questions seem really basic, and they expect a short and clear-cut answer. Should I answer the former question by saying I am from “Russia, Canada, USA, and China?” Or should I answer by giving an even longer list of cities I’ve lived in? The latter one is even more difficult. I am already home! Should I list my home bases instead and tell them of my plans to visit them in the future?
iMigrants are more likely to be renters than buyers of real estate. They are more likely to exhibit a job-hopping behavior rather than stick to a stable full-time job. They love independence and are entrepreneurial, starting their own businesses rather than building a career at a large corporation. They dislike small talk, office politics and other types of ass-licking. They embrace opportunity and risk, choosing not to cling to comfort and security. They are mostly young, but with some notable exceptions.
Of course, these characteristics are simply averages. There are always exceptions. I often meet individuals who don’t fit the stereotypical image of an iMigrant, yet possessing the same spirit of looking at the world with no boundaries.
After seeing both ups and downs, I realize that the benefits of my lifestyle far outweigh the drawbacks. When I fully embrace it, I embrace who I am. Instead of asking the question “What is the meaning of life?”, I ask “What is the life of meaning?” And to me, the life of meaning is the life of memorable experiences.
<A Note to Skeptics
If you’ve read this far, you might have some doubts about the whole idea of iMigration. Is it real or is it just a figment of my imagination? Is it useful in practice, or is it just another theoretical abstraction? These are valid concerns.
As any theory, the iMigration framework has its limitations.
First, as any rationality framework, it is a simplification of reality, and not reality itself. iMigration is not a photograph, but rather a painting reflecting my inner vision of the world.
Secondly, this framework was born based on my own subjective experiences. My direct experience, being biased, might not reflect the ultimate truth. There is a saying “a wise man learns from other’s mistakes, while a fool from his own”. As much as I learn from others, the best lessons, the ones that really stick, come from direct experience. Reader beware.
As a social theory, iMigration has descriptive powers, but lacks predictive power. That is, I am uncertain if iMigration can predict future shifts in human migration flows.
Why did I have to invent a new concept instead of just using existing one’s? The old concepts, like immigration, the old vocabulary did not make sense describing my present life. Creation of a new belief system is like the appearance of a new computer language, allowing you to solve existing problems in an easier way.
What’s with the name “iMigration”? Are you tired of hearing about the latest iThing? Me too. I am not a big fan of passing fads. But it’s the best description that combines both “Migration” and the individual choice to do it. The “I” does matter. I don’t’ iMigrate for the benefit of humanity, I do it for myself.
Does iMigration have any practical value? Will it work for you? Ultimately, I don’t know. It works beautifully for me. How do I know if it hasn’t been due to blind luck?
I have to admit here that the last few years have been the best years of my life. Of course luck has played a role, but there is a saying that captures the essence of luck and chance in our lives so well: “Luck favors those who Try”. If I didn’t try, if I didn’t go for it, I would not have gotten lucky. This book shows you what is it exactly what I did in order to capture all that luck.
Theories are great only if they can easily be put into practice by others. The point of this book is not to show that I have some kind of a special talent or skills to live globally. The goal is the opposite: to show you that it’s not that difficult at all. You can do the same too. You don’t have to force yourself to be someone else, try to become average, or have to fit-in. Instead of embracing the mediocre, you can leverage and embrace your uniqueness. The world is yours.
Chapter 2: The New Normal
<Push and Pull Motivation
Human migration is a given. It occurred since the beginning of times, since the Homo Sapiens roamed the African savannah.
Historically, migration happened as a result of some kind of a “Push”. Disease, hunger, or war was a brutal motivation to initiate human migration. In modern times, the “Push” motivation became gentler, involving social upheavals such as revolutions, economic collapses, and other social instabilities that do not threaten the very survival of individuals, yet make people move.
It is the “Push” (Famines, World Wars, Communist dictatorships) type of a migration that created the great waves of immigration America experienced in the last two hundred years.
Here is a great quote from Washington Examiner article “An End to Immigration”: “If you go back in American history, you will find that very few if anyone predicted that our great migrations—the great surges of immigration and of internal migration—would occur, and very few predicted when those migrations would abruptly end, as they usually do.”
Globalization changed everything. The world is now more prosperous, more peaceful, and more predictable than ever before. What’s even more fascinating is that the world is also becoming more and more homogeneous at a rapid pace, erasing the huge differences in lifestyles that once existed. As a consequence, there is very little “Push” motivation for people to migrate too far away. Let me give you an example.
