Daily Translation #2

为什么越来越多的美国人向往欧洲？

“我羡慕你们的自由，”在亨利·詹姆斯的《美国人》一书中瓦伦丁·德·贝勒加德伯爵对主人公克里斯托弗·纽曼说道。纽曼是名白手起家没有阶级偏见的富商，他前往巴黎游玩，却被卷入了一场法国贵族的阴谋之中。这是一个典型的旅欧美国侨民模板，即天真的美国富户到欧洲游玩或进修。然而还有另一种情况，人们来到欧洲不是为了享受悠闲的旧生活，而是为了逃离新生活。“我不知道我在法国会出什么事”非裔作家詹姆斯·鲍德温在1948年决定移民时说道，“但我知道我在纽约一定会出事。”

最近越来越多的美国人正在移民欧洲，并且许多人更像是在逃离美国而非向往欧洲。相关的数据很凌乱，因为当地政府很难密切关注这些移民的动向。但在一些国家这一趋势则较为明显。2013-2022年间，荷兰的美国人数量从大约15500人增长至24000人；葡萄牙的美国人数量增长了近三倍达到了10000人；在西班牙的美国人人数从20000人左右增长到了近34000。在其他地区，诸如法国，德国和一些北欧国家，美国人的数量有适度增长或保持稳定。英国政府认为其国内美国移民数量从2013年的137000人增至了2021年的166000人（最新估测）

同时，也有越来越多的美国人表达了他们的移民倾向。其中有部分人发誓如果唐纳德·特朗普赢得了2016年的总统大选，他们一定会移民，但事实上很少有人兑现承诺。但在2018年，民意调查人盖洛普发现想要永久移民到其他国家的美国人，其占比从奥巴马执政时期的11%增长到了特朗普时期的16%。到2022年，尽管乔·拜登当选了总统，这一比例还是上升到了17%。去年YouGov的一项调查显示，美国国内大部分考虑移民的人都是自由主义者。

很少有想要移民的保守派民众，这不足为奇。并且跟进率仍然很小：全美3.3亿人中只有几万人有意愿移民。但是最近很多移民者称他们离开美国一定程度上是由于对美国的发展前途感到绝望。

“有些人一个月给我打一次电话问我怎么出国，”卡洛琳·贝林格说道，她在2017年移民出国。贝林格女士曾是当时众议院民主党领袖南希·佩洛西的前助手，她在特朗普赢得大选之后辞职去往了其配偶所在的阿姆斯特丹。她认为，对于大部分移民来说，他们并不是因为政治因素离开，而是因其不想回去，“并不仅仅是大选，还有大选后持续的政治分歧。”

“我们一直听说欧洲人的工作与生活保持着很好的平衡，”特蕾西·梅茨说道，她是约翰亚当斯研究所的负责人。约翰亚当斯研究所是一个研究美国-荷兰文化的机构。美国人一年工作1811小时，而欧洲人工作1571小时，修生养息的荷兰人则仅有1427小时。荷兰曾一度吸引了想要吸大麻和与同性伴侣结婚的美国人。而现在的吸引力则更加主流，梅茨说道。英语的国际化使得定居荷兰变得更为简单，尤其是对语言能力出了名的烂的美国人来说。在荷兰的大学里，28%的本科课程是用英语教授的。线上招聘广告对英语的要求不亚于对荷兰语的要求。

有些移民则是被欧洲健全的社会保障体系所吸引。作家希瑟·考德威尔·厄克特于2021年移居里斯本，她曾在马萨诸塞州做文职工作只为获得健康保险。而在葡萄牙，她和她家人的保险费只占美国同等保险费用的一小部分。她说“到了这儿我们才发现美国的社会结构是如此的破碎。”

2022年移居里斯本的精神病学家西尔维娅·约翰逊认为，离开美国的数周后“我们感到紧张的情绪有所缓解”。对于约翰逊女士和她的家人来说，一个非裔家庭面临的关键问题就是种族歧视与暴力。她这几年来都在劝说自己的丈夫斯坦利，一名律师，移居国外。2021年发生的乔治·弗洛伊德事件及之后爆发的一系列冲突改变了斯坦利的看法。他回忆道：“‘我觉得我们需要一把枪’当我这样大声说的时候我在想，如果我住在一个需要用枪保护我家人的国家，那这个国家不待也罢。”

