Member-only story
Congratulations, You’re an Immigrant
And everything you learned in the U.S. is wrong
My wife and I run a small TikTok account where we document our experience as American immigrants living in Uruguay. After the election this last week, we’ve started to notice a small but noticeable uptick in engagement from Americans (typically, over 90 percent of our views come from our new country, not our old one). We’ve received some messages and comments asking us for advice on how to find housing and jobs and checking visa requirements. And we’ve been doing our best to answer all of the questions we receive.
The problem? It’s almost impossible to ask the right questions if you’re assuming the rules of the U.S. still apply.
And these questions can range from the big topics — medical care, housing, and immigration — to the little things — like knowing if you can access the ingredients to your favorite meal or how much you need to budget for bills.
When my wife and I first visited Uruguay, before moving here from the United States in January of this year, I fell and scraped my knee. I needed some antibiotic ointment (which my American brain still calls “Neosporin” even though we haven’t bought the brand in years), so my wife left our small AirBnB and went to the grocery store. She must have looked confused while she was…