A village on the outskirts of a megacity A is actually half a world away from that city in terms of lifestyle. Megacity B, physically half a world away, is very similar in lifestyle to megacity A. A resident of megacity A wouldn’t experience much change moving half a world away to megacity B, while a villager moving a few miles would see his whole lifestyle turned upside down.
Here are a couple of questions for you to ponder. Would there be any “Push” for a megacity A resident to move to megacity B? Furthermore, what kind of a “Push” is required for a villager to move half way around the world to megacity B instead of moving to near-by megacity A?
The “Push” motivation has to be a catastrophe. The motivation for people, living in the 21st century in a prosperous, connected world, to move somewhere is likely to be a different type of a motivation. Instead of being forced by the “Push”, they are more likely to be lured by the “Pull” type of a motivation.
Just as a “Push” type of a motivation is a characteristic of an immigrant, so is the “Pull” type natural for an iMigrant. What we are witnessing with the spread of globalization is the end of the forced movement of people and the rise of the willing conscious choice: the end of immigration and its replacement by iMigration.
It’s this phenomenon that will make the waves of human migration in this century look quite different from the past.
So what kind of “Pull” motivates the flocks of iMigrants flying around the world?
<The Big O: Opportunity
One of the best reasons to embrace the global lifestyle is access to more opportunities. Opportunities in all areas of life – education, career, retirement, adventure are multiplied when you start looking outside the “country” box. You simply have more to choose from, and more variety means better chances you will find a perfect match.
Hunting for opportunity means getting better deals, squeezing the most out of your time, money, and other limited resources. It’s natural for us humans to desire a better life, and being dedicated to self-centered, individual pursuit of happiness is nothing to be ashamed of.
Understand that I am not talking about over-achievers here (smart, strong, wealthy). I am talking about regular people who are just a little more open-minded than the rest. From teenagers to grandmas, this new tribe doesn't like to limit its options in a quest for happiness – globally.
To make myself clear, let’s go from general to the specific, and from theory to practice.
<Education
A decade ago, when I graduated high school in St. Louis, Missouri, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to study in college. Computer Science major was a natural choice since I was interested in programming for many years. But I had absolutely no idea where I wanted to study to get my degree. All I knew was that I wanted a top-notch education, to be taught by distinguished professors and surrounded by smart students. I wanted to be challenged. It is my philosophy that the best environment to learn and grow is where you are closer to the bottom of the class than to the top of the class rank-wise. My grades in high school and on standardized tests were pretty good, enough to get me admitted to an Ivy League school in the US, but not enough to get a scholarship.
At the time, my parents did not have the finances to pay $40,000 for tuition at a top university. So I decided to compromise, going to a local community college for the first year, with the hope of transferring to a “real” university later on. Community college tuition was around $2,500 and was almost fully covered by a state scholarship I managed to get. It was cheap, almost free, but it didn’t solve my problem.
I was still at the top of the class, and I was still under-challenged, under-motivated, bored. I had to do something, and I had to do something drastic. I had to escape. But how, what could I do? Maybe go study somewhere exotic like Hawaii or Alaska to spice things up? It seemed like my only alternative, considering financial restraints, was to be stuck at the low level of the mediocre US public education system.
Then I suddenly realized that I don’t have to constrain myself to the US education system. My thinking was boxed, limiting me to only considering opportunities within the USA. As soon as I realized that, an answer to the question of what I really wanted to do popped up.
What I really wanted to do was to go back to my motherland of Russia and get my higher education in a system that always stimulated and challenged me, the system I missed so much. As soon as the general solution presented itself, the details were figured out without much difficulty.
The next semester, I started as a freshman student at the Lomonosov Moscow State University, at the faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics. Being a student at the top university in Russia only cost me $2,500 per year, the same as a community college back in the States. The disciplines I would study, math and programming, were completely transferable world-wide, making me free to pursue career opportunities globally upon graduation. And being a foreigner, I didn’t even have to take the rigid entrance exams! Talk about a good deal.
Suddenly, I was not at the top of the class anymore! In fact, I had to struggle to just pass the tests and the final exams. Suddenly, I was living in the environment where other people were smarter than me, some of them being the best in the world at what they do. It was tough, but it was exactly what I wanted.
