Adrianna Tan
Reddit is wild. Someone won a diversity visa lottery. Wants to move to SF. People are advising him to move to a smaller cheaper city with way fewer jobs for cost reasons.
Look not everyone outside the country wants to move to a suburb in the Central Valley with fewer jobs
And no one is moving to the US to go live in Stockton by choice
Adrianna Tan
I also remain convinced that the experience of immigrants in San Francisco is vastly different than that of a white transplant from elsewhere in the country.
Instead of empty, soul sucking, friend-less tech-only work people who don’t want to hang out, I think many immigrants get to experience San Francisco with deep ties to communities through language, shared homelands or shared cultures.
I once gave a tv to a few new Ukrainian refugees. Former Vietnamese refugees, now my neighbors, feed me food often. Yemeni shop owners insist I try something their spouse makes. Local AAPI activism is stronger than anywhere else I can tell (alongside Oakland). It is just a vastly different world and we feel a kindred spirit despite or perhaps because of the challenges of being here.
Adrianna Tan
Don’t come to San Francisco, it’s miserable and awful here!!!
Yeah not for everyone
Adrianna Tan
I also don’t know if Americans know what a big deal winning a diversity visa lottery is. It’s a really big deal. It’s worth uprooting your life and coming to try to have a new one here. I know plenty of people who have and who have done this, including from countries white Americans are complaining they can’t move to but would prefer.
Adrianna Tan
Because the one thing that green card holders have is, if America doesn’t work out, most of us can always go home *
That makes most of the ‘but this country is falling apart!!’ aspects not relevant. Increasingly I feel ability to live in several other places is possibly why I am still here. I have a way out but I’m determined to see what I can do here in my chosen home.
* unless your home is in an active war or severely represses people like you
Adrianna Tan
@fuzzychef yeah that bit is sad. i'm probably going to move to oakland. i also cannot stand the conservative immigrants in sf. like the car brained chinese people who want to recall engardio. i hate them for making me feel sorry for engardio.
Berkubernetus
@skinnylatte As a departee, I feel like we had one chance to save the old SF, in the mid 00's, and the progressives blew it (mostly through sexism).
Adrianna Tan
@noodlemaz i wouldn't advise anyone to emigrate here, but i also wouldn't advise anyone to emigrate to many other places for the reasons you have stated. i do think that for many immigrants who are already here, we have much more of a chance in dealing with fascism because i feel we have a lot more community, organizing, than immigrants in many other places i've lived (many of the places that americans are saying they want to move to)
but if they have decided to come here anyway, then i would like them to have the information that they need.
there are still plenty of other reasons why someone might move here, it all depends on where they are coming here from and why.
Noodlemaz
@skinnylatte I think you're absolutely right, as a mere temporary, white, tech-visa-linked transplant - I could see there were aspects I'd never get as a visitor (which is fine - as you say, but for the horrific treatment of unhoused folks)
But would you really advise anyone to immigrate to the US right now? I don't think I could, but Tbf I'm not living there anymore so. Just, interested. What with the fascism and all (which we also have, we're just a bit behind)
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