Fleeing One’s Country It seems throughout the history of the United States, people have been fleeing here. There are many reasons for this. Some want to get here because we have a much better economy than the country they came from and they feel they will have a better chance at living a better life. Others come here because they want to get in on criminal activity and since we are one of the richest countries on earth, they see it as very profitable. Then there are those who are running from the rulers of their countries because they are afraid of having their families killed by some brutal dictator. Whatever the reason a lot of immigrants come here. Of course, the door swings both ways and sometimes people who have committed criminal acts in this country try to run to another country which has no extradition treaty with us, so we can’t send people to pick them up. There are a lot of countries like this, almost 100. About ten years ago two elderly criminals fled to France when they knew they were going to be indicted on money laundering and bankruptcy fraud. The man was 88 years old and the woman was 63 years old. We have a treaty with France for extradition but the French said they would only allow us to extradite them if we promised not to send them to jail and based this on their age. They took the 570 million dollars with them and were living the good life in the French Alps. This just shows that having this treaty doesn’t necessarily mean you will get your extradition. It does make one wonder however if a little money was passed around to the French, maybe in the form of campaign contributions or even flat out bribes. I think most of us have heard of Anne Frank. She is the poor young Jewish woman who hid in the attic to escape the Nazis extermination of the Jews. It was to no avail in the end because she was discovered. This is a case where it is said several attempts were made to get the United States to allow her to migrate here before 1942. In those days there were no special circumstances to allow immigrants to get to the front of the immigration line. All had to go through the same thing and meet the same requirements. The family had been trying since the late 1930s to get into this country. I suppose the same was true for many other Jewish families at the time. Some of the countries which do not have extradition treaties you wouldn’t want to live in. It could be worse than being in a jail here. Others would require a complete style of living many could not cope with. If you are a criminal facing a serious crime and have money you could try to escape to Mongolia. It is a very empty country with only 2.7 million people. It is said the police there are not big on law enforcement because of serious corruption. I have no personal knowledge of this, I am only stating what has been said by others. They went on to say there is not much of a chance the Mongolians would bother trying to return you to the United States. While this would require that life style I talked about, it is still better than some other countries which have no treaty. Fleeing to some of the Muslim countries like Iran would surely be a death sentence for an escaping American unless they felt he served some useful purpose for propaganda or was a professional person which could help them in their endeavors. I would have to say a criminal from here would have to be pretty stupid to try and hide out in Iran. I guess if one had money one of the most popular countries to hide out in would be Cuba. In 1979 a Black Panther named Assata Shakur escaped from prison in this country. The Black Panthers were a Marxist party group which advocated the use of guerilla tactics and violence to overthrow the U.S. government. Assata Shakur was given asylum by Cuba and still lives there. While you would have to get used to living on less and driving a very old car if you could afford it, it is still better than most non-extradition countries. Edward Snowden was a government official who leaked state secrets. He claimed he was only doing it to help this country but the government didn’t buy that explanation. He felt he had to escape and decided he could hide better in a large country and flew to Russia, but when he got to the airport, he found he was not allowed to leave it. He had gotten offers for asylum from Nicaragua, Bolivia and Venezuela but believed his plane might be intercepted while flying there. Russia finally allowed him in and he seemed to be able to go anywhere he wanted. I personally believe he was being watched very carefully. When we talk about people who have hidden from justice in other countries, we can’t forget the Nazis who made it to South America and hid from the entire world. Some of them were never caught and others were only caught when they became very elderly. Argentina is said to have been one of the countries favored by the Nazis and they seemed to gain a lot of influence in some South American countries, especially Paraguay. Argentina was perfect for the Nazis to hide out in because there were communities of hundreds of thousands of Germans living there making it easy to hide someone. They had developed a network for getting there and it became very efficient. There are so many rumors that Hitler did not die in the bunker and actually made it to South America and lived out the rest of his life probably in Argentina. There was even a photo shown on a television program trying to trace where Hitler was, that showed an older Hitler at the opera there. It would be ironic if the biggest animal of all Adolph Hitler had lived to a ripe old age when his deputy Rudolf Hess flew to Scotland to try and make a deal to end the war and was thrown in jail for the rest of his life. I don’t believe many fugitives who flee this country or other western countries are happy with their new destinations with a few exceptions. The Nazis had it pretty good. Those who go to third world countries are not happy, I am sure.
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