Having completed my education, I was naturally drawn to start applying the huge baggage of knowledge acquired in earlier years. I worked at a couple of software jobs while studying in Moscow, giving me a pretty good idea of what that career entailed. I was satisfied with some aspects of my job and dissatisfied with others, but that made no difference in my decision of what to do next after graduation.
<Geo-Arbitrage
What made the difference was opportunity. I packed my bags and left Russia in favor of the United States. The reason was simple: money. I was not satisfied working in Moscow and getting less than $1000 per month, knowing that someone somewhere was doing exactly the same job and getting paid at least triple the amount. The opportunity to earn a lot of money was too tempting to miss. How could I waste it?
Call it geo-arbitrage, currency misevaluation, economic competitiveness, whatever, but it’s a fact that people get paid hugely ranging sums of money for the same work solely based on where they are located. You can spend a lifetime analyzing the varied reasons for these discrepancies, or instead you could just act on them when you see them.
Yes, it’s not fair, but who said life was fair? And who is to say you should not take advantage of the opportunities, no matter how far away they are from where you presently live? There is nobody stopping you.
If one side of the money coin can be viewed as the “Earning” part, the other side is the “Spending” part. After all, there is no point in earning if you never spend, so those two go hand in hand. However, spending money should be viewed as a separate opportunity. You can earn money in one place, save it, and spend it in another, taking advantage of the same phenomenon discussed above. Simply put, a dollar can go much further in a different locale, with its value “stretching” as you take it somewhere else.
As you might have guessed, I practice geo-arbitrage heavily on the Spending side as well. The money that I earned while working in St. Louis, USA could be spent anywhere in the world, but I chose to spend it in Shanghai, China. Here is what I got as a result, setting a monthly budget of $2,000.
The lifestyle I enjoyed is best described as “living like a King”. In Shanghai, China’s biggest city, I was dining out in restaurants not just once a day, but every meal of the day, never having to cook. I was taking taxis everywhere around the city when I felt like it. Going to massage several times a week. Never had to clean my apartment either, with full housecleaning arranged once per week. Talking about the apartment, it was a cozy furnished one bedroom in one of the best neighborhoods in the city, right in the center of it all. Oh, I almost forgot. That price also included full-time language study tuition at one of the most prestigious universities in China, weekend excursions around the city and neighboring provinces, etc. You get the picture.
To achieve a comparable lifestyle in the United States, I would have to move to the American version of the “center of it all”, Manhattan. And if you’ve ever been to Manhattan, you know just how expensive that place is. To live “like a king”, it would cost me at least $10,000 per month, or five times more than in Shanghai. Talk about a deal.
Now the critics, and there are always critics when you start living life on your own terms instead of blindly following the herd, will scream “But you’re spending money that you earned in the United States!”, like I’m committing a crime. Yes, I use one system to earn money and another system to spend it in. I take advantage of cost of living differences to achieve my dream lifestyle.
But so does every multinational corporation! The goal of every corporation, of course, is to make money. The only reason global trade exists is profit. It is the job of Fortune 500 CEOs to scout the various places around the world where resources, including labor, are relatively cheap and to build systems that utilize those resources to make products that could be sold at a profit somewhere else. They analyze differences between various systems and try to find a good complimentary match.
Take Wal-mart, for instance. It’s founders, the Walton family, became billionaires because they took advantage of utilizing dirt-cheap Chinese labor to produce a wide variety of household goods to satisfy the insatiable appetite of American consumers. It was a win-win deal. Chinese wanted to develop their industry and to grow their economy, and Americans wanted to enjoy an abundance of household goods. Remember, nobody is being exploited in a free market transaction. Every purchase, every deal is a win-win, no matter where in the world you’re spending your cash. Sam Walton saw the opportunity and acted on it. You could do the same too!
In fact, you as an individual have many advantages in navigating a global landscape. Big companies are visible and therefore face greater scrutiny. You can stay under the radar and enjoy life free of worry of competition and of lawsuits. In fact, you are even more agile than a big behemoth corporation, you have even greater flexibility and mobility.
Ignore the hypocrites who object to your global thinking and your ambitious hunt for opportunities. You are the CEO of your life, the captain of your own ship, and you are free to fully embrace what the world has to offer.
<Business
Mark is a calm good-natured guy who exudes self-confidence. He is in his early thirties and has a muscular toned body of someone who spends a lot of time in a gym. Mark was born in Michigan but spent most of his life in New York City. His education and early career included work in biochemistry, specifically genetic engineering, but after a while he decided this was not the right path for him. He realized that his true interests and passion laid in finance and started working as an investment advisor for a firm in New Jersey.
