'Nigeria: the context for violence' (2006-2013)

[ganulv]

The flip side is that if you put most US salary in escrow pending return to CONUS and paid US civilian or military employes at local rate, you'd likely get few takers for overseas jobs. I do not see any easy solution to that problem...I suspect security is a big but far from the only reason for that withdrawal into little golden ghettos.

My step-father was for a short time the personal physician to a prince in a Kingdom-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named. After eight weeks of not seeing his patient he was bored silly with compound life and carefully and politely resigned his position. But most of the other residents of the compound loved it there. These sorts of situations lead me to believe that a great many American ex-pats are exchanging a life of struggling to not miss a mortgage payment for a life of relative material comfort and the chance to “be somebody” on the local scene in a way they would never be in the States (*cough* missionaries *cough*). The escrow arrangement would take such folks—who do America’s image abroad no good—out of the selection pool if nothing else. But I do acknowledge that that group seems to make up such a large portion of the USpora that in doing so it might prove impossible to fill all the necessary slots.