completely off-the-wall question

[kaigou]

(No, this has nothing to do with any plans for world domination. JUST ASKIN', really.)

What happens if more than 50% of your country's tangible property -- land -- is purchased/owned/occupied by nationals of another country? I mean, is there any scenario in which you could visualize or rationalize or imagine buying out a country? Or maybe just causing significant political shifts (assuming it's a multi-party and/or non-authoritarian regime)? Or... what happens when refugees from another country completely overwhelm the existing population (numbers-wise)? Could you end up with such chaos that the country ends up in a state of quasi-claimant by the nationals of a second country?

Feel free to reference books, movies, other fiction that's addressed such ideas, or your own experience and/or theories, academic or just fantastical, or real-world political, economic, financial, etc.

[Consider it purely curiosity on my part, but probably a curiosity that's buttressed by my own culture's assumptions that a nation is made up of its people & its land, which is where the foregone conclusion resides that a massive paradigm shift of people & ownership would have to, therefore, affect the nation as a whole.]

Comments

[kaigou]

Politics are often a reason to talk big, but from what I can tell, people don't walk them unless either a) they're in a position that's much much worse politically and/or b) there's an additional emotional context like religion or family or culture. I mean, libertarians moving to NH from anywhere else in the states may be looking at potential improvement (ideal-wise) but for the most part, they're not gaining any major rights they don't already have, as a citizen living elsewhere. But if, say, we were talking the gulag or the ghetto or some other significant marginalization where you have no privileges at all (and may even be in danger in re life & limb), then a move to a place that re-enfranchises you would be obviously attractive. Double that if you're moving with a whole host of family, friends, fellow religious-types, etc.

Instead of a situation like the US exporting people, I was thinking more of mass exoduses -- like when PRC was getting ready to take back HK from the British. I know so many people who left Hong Kong and came to the US & Canada, rather than stick around for the PRC's arrival. I'm told Vancouver's Cantonese population shot up by a huge percentage, relatively. I wouldn't be surprised if others bore out my own understanding, which is that it only takes a handful of people to say, "my uncle lives there" or "my sister moved there" and then it's "our neighbors have family there" and "I know some people who know some people who say that's a good place" and even strangers may catch word and decide to migrate in that direction as well. At least then you'd feel like you were moving someplace new but with a kind of buffer of fellow-newcomers who know where you'd come from, eh?

Citizenship and ownership is another situation, but mass exodus and/or refugees could swarm a neighboring country in times of famine or war or whatnot, and most developed countries wouldn't bar the gates, just for humanitarian reasons. (Not saying they wouldn't put the refugees in limited-access camps, but still, that's more in the door than people were before.)

At least that scenario gets people into the country, and from there, it's connections -- how many others (close or distantly known) had settled previously, who might lend a hand or do the sponsorship thing. Even countries where the ownership is strictly limited (like Thailand, frex) have allowances for non-Thai who marry Thai citizens, or who are adopted into Thai families. So there are other ways to get a foothold, as well.