Meanwhile, his brother, who got transferred to China from the US by a large multinational corporation, was telling him how much fun he had working and living in Shanghai for the last several years. Eventually, Mark decided to dive-in and see for himself.
Mark was my classmate for two semesters at Jiao Tong, and I’ve got to tell you he is pretty serious about studying Mandarin. Typing all the teacher’s points in a spreadsheet on his Mac Book, he does not hesitate to ask questions, be it the intricacies of Chinese grammar or peculiar cultural customs. But studying the language is not all that he is focused on, preferring to juggle several balls at the same time.
Studying for an advanced level international CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) certification, his sights are set on starting his own investment management company. Mark wants to find his niche, specializing in China to USA financial services. He is very well aware of potential business opportunities in Shanghai, with Shanghai destined to become the world’s financial center. Possessing true American spirit, Mark weighs risks and rewards carefully, and then takes action. What’s the downside, and what’s the upside?
<Career Mobility
One of the benefits of living a mobile lifestyle is that you not only have more options to advance in your present career, but have more freedom to experiment in an entirely different field, to try your hand at something new.
What if you simply fell-into your present career by chance, and feel like it’s not the right one for you? At the same time, you might not yet know what is the right kind of work for you, the one that will bring you joy, fulfillment and excitement every day. The only way to figure out is to experiment. Being an iMigrant allows you to easily do that kind of experimentation, while also having a lot of fun.
Staying in the same country, it might be very difficult to dabble in various occupations unrelated to your primary career, creating a sense of being stuck without chance of escape.
In my life I have reached certain heights in the software engineering career early on, but as the years went by, the work became more and more repetitive. I felt like I was turning into a robot, a machine performing purely mechanical tasks without even thinking. I wanted to do something else, something more creative and something involving more human interaction.
Being a teacher has long been a little dream on the back of my mind. In the US, switching from an engineering career and trying something new, like being a teacher, would not be easy. Even becoming a teacher in my own field of software development would require facing a rigid educational system, facing strict requirements like having a Masters degree (which I don’t happen to have), competing with other candidates for the same limited positions and so on.
In China, on the other hand, being a foreigner made me an exception to rigid hiring rules. It was a piece of cake to find a software teaching job at a university. I didn’t have to apply for an existing position, in fact the position was created specifically for me! In China I could even become an English teacher, something I would never be able to pull off in USA or Canada with my heavy Russian accent.
When thinking of unique career opportunities, Mike comes to mind. Just as Mark, Mike was one of my classmates at the university who stood out of the crowd.
Curly-haired, wide-eyed, and dark-skinned, he looks to be of southern European, perhaps Italian or Greek descent. Growing up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a well-to-do suburb of Miami, he went to get his college degree in Orlando, a few hour’s drive north. College years were one of the best, he says, telling me that the University of Central Florida was the ultimate party school. Upon graduating with a degree in finance, however, Mike found himself facing the worst job market in a generation. But unlike others who love complaining about the lousy state of the economy, he chose a different route and simply moved to a place with a booming economy – Shanghai, China. Heck, why not?
Like many newcomers, Mike started studying Chinese at the university, but on his own terms. He could care less about reading and writing characters, so he simply skips those classes. He is only interested in improving his conversational skills and therefore focuses all of his energy on spoken Mandarin. And, being a baseball player, he’s got plenty of energy.
He is extremely social, and, just like me, likes to hang out not just with foreigners, but also with the locals. Mike loves discussing American politics, the democrats and the republicans, but trusts neither. He keeps all of his savings in Chinese RMB, doubting the stability of the dollar.
Mike’s strategy of focusing on speaking, in less than a year, made him understand and talk to Chinese at a level well beyond all other students.
While having a time of his life, learning and experiencing a new culture, Mike has also started his own business coaching baseball lessons to Chinese sports fans (the game of baseball is somewhat of a novel concept here). And he has even bigger ambitions for the future, planning to franchise the sport of baseball across all of China, with professional teams in each major city.
In Mike’s own words: “What have I got to lose? Worst case, I can always get a job here as an English teacher to pay the bills.”
<Adventure
There used to be a time when my younger cousin Vitaly was as local a person as I could imagine. Born and raised in an industrial town of Orsk, Russia in the steppes of the southern Urals, he didn’t fly by airplane until well into his twenties. With his difficulties communicating in English, I had long written him off as a global adventurer. Boy, was I wrong.
