Would you move to another country?
So another thread ( https://lemmy.world/post/17746018 ) got me wondering... How many people would want to move to another country?
Just to provide a concrete scenario, let's assume that in your current country you (magically) have a decent-ish job. They open up offices in another country of your choosing, and you have the option of moving there and work for an equivalent living wage.
They're able to get visas set up (however improbable that may be) for you and any family, but you have to go through the process of finding housing, physically moving your belongings and anything else you need to set up.
What countries would you take the offer to move to, if any?
I'm an American, so yes - in a heartbeat.
Broadly, I wouldnt much care where it was, just so long as it was somewhere that was not being actively transfomed into a plutocratic/christofascist autocracy.
And in fact, there's virtually nothing that I want more at this point in time than to get the hell out while I can. I fully expect that if I don't, I'm going to end up in prison or dead, just like so many other vocal dissidents under so many other authoritarian regimes.
^the new American Dream
Yes, I have done this several times for work. Digital nomad life that turned into starting a family that travels for work.
It's difficult every time and sometimes you just have to admit that it isn't going to work out in that country. Some countries have really strange attitudes or laws or systemic issues that you will not solve as an outsider. Sometimes people will just see you as a target or an opportunity for money and that's never going to change.
Also looking back gives perspective; I had a difficult time in xxx country, but that was my first time overseas and I didn't have quite a grasp of the language, and I was also unfairly comparing it to the USA. A decade later, I've been back a couple of times and now xxx is my favorite country. Five stages of grief and all. There's more backstory but I can blend in a lot of countries.
Conversely, I went to some countries and saw how they are still very colonized from centuries of oppression. And then I go back to the USA sometimes and see the same mentality. Really shifts your perspective.
I was a child of a refugee so I always thought whatever complaints I had were nothing compared to what my parents went through. Also I had swastikas spray painted on my house when I was young so I never really fit in anywhere. Kind of keeps me going.
I feel more comfortable in some countries than my own home country. The USA has changed as much as I have over the past decade.
Finally, one semi-related point: I really, really learned to hate American missionaries. In every single country. They're just the worst. I think they choose their countries and villages for some sort of confirmation bias to themselves that American Jesus is the best and only civilized way to live. They aren't learning anything, just reinforcing their world view and not teaching anything useful. It's just a way for middle aged white guys to get young girls from poor villages. They aren't helping anything.
Not really. I live in Switzerland, thing is, there are no countries that surpass it in terms of safety, income, social security and political stability combined. For me at least it is the perfect country to live in.
I (originally from the US) moved to Germany with a Swiss girlfriend, so we visit Switzerland frequently and know the cultural/politics.
I find Germany to have much better social policies than Switzerland, such as better worker rights/conditions, public health insurance. The Swiss people voted against having minimum 5 weeks vacation and also just rejected caps on the private insurance minimum costs. The politics are much more conservative/individualistic compared to Germany. On a positive side, Switzerland probably has the best public transport system in Europe.
Not sure about social policies, for example homelessness exists here only by choice. Every citizen will get a roof over their head if necessary.
Medical insurance could be better but on the other hand we have one of the worlds best healthcare systems (for which I pay 200 bucks a month with a deductible of 2500.-).
And if the politics are conservative, which can't really be as the conservatives have below 50% of the votes and results are usually determined by what the center party wants, that is what the people want (we all vote every 3 months on various issues) and I will respect that.
And even then, Germany may soon be controlled by CDU/Afd and I seriously doubt anyone would want to live in that kind of Germany.
Canada: 25th in the ranks, apparently, but 0 and 0. While I didn't mind paying the premiums - and it slid with my income - the idea of a deductible/copay/user-fee I find abhorrent, chilling and the wrong way down a slippery slope.
I did not say it is free, but the price to performance ratio is quite good. Cost however is increasing slowly but steadily which is a bit scary.
Humblebrag, eh?
I had the chance to join Google (Zurich?) 2014, but it got kiboshed when we weren't sure we both could get along with just English, and her with no ability to work. So we asked for Ireland, but they don't work like that. And we were out.
Basically everyone speaks some English, wouldn't have been an issue. And I am not saying everything is perfect, just that there is no better alternative.
I moved from US to Canada with a whole lot less lined up
How did it work out?
The list of countries I'd move to is actually longer than ones I wouldn't want to move to.
I'd take an offer to work from home on a house boat and go sailing around the world I feel like I'd end up making a lot of new customs officer friends XD
I'd take a little canal boat in Amsterdam. Though learning Dutch sounds like a PITA.
It is. Our grammar rules are nonsensical and Dutch is useless outside of the Netherlands and Belgium.
It's probably the easiest language for a native English speaker to learn
You probably picture that as a cheap bohemian lifestyle but these things will cost you like 2M€ to buy + untold yearly fees lol.
