Exiting the American Dream

Abstract

Exit planning among U.S. citizens is on the rise. A confluence of worrisome domestic conditions— including societal violence, the curtailment of individual rights, and creeping authoritarianism— has prompted U.S. citizens to contemplate and plan for a possible departure from the country. Among the more popular exit pathways, particularly for minorities in the United States who have experienced or fear identity-based mistreatment, are programs that allow descendants of citizens or other members of the diaspora to acquire status in their ancestral homelands. Decades or even centuries after their ancestors’ arrival, present-day U.S. citizens are considering a return journey, thereby disrupting long-standing narratives about immigrant integration and plural democracy in the United States.

In this Essay, I offer a firsthand account of exit planning and describe how I, a gay man of color and son of immigrants, successfully obtained status in India, the nation of my parents’ birth. Drawing upon the scholarly traditions of critical legal studies and social scientific autoethnography, I interweave academic research and storytelling to generate insights about the motivations that underlie exit migration and the actual process of applying for status overseas. The Essay also records reflections about what diasporic return signifies for the project of U.S. democracy, the possibility of internal or circular migration, the powerful role of private industry in enabling transnational moves, and the complex relationships that exit planners maintain with both the United States and their ancestral homelands.

Rathod No-Bleed 2

About the Author

Professor of Law, American University Washington College of Law. Thank you to WCL students Sarah Cossman, Adam Domitz, Junnah Mozaffar, Emily Pratt, Chloe Schalit, and Xara Sunne for their research and editorial assistance. Thanks also to Bernadette Atuahene, Michael Dowley, Valeria Gomez, Liz Keyes, Fatma Marouf, Angi Porter, Faiza Sayed, Ragini Shah, Anita Sinha, and Thomas Williams for helpful conversations and feedback on earlier drafts, and to the editors of the UCLA Law Review for their excellent work on this Essay.

By LRIRE