In the spring of 2010, inspired by his short trip to visit me in China, Vitaly took off for a rock festival in the southern republic of Abkhazia, met some like-minded friends there, and proceeded hitchhiking across southern Russia and Ukraine, staying close to the coast of Black Sea. In the popular resort towns, he managed to get by with fun jobs like being a surfing instructor.
Vitaly fell in love with the spontaneous on-the-road lifestyle so much that his new favorite saying became “one wrong step, and you’ve reached your goal”.
There is something magical about the people like Vitaly who are inspired by life. Not just inspired by what they do for a living, but inspired by their very existence, by life itself. They have dreams of the future, but fully embrace the present moment, exuding tremendous positive energy that rubs off on you like an infectious laugh.
After his Black Sea escapade, I figured Vitaly would return back to his home base in the Urals and get a normal job, take a break from adventure, maybe even settle down. Wrong again!
When I last talked to him, Vitaly sounded as excited as ever. Renovating his apartment, he plans to rent it out and escape the long Russian winter in Dahab, Egypt, a Mecca for backpackers and one of the top diving and windsurfing destinations in the world. Having recently fallen in love with windsurfing, Vitaly wants to earn a living as a windsurfing instructor. With a seasonal flood of tourists to Egypt, he’ll have plenty of work.
Vitaly has a dream of sailing around the world on a yacht, and you can bet someday he will achieve it. Why? Because he is not stopping in his hunt for adventure. And now he is no longer limited by the boundaries of his native “country”, his hunt is global.
<Escaping Local Limits
Sometimes the Push and the Pull motivations are not strong enough to make you move, yet by staying put you are making the wrong choice. I see people stuck in such situations all the time.
While I don’t envy the masses of inhabitants of the megacities caught in the rat race, I pity the common mentality of small-town folks. You could describe it as either close-mindedness or powerlessness.
When they describe their problems, their life situation, there is a note of hopelessness in their voice. They seem completely resigned to their circumstances. In megacities, people observe the fast pace of change and have at least a glimmer of hope of a better future, of more opportunities.
Small towns with their slow pace of life create a tendency for people to think of reality as fixed. Seeing little change in the external world, they accept their life, fate, and their place in the world. This kind of “slave mentality” is very pervasive and hard to change.
It is quite true that people do not change themselves, it is the environment that shapes people. Be we can choose to change our environment, a power many people deny having, perhaps fearing change itself.
I have a cousin, Sasha, who lives in a small mining town of Asbest, Russia. Since childhood he always dreamed of living in Yekaterinburg, a big city and a capital of the Ural mountains region. I feel his excitement when he talks about the big city, and even some envy for its residents.
Yet he doesn’t move, being surrounded by people, including his parents and grandparents, who tell him things like “Oh, it’s really dangerous in a big city, you will be robbed of any money you make”. Or “the big city is too expensive, you’ll never earn enough to make a decent living”. With advice like this his social circle keeps him stuck, because they are stuck themselves.
I once heard a friend, who was my roommate in Moscow, complain about the dire living conditions in his home village deep in central Russia. He described in great detail the poverty, joblessness and lack of opportunity in the village.
Being my natural self, I asked casually him “So if the conditions are so bad, why don’t they just move to a better place?” My friend replied, with some anger and irritation in his voice, “Andrei, why is your solution always to move? What if they don’t want to move?!”
Well, if they don’t want to move, why keep complaining about bad local conditions? Complaining isn’t going to improve anything, much less let them escape negative, limiting circumstances.
<Culture: Dealing with Averages
“Common Sense is a bunch of misconceptions that you learn by the age of 18” - Albert Einstein
How do iMigrants deal with people around them, people whose beliefs and lifestyles are completely different, and especially people who tell you how you “should” live your life?
Let’s begin by dissecting a phenomenon called “Culture”. What is culture anyway?
You could say culture refers to traits or behavior of an average individual. But there is no person who is exactly average, such a person doesn’t exist. In reality, culture is a commonly-accepted generalization. It’s a stereotype.
What does it mean to be an “American” anyway? Let’s look at a statement “Americans Love Cars”, which is commonly considered to be true, to be an element of American culture. It is certainly true for a majority of American citizens, who indeed love to drive autos. It is a necessary part of a majority’s lifestyle, who can’t imagine life without a car. But my sister, for example, doesn’t have a car and has no plans to acquire one, even though she can easily afford it. She prefers to take public transit in St. Louis, Missouri. She is an American citizen too.