斯坦利在佛吉尼亚州成长时，他家的草坪上有个十字架被烧毁了。西尔维娅的几个亲戚都死于枪杀。现在他们正从遭受偏见时和与警察打交道时的警惕中解放出来。他们说尽管葡萄牙存在一些种族歧视，但他们至少不用担心暴力。

其他因素则比较平淡无奇。疫情期间激增的远程工作使得在国外居住变得可能。美国人最向往的一些欧洲国家也为外国人提供着诱人的合约。荷兰政府要求公司为熟练的外籍员工提供30%的收入税收减免。获得葡萄牙的居留签证只需薪水达到其国家最低收入的150%，大约为每月1100欧元（1190美元），这对于美国的退休人员来说并不是个难关。外籍人员可缴纳“被动收入”（如投资或退休金）10%的单一税。西班牙的“贝克汉姆法案”使得外籍人员只需缴纳24%的个人所得税。许多国家也正在为科技自由职业者推行“数字游民”签证。

这些信息解释了一些并不富裕的美国人移民欧洲的原因。其他国家想吸引全世界的“克里斯托弗·纽曼”。意大利计划引入“高净值人群”，无论他们挣多少钱，每年都要缴纳10万欧元的个人所得税。法国有一项针对外国企业高管的复杂税收豁免规定，但德国却没有。

相比于政治幻灭的故事，美国侨民更注重实际问题。“每个人都有复杂的因素促使其选择移民，”来自肯特大学的阿曼达·克莱科夫斯基·冯·科彭费尔斯说道，她是研究美国侨民的权威人士。许多人都是因访学或工作，之后与配偶相恋后定居于此。但她补充到这种情况也发生了改变。美国人曾认为自己的国家是移民大国，因此在别人移民美国时自己移民出去似乎是一个很反常的行为。现在美国人意识到了欧洲所具有的的优势：“健全的医疗保障，更便捷的交通，更少的枪支暴力，虽然有些种族歧视但至少不会要人老命。”

了解了新美国侨民之后会觉得《美国人》在一定程度上被颠覆了。美国人依旧比欧洲人更富有。但当前者来到欧洲这片充满着傲慢与偏见之地，他们便会丢掉自己平等主义者的身份，便会享受欧洲的全民医保，高效交通，低犯罪率以及平等收入。如此看来，欧洲的自由也让美国人红了眼。

Original Article:

Why Europe is a magnet for more Americans?

“What i envy you is your liberty,” says Count Valentin de Bellegarde to Christopher Newman, the protagonist of Henry James’s novel “The American”. Rich, self-made and free of class prejudice, Newman moves to Paris for fun, only to be sucked into the intrigues of the French aristocracy. The template still describes one type of American expat: the well-off innocent who comes to Europe for amusement or edification. Another sort, however, comes not to enjoy the old world but to escape the new one. “I didn’t know what would happen to me in France,” said James Baldwin, a black writer, of his decision to emigrate in 1948, “but I knew what would happen to me in New York.”

More Americans are moving to Europe lately, and many are fleers rather than seekers. The statistics are messy: governments have difficulty keeping tabs on foreign residents. But in some countries the trend is clear. In 2013-22 the number of Americans in the Netherlands increased from about 15,500 to 24,000; in Portugal it tripled to almost 10,000; and in Spain it rose from about 20,000 to nearly 34,000. In other places, such as France, Germany and the Nordic countries, the number grew moderately or held steady. Britain thinks the number of resident Americans rose from 137,000 in 2013 to 166,000 in 2021 (the latest estimate).

Meanwhile, more and more Americans say they want out of their own country. Few of those who vowed to leave if Donald Trump were elected in 2016 actually did so. But Gallup, a pollster, found in 2018 that the share of Americans who said they would like to move permanently to another country had risen from 11% under Barack Obama to 16% under Mr Trump; by 2022 it was 17%, Joe Biden’s election notwithstanding. A survey by YouGov last year found that those considering emigration were mostly liberals.

