“The only way out is the airport”: the exodus of young professionals from Argentina

Anat Procianoy was 19 years old when she left her native Argentina to move to Israel.

It was February 2002, and the South American country was going through the worst economic, political and social crisis in its recent history.

The president – the fifth in less than two weeks – had ordered that dollar deposits be “pesified”, causing a sudden devaluation that, in an instant, erased three-quarters of the value of the savings of millions of people.

Tens of thousands of Argentines left the country during the so-called “crisis of 2001″.

Many, like Anat’s parents, had lost their jobs, or had to close their businesses, and decided to start over elsewhere.

When Argentina managed to recover economically a few years later, and stabilized politically, some of the emigrants they started coming back.

This was the case of Anat, who moved back to Argentina in 2011, at the age of 29, and today lives on the outskirts of Buenos Aires with her husband and son.

Although his country is mired in a new economic crisis, with annual inflation of more than 50%, and one of the most devalued currencies in the world, she assures that she does not regret having returned, and says that, as long as she continues to have a job, she plans to stay in the country.

However, he points out to BBC Mundo that in recent times he has been observing a trend that brings back many memories than he lived two decades ago.

“I have several friends and acquaintances who are leaving,” he says. “Some have already left, others plan to leave this year.”

Anat has no doubt that the country is going through a new great wave of emigration, a phenomenon that many local media have dubbed a “Exodus”.

How many

BBC Mundo consulted the National Directorate of Migration of Argentina (DNM) about the number of emigrants, but a spokesperson for the agency explained that they could not provide that figure.

The spokesman pointed out that the reason was “to protect the personal data” of travelers after alleged irregular entries to the Migration database during the previous administration, which are still being investigated.

However, the A24 news site published statistics last October that it obtained from the DNM through a request for access to public information, indicating that between September 2020 and June 2021 almost 60,000 people emigrated.

That equates to about 200 emigrants per day.

The figure corresponds to people who put “moving” as the reason for travel in their affidavit, prior to leaving the country.

However, experts point out that the number of emigrants could be much higher, since not all those who plan to leave definitively recognize it in their travel documents.

“Not only do those who declare a move leave; there are others who declare traveling for tourism or studies, but who may also be emigrants,” the director of the Institute for Migration and Asylum Policies (IPMA), Leilo Mármora, warned A24.

More than 445,000 Argentines traveled for “tourism” during those 10 months, and almost 15,000 did so for “study”.

Another 180,000 declared “residence” as the reason for their trip, while more than 142,000 said they were leaving for “work”.

A quarter of those who admitted that they were moving from another country they traveled to Spain, according to information that the DNM was able to share with this medium.

The next most popular destinations were neighboring countries, such as Paraguay, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay. 5% moved to the United States.

It is not easy to draw comparisons with the emigration of 2001, since at that time there were no sworn statements indicating the reason for the trip. In addition, the general population was smaller.

But, as a reference, one could take a study published in 2003 by the sociologist Fernando Esteban, who estimated that between 2000 and 2001 “118,087 Argentines left the country”.

Taking this as a parameter, it can be estimated that at that time the emigrants were, on average, about 160 per day.

This has led some to warn that the current wave of emigration is unprecedented.

who are leaving

Beyond the numbers, what many media outlets highlight is that the current migratory phenomenon is led by young professionals, many of them highly qualified, which means an important loss for Argentina.

This differs from what happened in 2001, when emigration was much more heterogeneous, both from an age and professional point of view, and even socioeconomically.

Another difference is that, two decades ago, many left with what little they had – a large number had lost most of their savings in the so-called financial “corralito”.

Now, instead, the émigrés seem to be traveling much better preparedboth logistically and financially.

It’s something Anat noticed.

“What you see now is far removed from the context that was experienced in 2001,” he says. “The one who leaves today leaves differently. You have time to plan. He’s not running away so he can feed his children.”

In fact, he points out that all his friends who have left or are planning to leave have or had a good economic position in Argentina.

This is the case, for example, of her friend Daniela Mansbach, a 38-year-old engineer who moved to Spain in July 2021 with her husband and two young children.

“Economically, we were fine there,” Daniela admits to BBC Mundo from Madrid.

“We had the life we ​​wanted. I had even stopped working during the pandemic to take care of my daughter, who was three months old,” she says.

“There economically I could not work. Here it is not an option”, he highlights, about his new life in the Spanish capital.

Although he has European documents, thanks to his German ancestry, he knows that getting a job there will not be easy.

“We sold our house in Argentina and we came willing to live on savings for a while,” he says.

Why all this sacrifice if they had a good life in Buenos Aires?

“We came for our children“, Explain.

“Last year we heard that 54% of children under 14 are poor in Argentina. Applying birth rates, it is expected that in 30 years 80% will be poor, if things do not change”, he pointed out.