It’s obvious that culture has little to do with our individual lives. Yet we cannot deny the existence of the majority and the predominant beliefs of the population we live in. The majority does make itself visible and does make itself heard simply because those are the people you walk by on the street, observe on the subway, and have lunch with at work. No matter how closed our intimate social circle is, we can never completely avoid social interactions with the rest of society.
If we cannot deny the existence of the majority, shouldn’t we try to adopt their habits? Yes and No.
Whatever culture I come into frequent contact with, I try to adopt its best traits and beliefs, disregarding or ignoring the worst. For instance, I borrow the intellectual depth of the Russian culture, while ignoring the deeply-rooted racist and xenophobic traits. In the American culture, it is the entrepreneurial can-do spirit that strikes me the most, while I place little value on the materialistic over-consumption mentality. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is a part of the USA brand that resonates with me on a global level, without being confined to any “country” borders. I appreciate the ancient wisdom of the Chinese and the richness of their cultural heritage, especially the language, but I disregard their tendency for a blind belief in authority.
Instead of thinking about the world as consisting of various cultures, iMigrants look at it in terms of lifestyles. Cultures are stereotypes that have roots in nationality and are polluted by associations with country brands and geographic boundaries. Lifestyles, however, have roots in individuality and have no borders nor countries associated with them. It is lifestyles that define individuals, not what their passport says.
As a consequence, I do not identify myself with any single culture. What that means in practice is that if I hear a person on the street speaking Russian, that doesn’t mean I feel some kind of close connection to them, making it more likely to befriend them.
My friends come from all over the world, speak different languages, and I don’t care what their passport says. I care what their values and lifestyles are. I have a closer sense of connection and feel drawn to people who are intelligent, curious, and adventurous. A culture doesn’t have anything to do with it.
<Mobility Generational Gap
iMigration equals Mobility. Mobility on a global scale.
Right now we are just witnessing the birth of the Mobility phenomenon. However, there is no doubt that with accelerated globalization and appearance of enticing opportunities, the allure of Mobility will be on the rise.
The world is likely to be split between two groups – those who never move and iMigrants who are constantly on the move, rather than having a large portion of people in between (immigrants) who move only once.
There will come a time when moving from country to country will be considered just as normal, natural and easy as moving between states and provinces within a country right now. Nothing unusual, just life with all of its twists and turns. It’s just what mobile people do for various reasons and nothing to be concerned about.
You would not have to get a permission from anyone, including the government, in order to move. You wouldn’t need a visa because there would be no such thing as a visa. No questions would be asked at the border checkpoints because there would be no checkpoints. Freedom of global movement will be considered a basic human right. Just as gender and racial discrimination in the civilized world is a thing of the past, officially at least, so will the geographic and mobility discriminations.
But as bright as the future looks, we still live in the present. And it is in the present that we have to interact with the majority who don’t understand us. Especially difficult is dealing with people who are close to you, yet belonging to a different generation.
Explaining the iMigration lifestyle to parents is just as futile as explaining immigration to grandparents. It’s a generational gap in thinking about mobility! Too many of the assumptions the older generation of immigrants hold are no longer correct. The world is changing so fast that each generation can only hold on to its own vision of reality.
For my parents, moving from one country to another was extraordinarily difficult, a true feat of accomplishment. It was just as difficult as moving from one city to another, in the same country, for grandparents. And for my great-grandparents, moving from a village to a nearby city seemed nearly impossible.
Over generations, not just the geographic scale of movement has changed, but basic principles as well. Don’t expect older generations to grasp those principles.
Many parents, especially in more traditional societies, where family bonds are much stronger than in the independent-minded American culture, have lots of issues with the global iMigrant lifestyle. Some of them are simply not used to seeing their kids only once or twice a year. Others want to impose their own values and control their children’s lives on a daily basis, and that’s kind of hard to do over the phone…
Often times parents are hypocritical, accusing their children of leaving them behind and of being selfish in their pursuits. My parents are that way. “How can you leave us here all alone [by choosing to go to China instead of getting US Citizenship]”, they scream hysterically, almost in tears, forgetting that they did the same thing to their own parents when immigrating from Russia to Canada. They too left them behind and went half way around the world in an ego-driven pursuit. Even worse, they intended to re-settle permanently, while iMigrants never consider completely abandoning their home base.
