Josephine Baker made a life in France. James Baldwin wrote in Paris and Istanbul. Ordinary Americans married in Naples, farmed in Brazil, taught in Seoul, opened shops in Tokyo. They did not need a ministry’s permission to leave, and they did not have to stop being American to try.
Empires send administrators. Free countries also send people who simply want a life. Some come home. Some stay. Children grow up with two passports and a Thanksgiving table in a third language.
That is a public American story too: opportunity is not only inbound. The Constitution does not chain you to the county you were born in — including when that county is in Ohio and the next chapter is in Lyon or Lima.
