"Fullmettlejaquette" said:
No matter what happens in the US, the vast majority of Americans will never have any desire or interest in being expats. So, there won't be a run for the border, and other coumtries will not have to change their immigration policies. I think there will be a mini wave of US expatting because of the baby boomers not having enough money to retire in the US. This will benefit poorer countries. However, if the US economy and dollar does totally collapse, this mini boom will be even mini-er, as in the case the dollars won't go far anywhere, even Bangladesh.
Quite so. The language barrier is a formidable one. Customs and culture is another. But let me sketch other scenarios.
100,000 US citizens did apply for emigration to the Soviet Union in 1932 (the USSR had put out an advert for skilled workers in American newspapers). So if circumstances become dire enough, one can expect a rising efflux.
As the United States becomes steadily more polarised into rich and poor, and the middle class eveaporates into thin air, one can expect the number of emigrants from the US to increase even without a crash. For a number of reasons, the USA is an increasingly unattractive place to live. So conceivably it could be like the situation depicted in Tolkien's
Lord of the Rings, where men from the troubled South wind up in places like the Shire and Bree, and these places end up either invaded (the Shire) or in a state of siege (Bree).
Let us not forget that Americans (i.e. US inhabitants) defrauded and mass murdered millions of red Indians, and took hold of their lands. Why is it out of the question that the same not be done to sparsely populated Argentina and Uruguay? The Germans used to call it
lebensraum -- living space. We already know that this is going to be a century of unremitting resource wars -- for land, water, oil. In any case, the entire history of the Americas is one of mass murder, plunder, and appropriation of land and possessions.