It is hardly surprising that conservatives are less likely to say they want to leave their country. And the follow-through rate remains tiny: a few tens of thousands of émigrés out of a population of 330m. But many recent expats say they left partly out of despair at where the United States is heading.

“I do a phone call once a month with Americans asking me how to come over here,” says Caroline Behringer, an American who moved in 2017. Ms Behringer, a former aide to Nancy Pelosi, the then leader of Democrats in the House of Representatives, left her job and joined her partner in Amsterdam after Mr Trump’s victory. For most expats, she says, politics was not so much the reason they left as a reason not to go back: “not just the election, but the continued divisiveness”.

“The thing we hear all the time is that the work-life balance is so much better here,” says Tracy Metz, who heads the John Adams Institute, an American-Dutch cultural venue. American workers toil for 1,811 hours per year, Europeans just 1,571; the well-rested Dutch put in a mere 1,427. The Netherlands once attracted Yanks looking to smoke marijuana or marry same-sex partners. Now the attractions are more mainstream, Ms Metz says. The rise of international English makes things easier for Americans, who are notoriously bad at languages: 28% of the bachelor’s programmes at Dutch universities are in English. Online job ads require English almost as frequently as they require Dutch.

Some émigrés are drawn to Europe’s robust social safety nets. Heather Caldwell Urquhart, a writer who moved to Lisbon in 2021, had taken a clerical job in Massachusetts simply to get health insurance. In Portugal she and her family pay for coverage a fraction of what an equivalent American plan would cost. “We didn’t realise how shredded the United States’ social fabric was until we got here,” she says.

“We felt the tension lift” within weeks of leaving America, agrees Sylvia Johnson, a psychiatrist who moved to Lisbon in 2022. For Ms Johnson and her family, who are black, the central issues were racism and violence. She had been trying for years to convince her husband Stanley, a lawyer, to move abroad. The strife after the murder of George Floyd in 2021 brought him around. He recalls saying: “‘I think we need to get a gun.’ When I said that out loud, I was like, if I have to live in a country where I need a gun to protect my family, then this is not the country for me.”

Stanley had a cross burned on his lawn while growing up in Virginia. Several of Sylvia’s relatives were killed by guns. Now they are relaxing some of the wariness that black Americans develop for detecting prejudice and coping with police. While there is some racism in Portugal, they say, they do not worry about violence.

Other factors are more prosaic. The huge increase in remote working during the pandemic made living abroad more feasible. And the European countries that lure the most Americans have set up tempting deals for foreigners. The Netherlands lets companies exempt 30% of skilled foreign workers’ income from taxes. In Portugal a residential visa requires income of just 150% of the national minimum wage, or about €1,100 ($1,190) per month–an easy hurdle for American retirees. Foreigners can pay a 10% flat tax on “passive income”, such as investments or a pension. Spain’s “Beckham law” offers a 24% flat tax for income earned in the country. Several countries are introducing “digital-nomad” visas for tech freelancers.

Such deals explain why these places are getting a lot of non-rich American expats. Other countries target the Christopher Newmans of the world. Italy aims to attract “high-net-worth individuals” by letting them pay €100,000 per year in income tax regardless of how much they earn. France has a complicated exemption aimed at foreign business executives. Germany, though, has none.

For all American expats’ tales of political disillusionment, it is less important than practical matters. “Everybody has convoluted how-I-ended-up-here stories,” says Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels of the University of Kent, an authority on the American diaspora. Many travel for education or work, fall in love and settle down. Still, she says, there has been a change. Americans once felt that their country was the ultimate immigrant nation; leaving for anywhere else seemed odd. Now they are aware that Europe has its advantages: “good health care, better transportation, less gun violence, there’s racism but [it is] a lot less deadly.”

To listen to the new American expats is to get a sense that “The American” has been partly upended. Americans are still richer than Europeans. But when they come to the continent, they no longer arrive as egalitarians in lands of aristocracy and prejudice. Instead they admire Europe’s universal health care, efficient public transportation, lower crime and lower income inequality. In a way, they envy the Europeans’ liberty.

原文网址：

https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/08/28/why-europe-is-a-magnet-for-more-americans