That's significantly more than I expected. Also, I probably wouldn't want to deal with the toilet situation. Would probably be novel for a couple weeks and get old quick.
Did a quick check and yeah I was massively exaggerating, you can get some in the 600k to 1.3M€ for small ones with mooring in the center, which is still pretty unaffordable for normal people but not as outlandish as I made it out to be. The points about additional costs to the city and the mortgage stuff remains though.
I might be slightly exaggerating depending on how big it is and location but yeah everything in Amsterdam is crazy expensive. The toilet situation is pretty normal these days I think? I think they get plugged into the normal sewer systems, the days of it just falling into the canals are long gone (but that's also a part of the yearly expenses along with mooring costs, property taxes and so on). Also you can't even mortgage these things normally because banks consider them high risk so you get less advantageous terms (higher costs, bigger down payment, etc).
I would and I did. Nearly on a lark I decided to move to Norway right as the pandemic started appearing on cruise ships. I got a job within two weeks and they handled the immigration process for the most part. It wasn’t simple but it was pretty straight forward.
And it was worth it, big time.
So, for context - I live in Scotland and I guess I feel a cultural connection with being Scottish. I even have a domain with a .scot tld.
But at the same time... I know the UK is kind of slipping back in terms of social issues - starting to feel like a "mini US" than a state with european standards.
So yeah, I'm torn between staying here and moving to some as of yet unknown country with better rights...
Although, since I basically never travel and nothing is really infringing my freedom (yet ...), I'll probably not actually do anything even if I wanted to.
Love Scotland and the Scots (one of my best mates is one, and I visited many times), but it has the unfortunate flaw of being part of the UK indeed... I guess the obvious option that is similar-ish without having that flaw is Ireland, but personally living in the Netherlands I'm only really considering a move if it's to somewhere truly different (tropical, etc).
Yes. In fact it’s a done deal.
Steady on, I only just got to Australia!
But it’s New Zealand.
Hey greetings from Aussie land
Piggy backing answer to op, I did that already. Twice.
Honestly, comparing 1st world to 3rd where I come from, employment is so easy!
Israeli, I've been considering this for several years but the impact on the family seemed too big. Since the war with Gaza, and the the political situation, the impact seems with it. Last week I've started looking for options.
I haven't given up on being a stick in the mud keeping Austin a little different from other parts of Texas. The loudest idiots in this state rebuke Austin as something un-Texan, but I'm not going anywhere and am continuing to live and vote the way I do. I know it's a little easier for me to say this, not having to worry about kids, so I don't expect others to make the same choice, even if they feel the same way.
I did, moved from France to Canada
I did the opposite lol.
Did you have any problem with the French?
I always wanted to move to Sweden. My grandfather was born there and I have always loved visiting.
It was a nice country but it's getting poor and has many problems now due to unlimited immigration the last few decades. Much violence and murders now.
The classic Sweden that I grew up in is gone. But it's still better than USA of course. If you avoid the big cities, it's still a bit like it used to be though.
The best country in the Nordics is now Norway I would say.
More and more I want to now. I'm growing to really have a high level of disdain for this country and it's lack of doing anything for the worse off.
Anywhere that has quality public transit, reliable internet and is located near a beach.
I live in the PNW of Canada. It's expensive, but I love it here and wouldn't move unless I absolutely had to.
I moved here from England. I love it and would never go back.
I love that everyone else here is saying they'd move to Canada. I also live in the PNW and as much as I hate how expensive it is, I do not see myself wanting to go anywhere else. Somewhere else in the province? Maybe. But it's fucking beautiful here and I'm not gonna pretend it's not.
I live in Finland. Wouldn't mind a less wintery climate but not to the point of willing to move elsewhere.
Wanna swap? I'll come enjoy the snow, you can come to the UK and enjoy the, uh, rain.
It's not the winter wonderland many foreigners think it is, unless you go to Lapland. Most of the winter is just wet, cold, dark, slippery, and absolutely miserable. It's dark when you leave for work and it's dark when you get back home.
Ngl sounds good to me. I like it cold and dark. Did I mention I'm a mole?
Yeah sounds awesome to me too tbh. My mood brightens whenever I see snow and I don't find that low sunlight levels affect me at all.
However apparently between 1-10% of people are affected by seaonal affective disorder so those people may want to avoid Finland during the winter months
My wife's sister found she has SAD when she moved to sweden. One of her kids has it too. They cope with the lights and the , well, the understanding they're gonna be affected. They seem to suggest that it's not rare there, and that its frequency makes it more acceptable and understandable. It's okay to be super-down for a few days on a bad wave, and people seem to get it.
So, Chicago? Except I bet your winters are a bit longer than they are in Chicago.
