Stakes [Pull Up / Put Down]: An Interview with Greg Foley
Greg, second from left, in a very Texan photo with former president George H. W. Bush. March 19, 2008.
I conducted this interview as part of Stakes [Pull Up / Put Down]. For more information about the project, read the project overview. To read additional entries as they come available, subscribe to The Letter.
Utterly without design on my part, I had back-to-back interviews for this project with people who made the Australia–United States move—one with someone who went in one direction and one with someone who went in the other. The serendipitous juxtaposition illuminated interesting contrasts and similarities.
Greg and I met via Skype for our interview on a Houston morning for Greg and a Lausanne afternoon for me. However, I should share that Greg and I know each other via business connections and have interacted several times in person when we both lived in Houston. He learned about this project via a post I’d placed on LinkedIn and volunteered to participate.
Therefore, though our conversation for this project took place digitally, I can confirm from in-person experience that Greg is warm and friendly—a perfect suite of characteristics for navigating the life upheaval of international relocation and for smoothing his road to success in the profession of technology sales as well.
Ready for a Change
Greg moved to Houston, Texas, from Sydney, Australia, in 1999, because he saw adventure and opportunity in a big move. Also, Greg had divorced two years before a job opportunity in Texas arose; the life upheaval involved in the change to his marital status at that time helped him feel ready for a further change in his surroundings and horizons.
Prior to his relocation, Greg had visited Raleigh, North Carolina, on a sales trip with his Australian employer; the visit opened his eyes to the large possibilities in the U.S. market. However, Greg had never visited Texas or Houston when a friend mentioned that a company there had an opening for a sales position. Greg applied for the role, interviewed, got the job, and moved.
When asked if he felt any doubt or uncertainty around moving so far from home and to an unknown place, Greg said he didn’t remember experiencing any. At the time of his move, Greg and his sister didn’t share a close personal relationship. His mother had died.
Greg did remember realizing that he would need to feel at peace with living so far away that he may not be able to return in time to be by his father’s side when he died, and this gave him pause. Greg said that this indeed had happened and that he did feel at peace with it. (Greg returned for the funeral.) He and his father had stayed in regular contact after his move, Greg returned to visit as often as possible, and his father had come to visit Houston as well.
Feeling Welcomed and Welcoming Others
Greg did say he’d wondered how the Houston community would treat him, and that he felt surprised to be so warmly welcomed. From this experience and his subsequent experiences living and traveling in the United States, he said he feels that Americans really like Australians.
However, Greg said that he deeply felt the contrast in moving from a place where he saw someone he knew every time he left home to a place where he felt he needed to ensure his identification card could easily be found in case of an accident on a short bike ride. He said he still remembers the first time someone spontaneously recognized him in Houston.
In response to this initial feeling of anonymity and isolation, Greg became very active in the Houston chapter of the Australian American Chamber of Commerce. Though this certainly kept him in closer contact with his country of origin than he might have been otherwise, Greg gave me the impression in our conversation that the goal of his AACC involvement was less to maintain cultural connections than to ensure people in his former shoes felt welcomed and supported.
Becoming American and Calling Houston “Home”
Originally, Greg envisioned living in the United States for approximately three years on his H1B visa, which he knew he could possibly extend for another three years.
A year and a half into his initial visa term, Greg met his now wife.
First, Greg extended his H1B visa for the additional three-year term. Then, he applied for and received his green card. Once he applied for his green card, he didn’t leave the United States until he received it, which took about a year and a half. Eventually, he applied for and received his U.S. citizenship.
At the time of our conversation, Greg had lived in Houston for over twenty-one years. He doesn’t envision moving back to Australia and has never seriously discussed the possibility with his wife. He said he doesn’t have any strong emotion when he thinks about never moving back to his country of origin.
Greg calls Houston home and says it became “home” once he married and bought a house there. He has made a lot of friends in Houston. To Greg, “home is where everything converges,” he said. “Home is where the heart is, and that’s a pretty good definition.”
On Being “Fundamentally Australian”
However, Greg said he would not give up his Australian citizenship.
“I see it as my birthright,” he said. “If Australia hadn't realized dual citizenship in around 2008, I would have had a hard time with renouncing. I see that as part of my identity.”
What does it mean to Greg, to see himself as, in his own words, “fundamentally Australian?”
“You grow up with certain attitudes that are different,” Greg said. “For one, the attitude toward guns. We think that people don’t need them. Here it’s better not to talk about them. For another, people in the U.S. are more individualistic. In Australia, we are more community focused. Another thing I notice is that ‘freedom’ has a different meaning. Looking after the common good is freeing in a certain way. In Australia, the common good is elevated to a higher position. People grow up with an attitude that it’s okay not to do something because not doing it is better for everyone.”
“Expat” because “Immigrant” is Derogatory
When asked about how he identified his living status, Greg responded “expat.”
He chose the term because he’s more familiar with it, he said. He defines it as “someone who lives somewhere else than where he grew up.”
When I asked him why he hadn’t chosen “immigrant,” given that he didn’t plan to move back to Australia and has U.S. citizenship, Greg said, “You see so much B.S. about ‘immigrant’ in the media in this country that you don’t want to be associated with it. I take pride in the fact that I did it legally. But in the U.S., it’s almost a derogatory term.”
Hypotheses on a Smooth International Transition
Greg has had one of the smoothest experiences with his international move and integration of anyone with whom I’ve yet spoken for this project.
Why? Further work on this project will help illuminate shared characteristics between easier and more challenging international displacements—and I look forward to discovering and sharing my insights.
For now, I can only hypothesize based on early impressions. Could Greg’s relatively smooth transition come from a combination of factors swirling around shared language (Greg’s native language is English, as is the native language of most people in the United States), shared dominant race (Greg is white, the dominant race in the United States, and he self identifies as “Caucasian”), and positive impressions of the home country (Australia) in his adopted country (the United States)? Further, Greg’s naturally outgoing personality must assist with the upheaval of an international transition as well.
As always, I will close this summary of our conversation with from-the-heart gratitude to Greg for sharing with me and with this project his time, his spirit, and his invaluable insights.
I have no doubt he and I will meet up again in Houston one day soon.
For more information about Stakes [Pull Up / Put Down], the project that generated this interview, read the project statement. If you would like to participate as an interview subject or have a participant to recommend, please contact me. To get updates on the project, subscribe to The Letter.