October 18, 2013

Why I'll never go home

Like a growing number of Americans between the age of 25-35, I have left the country due to lack of opportunity. Politicians have created a system in which young educated citizens have no future.

My master's degree makes me less competitive. The jobs that I would have been competing for in the past, some kind of analyst or low level manager, are going to 40-year-olds who used to have much better jobs. They did the same job 15 years ago.

The fact that these people are now taking these jobs means that those who are a few years out of university must compete for McDonalds-type jobs. However, I am not equiped for such a job. It requires physical skills that I don't have including standing for ten hours, taking pre-made burgers out of wrapping, putting it on the grill and wrapping it up at the end.

This is doable, but the speed and endurance required should be left to the experts, the blue collared workers. Some people were made to work with their hands. They built treehouses with their Dad growing up. They worked a summer job scooping ice cream, or helped out at the family farm.

The children of the country's intellectual class were encouraged to get out of gym class to take an extra math class, to specifically NOT work because it supposedly got in the way of turning an A- into an A+. We were indoctrinated with the concept that so many jobs are below us to the point that outside of medicine or law, there's no purpose.

Not only is a master's degree holder less qualified than someone who chose not the go to college, but the managers don't want us there because they didn't go to college either.

McDonald's work is made for blue-collared workers. White-collared workers need to be doing white-collared work. However, if all of the white-collared work is being done by people age 40 and up, there is no place for young people like me who just came out of school.

So we leave the country. I have no future in my birth country. Our parents always wonder when we are coming back home to America. What they don't seem to understand is that the answer is probably never. The opportunity is not there. Even if we do get the coveted job working at McDonald's, the wage is far too low to live. We can't go back to a country to live in poverty. It doesn't make sense. Mom, Dad, I'm not coming home.

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