#NewLifeAbroad #StartingOver #IdentityReset
🤔 What would happen if I got on a plane to a different English speaking country and claimed I had no memory of where I came from? 🌍
If you ever find yourself entertaining the idea of starting a new life in a different country by completely erasing your identity and claiming amnesia, you’re not alone. The concept of starting over in a new place with a clean slate is a common theme in movies and literature. However, in reality, things may not unfold as smoothly as they do in the movies. Let’s explore what could potentially happen if you were to do this.
First off, destroying your passport and claiming amnesia upon arrival in a different English speaking country is a scenario that poses a multitude of legal and practical challenges. Here are some factors to consider if you were to embark on such an endeavor:
## Legality and Immigration Laws
When considering starting over in a new country, it’s important to understand the legal and ethical implications of your actions. Here’s what you need to know about the potential legal consequences:
1. Immigration laws: The concept of arriving in a new country without any form of identification or documentation is a clear violation of immigration laws. Authorities in the country you arrive in would likely detain and question you, and you may even face deportation if they are unable to verify your identity or nationality.
2. Falsifying identity: Claiming amnesia and discarding your identification documents could be classified as an attempt to falsify your identity, which is a criminal offense in many jurisdictions. This could result in legal trouble and imprisonment.
3. Citizenship and asylum: Even if you were to successfully enter the new country, claiming amnesia would pose challenges in seeking citizenship or asylum status, as most countries require proof of identity and background checks for these processes.
## Practical Challenges
Aside from the legal implications, there are practical challenges you would encounter if you were to pursue the idea of starting over in a new English speaking country:
1. Access to basic services: Without any form of identification, you would face difficulty in accessing basic services such as healthcare, education, and employment.
2. Establishing a new identity: In the modern digital age, creating a new identity from scratch is extremely difficult. From obtaining a job to accessing financial services, your lack of identification would present significant hurdles in establishing a new life.
3. Social and emotional impact: Starting over in a new country can be isolating and emotionally difficult, especially when you are unable to establish a clear identity or backstory. It’s important to consider the mental and emotional toll of cutting ties with your previous life and assuming a new identity.
## Seeking Alternative Solutions
While the idea of starting over in a new country may seem appealing, it’s important to consider alternative solutions that are legal and beneficial in the long run. Here are some alternatives to consider:
1. Seek legal avenues: If you are looking to make a fresh start in a different country, consider exploring legal pathways such as obtaining a work visa, seeking asylum, or exploring citizenship through legitimate means.
2. Address the root of the desire for a new start: Before considering drastic measures, it’s important to evaluate the reasons behind the desire for a new life. Are there practical solutions or changes that can be made in your current situation to improve your quality of life and sense of fulfillment?
3. Seek professional guidance: If you are feeling overwhelmed and in need of a fresh start, consider seeking guidance from immigration professionals, counselors, or support groups who can provide guidance and assistance in navigating your desires for a new life.
In conclusion, the idea of starting over in a new country by destroying your identification and claiming amnesia poses significant challenges, both legally and practically. It’s important to consider the potential consequences and seek alternative, legal pathways to fulfill your desires for a new life. Remember, seeking professional guidance and exploring legal avenues can help you achieve your goals without resorting to drastic and potentially harmful measures.
Without documentation? As an illegal immigrant? Sure, though it will be as hard as you can imagine. You certainly won’t have an enviable life
Haha, ok, let’s just say it’s a hypothetical question! In reality, it’s not as easy as just hopping on a plane and claiming amnesia. You would likely be taken into custody and evaluated by medical professionals to determine if your amnesia was genuine or not. If it was found to be genuine, authorities would likely attempt to locate your identity through DNA testing, fingerprinting, and other methods. Even if your identity couldn’t be established, you wouldn’t be able to start a new life from scratch – it’s just not that simple. Plus, it would be pretty morally questionable to fake amnesia in order to start fresh. So while it might be a cool plot for a movie, it’s not really a viable option in real life!
I guess? But i doubt whatever country you’re going to will just accept it but they could probably track you down to your plane ticket if you go by plane, same if you try crossing the borders etc and starting a new life without any proper documentation would be super hard
They would just look at your passport and find out your country of origin
The airline knows who you are because they avoid flying people internationally who won’t be allowed into the destination country as much as possible because they then have to fly them back if they aren’t allowed into the destination.
You can’t board to an international flight without proper documents. What likely happened is that someone tried like you said but on the Ellis Island days.
You’d have to somehow destroy any and all paperwork and ID on the plane and lose your phone just to be unpleasantly surprised at how good interrogators are at making you slip up and blow your story.
You’d be homeless on the street. In the modern world, lacking ID of any kind is very bad, and it’s a lot worse if you’re obviously not a native of the country you’re in and have no contacts to rely on.
You might or might not attract the attention of the immigration authorities, who’d tell you to knock it off and try and identify your home country to deport you to. Whether you’d wind up in a hospital or immigration jail would depend on just how convincing your story about having no memory due to some sort of medical incident is.
They’d ask for witnesses. They’d find you on camera at the airport. They’d find where you flew from, and track you back that way.
Your accent would let them know what country you belong to, and yeah, you could try to fake the local accent, but remember that there are actors getting paid millions of dollars who can’t quite nail down a foreign accent.
Plane is going to be hard. To even get on it, you’d need your documents, so you’d have to destroy it (passport, id, boarding pass, etc. ) after boarding.
