How to Expatriate with Your Baby

America sucks, dude. Face it. America is a piece of shit. That place is wack as fuck. America kills its kids, and I don't mean that as some veiled jab at the education system—although that's fucked too—I mean it literally murders its children. It is a racist, warmongering, xenophobic, imperialist military-prison industrial complex.

I spoke at length on this subject in this old article from 2014. Sadly, the words ring as true today as they did over a year ago. Over the past 12 months, American police have shot and killed more than a thousand people, close to 200 of them unarmed, the majority of them black. The homie Raha Jorjani recently wrote a very thought-provoking article for the Washington Post arguing that black people in the United States, under our own definition of the term, very well might be entitled to refugee status if they were from another country.

The lists of Sandra Blands, Christian Taylors, Samuel Duboses, Aaron Campbells, Quintonio Legriers, and Bettie Joneses is numbing, sickening, terrifying. The idea that our tax dollars are not only paying the salaries of the officers involved in these tragedies but funding the legal system that protects them from consequence while at the same time imprisoning over a million of its citizens for nonviolent crimes is disgusting.

Add to that the terrifying rise of Trump's popularity and the growing atmosphere of Islamophobic hate crimes in the US—numerous assaults on Muslims, the recent burning of a mosque in supposedly hippie-loving Coachella, the arrest of a middle school student for bringing a clock radio to school, etc.—and you get a shameful place to raise a kid. So I packed my black ass up with my Muslim wife and our baby daughter and we moved to Mexico. We stay in a nice spot on a hill overlooking the sea, a five-minute walk from a private beach and close to a bazaar for a quarter of what you would pay in the States. Dude didn't even run a credit check. They don't care out here, mane. It's the Wild West. Baja.

Bruh, I'm from California—that used to BE Mexico. So why not make it official? And before the Spanish it was all the various indigenous nations along this coast, so why trip off some nominal ass shit like a national border?

And look, I'm not the only fool with this idea. Aside from that Affluenza-stricken clown Ethan Couch and his spun-out mama, it's hella fools moving down here. And contrary to what some of the racist scum in the GOP will have you believe, there's actually more Mexicans LEAVING the States than coming in. It's the biggest migration OUT of America in US history.

In terms of having a kid out here, Mexico is tight. For one, it's easier on the wallet. Second off, it's a lot of nature out where I am, and nature is a perfect place for the kid to get in tune with the magical rhythms and cadences and lessons of the Earth. The kid learns about existence in its purest and rawest form, it sees the ocean waves crash on the shore, it sees the stars in the night sky in all their entirety and splendor, unhampered by the light pollution of the city. The kid sees whales breach and spout water out in the sea, sees falcons swoop through the sky, bunnies scamper here and there. The Mexican landscapes remain largely natural, unscathed by human antagonisms.

The baby has been digging it out here. Every morning we take that five-minute hike down the hill to the beach, watch the waves crash. If it's warm enough we might take off our shoes and wade in the water. In the summer it's a destination for swimming, surfing, snorkeling, kayaking, etc. We go on walks along the cliff overlooking the massive churning ocean waves—it's a heady vista. She can identify various plants, points to a cactus and says "cactus," points to a tree and says "tree." When the moon comes out at night she points up there and says "moon," bruh. It's wild idyllic.

When we drive into town it's a lot of stimuli. Mexicans have an eye for color when it comes to design. It's all wild splendid for a kid to gaze upon. Plus it's good for her to pick up some more Spanish, expand her vocab and linguistic brain centers. If she for some reason, Allah forbid, needs medical attention it's actually cheaper here than in the States and there's plenty of options for bilingual education. Plus, the tacos out here are bangin'.

I would recommend moving to Baja to literally anybody. I have zero complaints thus far. And don't worry, I'll keep y'all updated.

Follow KOOL A.D. on Twitter.