Migration

MIGRATION
©1979 By Kurt Saxon

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 rip-off 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.

Notes From The Years 1972 & 1964