Once you’d get off the plane, you need your passport to enter the country, without it you wouldn’t be let it, and they still have your data (picture, maybe fingerprints) from the booking with your name on it. By simply looking at the passenger list, they’d identify you.
Entering a country in a less official way would be better, crossing the border far away from checkpoints, via boat, etc. that way you get into the country without leaving a trail. They’d still might be able to identify you based on fingerprints or pictures if those are available, so ideally you come from a developing country which doesn’t have good infrastructure for these things.
Which comes to my bottom line, that’s pretty much what refugees from war torn countries do. So I’d guess you land in a refugee camp if found by the government.
Getting on a plane is the worst part of the plan, because they’ll say, “Oh, the guy from seat 23A? Yeah, we have a scan of his passport.”
Easier to go to a different part of your own country, lie about your name, and start a new life that way.
You could do that right now by moving to a different city.
Even if they believed your amnesia was genuine, it would take them all of 20 minutes to figure out who you are. You aren’t getting on a plane without an ID, and you’ll be the only person on that flight that didn’t clear customs. Simple process of elimination, and they would then verify that is who you actually are. Then they’d put your ass back on a plane to your country of origin.
How are you planning to get on board an international flight without a viable audit trail in the first place?
There was a case in the media years ago where a man claimed he couldn’t remember who he was. They published a photo of him in newspapers around the world asking “do you know this man?”
You’re not getting on the plane without a passport and a ticket, both of which would identify you.
Fingerprints, missing persons reports, facial recognition on social media. They’d find the old you.
I don’t even think “being found shipwrecked on the coast would work as a plan, because they’d just send your picture to the news of every major country, it would circulate on social media, and you’d be identified in days.
In 2023/2024, I have to imagine you’d have enough of a physical/digital footprint for any modern country to find you: housing history, work history, digital history. Potential…. *criminal* history?
They would take you to the hospital, have you checked out, and then deport you home.
Don’t forget to obtain a passport of a person who once lived:
“A MYSTERY man charged with using passports in the names of two Irish babies who died in the 1950s is apparently an American with an FBI record dating back 50 years.”
https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/mystery-man-charged-with-using-passports-of-dead-babies-has-fbi-record-court-told/a1305822020.html
There was a movie about this. I can’t remember the name of it. A woman said she had amnesia, it was in Australia I think… they kept her in immigration lockup for a long time.
Step 1: Get the photo of every passenger on the plane from the airline and departure airport.
Step 2: Identify you.
Step 3: Repatriate you.
You will have a bad time, like this unwell Australian lady: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Rau
This happens every 10 year or so. Last time I remember it was a dude who played the piano very well but didn’t say a word. It took like a year after someone from his family (Danish if I remember correctly) saw him in the papers and thats when all blew up.
Go to Europe.
Walk through it via several countries, spend at least 24 months between entry to Europe and the moment you declare to have lost memory. Also put at least 5 countries in between.
Stay at backpacker hostels
Become mute. Learn a mix of bsl, asl, auslan, korean sign language
Pretend you don’t understand English. But you actually can, so while appearing to be clueless you can understand what people are saying about you
Swim to Denmark and commit a crime, i hear prisons are really nice there
Kind of similar but there is a thing called granny dumping or grandad dumping.
I know a real story where an American old man was found alone in Hereford. He couldn’t look after himself I think he had dementia.
Anyway he was put in a care home and looked after.
3 years later someone had managed to locate who he was, where he was from etc and he got sent back home.
Mehran Karimi Nasseri lived in Terminal 1 at Charles de Gaulle for 18 years and died there in 2022.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Karimi_Nasseri
Likely have to find a way to illegally get into Europe via a non-European union country, then sneak into England via the Chunnel to ensure there’s no record. They’ll likely still run you through interpol and you could come up via finger prints or photo id or even DNA.
Low likelihood as a citizen of the first world you can just start over in this day and age without some sophisticated efforts.
This may well have been possible 30 years (or more) ago but I don’t think that you could do it now. I think that with modern face recognition software, no matter where you went it would be fairly easy to track your real identity down.
This is something that ireland deals with a lot. Migrants have figured that you can destroy your passport on the plane, and when you land you can’t be put back on a plane without a passport. So they get processed in ireland and 99.9999% of the time you get to stay and enjoy the bountiful benefits that the Irish are happy to hand out.
How do you fly there without documentation
Your accent would give you away. Once you spoke at all, they would know what region of which country you originated from. It’s a matter of checking flight manifests and missing person reports from there. If you’ve ever been arrested or done a DNA test, again, immediate identification. Your documents only matter for the sake of tracking movements, at least in regard to international travel. Also, the documents show that you are allowed to be somewhere if necessary to have ( like a visa for us citizens). I would also assume facial recognition would be available for identifying someone on an international basis. Considering that you had to have identification to get there to begin with, you’d likely be identified within hours.
Your better option would be to smuggle yourself in to whichever country, but it still probably wouldn’t take more than a couple days to identify you and have you sent back.
So basically, no, you couldn’t do this with modern technology available to every country which speaks English.
You could, however, apply for residency where you want to go, and not need to put on an act about having severe amnesia.
You’re basically doing what people do all over the world all the time – turn up at a country border and refuse to say what country you originated from.
Since the border is not technically fully in the country, and Lord knows how you managed to get on a plane without a passport, the border will likely deny you entry and you’ll get sent back to the country you travelled from.
You would just get weird looks and ignored. If you got on the plane then you would of used your passport. Someone would have to verify from the airport you flew from.
The person would just be thinking ffs this person is an idiot.