Its too bad that's been your experience. The cities are def rough though, which is why I don't live in or even near them.
Though I'm never planning on leaving the US again, except maybe, big maybe, a few trips to Canada at some point in the future. This is mostly due to my extreme dislike of traveling via airplane.
How often do you get a chance to visit home?
I've been here 20-odd years and still can't wrap my head around the absolute need here to accumulate stuff and debt. Madness. My wife and I do well, we make good money, we live within our means. So many friends of ours though overextend on houses, or done stupid things like take out second mortgages to pay for home cinemas or hot tubs, or giant pickup trucks. The work life is mental, so many living to work and not working to live. Mind you, every time I go back home to Cork I'm noticing its getting more and more like that as well so I'm probably eyeing it with "grass is always greener" syndrome. (Although living in California the grass is literally greener everywhere else since the place is in a permanent drought and usually on fire.)
The tipping point came when my (then) five year old daughter came home from pre-kindergarten one day, and when I asked her what she learned at school that day she replied "We learned that if bad people come to the school with guns to lock the door and stay away from the windows and hide under our desks or in the toilet." Just... nope.
I used to get home every year before I moved to California (used to be in Washington DC) and we had our girl, then it became every other year. Thanks to covid and whatnot, I've not been back in four years. I had tickets booked for myself last year in March to go see my aunt before she passed away, but Trump shut the borders the night before I was leaving, and had to cancel.