There is no magical, quick and easy way to deal with those conflicts, something that would leave both sides happy. The worst thing you can do is try to please everybody. You have got to choose. How much do you value your own freedom? How much do you value pleasing parents? If you cannot do both at the same time, is pleasing your parents worth losing your own individual freedom? For me the answer is an absolute No.
I simply tell my parents that I am an adult and that I am living my own life. I am making my own decisions and I am willing to suffer the consequences of my actions. I consciously choose to live life on my own terms and value my freedom and happiness over suffering while pleasing others.
<Where is Home & What is Home
It was very late in the evening and I was tired after spending 14 hours walking miles around the Shanghai World Expo. Spending several of those hours waiting in long lines at the pavilions, I dreaded waiting at another, final line right outside the gate – the taxi line. Because the line was not inside, but outside the expo, it did not have the usual white plastic fence to keep it orderly. A couple of traffic policemen were shouting orders to passengers and taxi drivers to prevent chaos and line-jumping. Luckily, the line was moving quickly, with a dozen or so empty taxis arriving every minute.
Getting into the brand new Volkswagen SUV, the official taxi for the Expo, I automatically blurted out the address “Fanyu Lu, Jiao Tong Daxue”. The taxi took off, with the driver casually asking me whether I visited any popular pavilions like UK or UAE. Sleepily, I told him some of the highlights of the day.
Glued to the passenger side dashboard, as required, was his taxi driver license, with a photo and an ID. Casually glancing at it, my sleepiness suddenly went away, replaced with awe and curiosity. The ID was around 3,000, which, knowing a bit about the way this system works in Shanghai, told me a lot. When getting a taxi license, every new driver is given his own unique non-transferable ID, to verify identity and for occasional passenger complaints. The numbers are consecutive, with the most recent ones well over 300,000. All of the other taxis I took had numbers above 100,000, indicating relatively high turnover in the taxi business. This driver was one of the few remaining old dogs, driving a cab since the 80’s.
We chatted while I was snacking on the leftovers of my expo survival pack – a mixture of peanuts with raisins. We talked about the old times – Shanghai before private cars and traffic jams, before skyscrapers and sky-high real estate prices, before the flood of foreigners and the glamour of the Expo. Of course, with my very basic knowledge of the language most details of the conversation had to be filled by imagination, but nonetheless it was extremely engaging.
Suddenly, for the first time in a long, long time, for the first time in the last 15 years, I felt at home. I felt like I really belonged at this point and place in time. Belonged right here, and right now. In this present moment. Something shifted deep within. I was alive again.
<Home Base
What most people, including immigrants, consider to be “Home”, iMigrants consider to be a “Home Base”.
Immigrants, relocating abroad, consider it a permanent move, and try to take as many material possessions, as much stuff with them, as humanely possible. They are leaving their old Home forever and need to establish a new Home from scratch. What they can’t take with them, they sell or give away to the relatives.
When my parents were leaving Russia to immigrate to Canada, they sold our house in Yekaterinburg and packed as much baggage per person as was allowed by airlines at that time, forty kilos per person! In addition, before leaving, they sent a dozen cases filled with their collection of books to Toronto. There was no coming back, so our treasured goods had to make the move with us. After all, there was only one Home.
iMigrants, on the contrary, don’t limit themselves to one “Home”, preferring instead to establish several Home Bases around the world.
To define a Home Base, let’s look at what associations comes to mind for the word “Home”? A place that is familiar, safe and secure, where you know the people, the customs, the rules. A place where others know you.
What associations come to mind for the word “Base”? A base is something solid, physical, well grounded, permanent. Something you can count on to be there upon coming back. A storage of supplies available for your taking. A place to lick your wounds, sort of.
So what exactly is a Home Base? It is a combination of a “Home” and a “Base” concepts.
A Home Base is a geographical location you can always return to when the going gets tough or when you need to rest, recharge, and replenish your resources before embarking on future worldwide adventures. It is your regional anchor, consisting of a social circle of relatives and friends. It is a place you have a deep emotional connection to, a place with lots of memories to cherish. A place where you are familiar with the language and the culture to the point of being very accustomed to daily life. A place where you could easily find employment and support yourself. A place where you will always be accepted no matter what. A place to reassess priorities in life and figure out where to go next.
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