Well, in the GDR, 20% of the population had immigrated to the west before the government started more strictly regulating emigration. Restricting who could leave was kind of a necessity at that point.
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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The GDR started allowing more travel to the west in the 1970s. You could visit if you were aged over 50 or had relatives in the west, and other people could also visit but they had to wait much longer and get an approval from the Stasi (most requests were approved). By 1988, millions of people legally visited West Germany each year and over 99.9% returned to the GDR.
This is not quite the same since it is not about freedom of movement but instead about economic control, but is an interesting comparison: the US charges its citizens income tax even when they are not resident in the US, and it is the only country that does this, IIRC.
If you leave the US and immigrate elsewhere, the only way to stop paying for the US's militaristic imperialism is to renounce your citizenship.
The US impoverishes other countries and entices economic refugees to come to America where they are used as cheap labor. To make matters worse, highly educated immigrants are given special treatment, causing brain drain in the periphery. As a cherry on top, the US under-educates its population and keeps them monolingual so emigrating becomes much harder. And then of course they double tax people and make renouncing citizenship expensive, but I'm pretty sure you have to make over $103,900 for that to apply. If America's parasitic relationship to other countries was ended, not only would it face demographic collapse like all other developed market economies, but it would also become much less relevant in the realm of R&D.
I'm still for freedom of movement and immigration out of principle, but it should be paired with reparations to undo the unequal development of the world.
you have to pay at least a $2530 fee to renounce US citizenship, if you somehow avoid all of the other hidden fees. and Allah help you if you mess up part of the application. cool country 👍
edit: i conclude it's probably easier to lose citizenship by committing treason or joining a foreign military than doing the state department's arcane (and expensive) rituals
I have not lived in the US for most of my adult life, and have been in the process of renouncing for a while now, as I need to to get my new citizenship.
I was interrupted by covid, because they just decided to not let anyone renounce during that time period, so I have started my application process over. You're lucky if you only get the couple thousand charge, because the chances are very high that they will find some tax that you didn't pay you suddenly owe now.
Honestly, paying income tax to the US for the rest of my life is probably the easier route. At least most people get it all returned.
Most of the time, I don’t think so. For the DPRK specifically thousands of people have permits to work and live outside of the country, while it’s the South that restricts people going north. The only actual example I can think of is in the GDR where they were dealing with the problem of people getting good free education and housing there but going to West Germany to get a higher paying job.
Haven't heard of a DPRKorean who lives outside DPRK, I thought most of them were only allowed to work in Russia or the PRC, since that's what liberal me was fed to regarding info about the DPRK at the time.
Also, to add with OP's question, are DPRKoreans allowed to keep passports to themselves? Or only the government is allowed to have them (from which the DPRKoreans must return their passport back to the passport office once landing in DPRK)?
A lot of them go to South Korea, whereupon they are considered by the government there to be South Korean citizens, and then prohibited from going back to the North. So in a way there are technically no DPRK citizens in south Korea, because south Korea stops recognizing them as DPRK citizens once they cross the border. If you haven't seen loyal citizens of Pyeongyang in Seoul I'd recommend it.
Idk all the details, but yeah, the work permits are mostly for China/Russia, but that’s probably because most countries sanction the DPRK more, and don’t want them there. I know there are people who’ve gone to China and then to somewhere like South Korea.
but i thought chinese police send them back to the dprk if they spot them?
Maybe its not widely enforced, and only if they don't have the proper documents. Since DPRK and China are allies, maybe China only sends them back if their hands are tied.
I would assume people without work permits and such documents would get sent back if caught by authorities, as that is generally a normal law in most countries. (Just my assumption; I'm not aware of the specific laws in China around this.)
The reduction in visa renewals for north Koreans working/residing in China is a result of (US-led) UN sanctions:
Article from 2017: "North Korean workers leave China because of UN sanctions."
More and more North Korean workers are being forced to leave China following the sanctions imposed by the UN on 12 September. Beijing has announced the closure of all North Korean companies and joint ventures within 120 days, and a clamp down on the issuance and renewal of visas. [...] The closure resulted in the departure of about 2,600 North Koreans from the northeastern provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang alone, where workers are employed in the fishing industry. A photo showing hundreds of North Korean women waiting for repatriation is circulating on WeChat, a widespread messaging application in China. It is estimated that at least 100,000 North Korean workers reside outside the country of origin to earn strong currency, for an annual total of remittance estimated at around US $ 500 million.
Although China went along with the 2017 round of sanctions, in 2022 China and Russia vetoed a new round of UN sanctions on DPRK and proposed lifting some of the earlier sanctions from 2017, as they felt the US had failed to engage in its end of peaceful diplomacy with DPRK and therefore the sanctions should be reduced and no further ones should be imposed.
It seems to me that China would be and is fine with DPRK citizens living and working in China, but is forced into a diplomatic balancing act as they try to maintain peace conditions while the imperialists are on their usual mission to split up and destroy their economic rivals by any methods they can achieve.
The problem isn't leaving, the problem is finding a country to accept you. You can have a passport but if you don't have the visa, they'll turn you away at the airport.
Let's not also think that back in the day of the USSR it was easy to travel around the world. Schengen and the popularisation of air travel are relatively recent developments.
The big measure I can think of was in the GDR, but even then the "Berlin wall" was maligned. Imperialists created a problem and then mocked the only solution. They actually created two problems; the first one was dividing Berlin in two. https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Anti-Fascist_Protection_Rampart
That’s useful context. Thank you!
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