We don’t want to live like this we do not want our children to live like this in the future”.

Another factor that influenced them, he says, was the decision of the national government to close schools for about a year and a half during the coronavirus pandemic, something that affected hundreds of thousands of children from humble homes who did not have the chance to continue their education virtually.

“How are you going to recover the time that there were no classes? It is a situation that in the future will have very serious consequences for the country,” he said.

Daniela says that in the neighborhood where they live on the outskirts of Madrid there are many families of newly arrived Argentines, like yours, with small children.

“I can’t explain to you the number of people we are interacting with who arrived a month before or a month after us, who also came with their savings, willing to spend it until they settled down.”

He says most have European citizenship, and some started looking for work in Spain before they moved. Others came ready to start their own business.

They all share his pessimism about his country of origin.

“We totally lost hope that something could change in Argentina“, the Mint.

“We have no future”

That hopelessness is something conveyed by many of those who choose to leave.

But in the case of the youngest, to the concern about their future is added the satiety about your present.

“I have been hearing for many years that the country is getting worse and worse: inflation, the dollar that shot up. My parents were stressed, my grandparents were stressed,” says Alexis Lewin, 26, who lived with his family in Buenos Aires.

“Everyone told me that when they were younger things were not like that. Apart from listening to them, I was living it”, says the young man, who has a degree in global business management.

Although I had a good job in a reputable company, states that eThe salary was not enough to rent their own apartment or take trips abroad.

“I didn’t see light at the end of the tunnel, I didn’t see the possibility of living alone. With my partner we were going to have to kill each other to pay the rent, not to mention having children … ”, he told BBC Mundo.

“I woke up every day and said: what for? Why am I still here if my goal is to enjoy life?

“I got together with my high school and college classmates and we were all in the same: we love Argentina, we love the country, we love the people and the group of friends that we create, but we have no future”.

That was what prompted him, last April, to take advantage of the many facilities that the Israeli State grants to Jews who want to move there.

When he arrived at the airport to board his flight to Tel Aviv, he found a large number of young people in their twenties, just like him, ready to go on the same adventure.

Emigrating was much harder than he thought, he confesses. He had to learn Hebrew and – as with many newcomers around the world – the first job he landed was far from ideal for a university graduate.

“I worked in a call center. I had a bad time“, recognize. “Many of my Argentine colleagues worked as waiters, or cleaning rooms. Walking dogs too.

However, he points out that three months after finishing his studies in Hebrew, he got a job at an Israeli high-tech company.

“I was very lucky. It is a luxury. The salary is very good, the conditions too”, he points out proudly.

“Israel gives you a lot of opportunities,” he says. “In Argentina it was all about surviving. It was very frustrating. The only way out was to go to the airport, take a plane and go to another country to live”.

“A good old age”

Something similar expresses Camila Levin, a 28-year-old Argentine theater producer, who also has purchased tickets to move to Israel in May.

“Here is work, work, work and not enough”, dice a BBC Mundo.

“I’m not leaving life happy, it hurts me a lot to have to go”, he confesses. “I have a story here, my friends are here. But I don’t have a real chance to develop myself.”

Unlike Alexis, Camila will not emigrate alone. She will go with her parents, both psychiatrists, with whom she lives in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Belgrano (“Today I can’t pay rent alone, it’s one of the reasons I choose to leave,” she says).

“My parents also want to leave because they feel that they will not have a good old age here”, he points out.

“As much as they love their profession, at some point they want to retire, like anyone else, but here they are going to have to die working in order to survive.”

Camila cites another reason for wanting to leave, in addition to economics: The insecurity.

“In 2019 I was robbed with a pistol in the middle of the street, before that my cell phone was stolen,” he says.

He says that this type of violence worries him much more than what he may experience in Israel, which has one of the longest armed conflicts in the world.

“I have more chances of being killed in the streets of Buenos Aires for a cell phone than a missile falling on my head in Israel,” he says.

Insecurity is something mentioned by all those interviewed.

Patricia – who did not want to give her real name because she still treats patients in Argentina virtually – is a 34-year-old psychologist who traveled to Europe in May 2021 “for love”.

Although her partner did not prosper, she decided to stay try your luck in Barcelona, where you currently reside.

“There are things that changed my mind a lot,” he says. “I no longer turn around when someone comes running to my side because I’m afraid they’re going to rob me. In Argentina it was very naturalized”.

Another thing that she, Alexis and Daniela highlight is that outside they can put together a budget.

“Things don’t increase here,” observes Patricia, who was used to living with prices that increased by about 4% each month in her country.

“We have predictability. you know how much you earn and how much you spend and that lowers your stress a lot”, agrees Daniela, who enjoys being able to “go to the supermarket when I want, and not just on days when there are discounts with my credit card, like in Argentina”.