That makes a lot of sense. I didn’t get the W-2 reference though.
That event in 1974, the coup d’etat, or whatever the Portuguese version of a golpe is, had many reverberations. Losing Mozambique to communists and terrorists ended the rail link to the Indian Ocean as well as other support for Rhodesia, and things really accelerated downwards from that point. The Rhodesian dollar, even for all the economic war against the country, was worth more than the American dollar at that time, but look at the Zimbabwe dollar now - it’s not even legal tender any more, after printing trillion dollar notes before giving up on it and relying on other countries’ currencies.
They aren’t issued W-2s because they are “undocumented permanent guest workers”; sorry.
It was devastating to Portugal itself as well; the African colonies had a lot more potential (land, resources) than Portugal (in the same way Brazil had), and the return of so many settlers to Portugal at once was economically difficult.
On a side note, John Kerry’s wife was born in Mozambique.