I think that hardest part wouldn't be adjusting to the winter--I'm actually pretty okay with the kind of winter you describe--but the language. I hear that Finnish is very challenging for most people to learn to speak with any degree of fluency, unless they're raised with it.
I wouldn't. I'm pretty happy in the US.
If someone held a gun to my head and made me move, probably Canada, due to similarity.
I mean, I did. Highly recommend. Spoiler alert almost all the non-USA people places a multinational company would offer to post you don’t have guns
canada. toronto or vancouver seem like attractive choices.
You picked the two most bubbled housing markets you could? Vanity is beautiful, though, many newcomers don't handle the winters well.
Quite a few places, particularly if it was coupled with a decent job. Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, S. Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and mayyybe the US depending on how enticing the job was.
100% if I could afford it.
Of course. I have. Spent some time in Japan. I would very happily go back, but I'm in the States again now.
Yes!
My friend and I are actually planning to start taking trips to find which country we want to live in later on (we're both single/childless). We've been looking around Europe and Southeast Asia.
If we could move to Iceland or Finland, we’d do it in a heartbeat.
I would love to move to Finland, but since my wife's company has an office in Sweden that is more likely where we will end up.
Having recently moved to Europe due to the political situation and level of threat to me and my family back in my home country, I can definitely say it can work out extremely well.
I now live in the first world where I’m actually cared for as a human being by the laws and regulations.
But ultimately it’s your prerogative to determine the course of action that suites your goals and desires.
I want out. I want to go to Australia, but any country with decent human rights is a good choice. But I've been to Australia and it was cool.
Australia is under the five eyes pact so it has the same policies as the USA when it comes to spying on citizens. Just something to have in mind.
I would love to move to England from the US. Specifically London. I've loved my visits there and the people have been amazing.
Christ you must have low standards 😂
Have you… seen the US lately? We went to UK in the spring and I was like, “yeah we could flee here”.
Please don't listen to the other guy. London is huge and incredibly diverse and there's plenty of great people.
Londoners are the worst form of Brit available. They're like if you bought a Brit off wish dot com and they posted it from China in a bag with no padding so it was irrevocably damaged upon arrival and its entire vocabulary contains only bleating about Oyster cards and folding bicycles
That’s hilarious; luckily our time there was outside of big cities as often as possible. Really liked Bath.
A great caricature of Londoners is Twenty Twelve, and the follow up programme, W1A
Some amazing catchphrases
The fact is the catchphrases are catchy
I come from Arkansas, literally anything is better
I don't know about MOVE move, but I did see some lovely little houses in Mexico that are pretty affordable. Might make nice winter homes.
I wish lol... I'd love to go somewhere not often considered. maybe Bulgaria or Kyrgyzstan. would be cool to see real world life there.
I did move within the EU for studying and for work and it was generally a good experience and I would do it again. Am German and have been in Ireland for studying and lived in the Netherlands and Slovenia for work (although never longer than for one year).
About 10 years ago, I moved to Japan and don't regret it. The only real downsides are that my family is on the other side of the world and the yen is doing poorly against the dollar. Well, that and being a US citizen trying to do something silly like use Japanese retirement vehicles outside of pension (iDECO and NISA) is basically impossible because everything is considered a PFIC by the US, but that's true of many things in other countries as a US citizen.
My hand might be forced someday.
Otherwise, I'd need a specific destination and reason to want to live there instead of "I don't want to live here." I make a point to not have "grass is greener" syndrome, sometimes to a fault.
November’s right around the corner!
In a heartbeat if I could afford it
Sure, but not because I dislike living in America. I just want to learn another language, and id do it best by immersing myself in that language.
Hmmm, I'd love to learn Portuguese or Chinese, so either place
I don't know how.
Off the cuff, yes...
Canada(West Coast)
Australia
Iceland
One of the Scandinavian countries. (Norway, Finland, Sweden)
I really love Belgium. It's a criminally underrated country with a silly culture and a pretty fun vibe.
The bad news is that I'm Moroccan, and not just any Moroccan, a QUEER Moroccan (even more specifically, an aroace gender non-conforming Moroccan man), meaning basically everyone hates me.
I need to get the visa which takes forever to get and I have a chance of getting denied.
Right wing politicians in the country are basically super racist and really hate the immigrants so much (most of the bad apples are second generation folks that literally act like they're having a stroke, even Moroccans hate them).
Housing is expensive basically everywhere. People in Belgium are pretty introverted (just like me), meaning they basically don't care of my presence, but it's much harder to make friends.
Everyone I know actively discourages moving there because they only know Brussels and... the snooze festival that is Charleroi or something, but they've never heard of Ghent or Hasselt or Bruges or Liège or Antwerpen (truly amazing cities) so they're basically untrustworthy.
I'm so disconnected from the country I live in that I genuinely don't feel Moroccan and want to get rid of my citizenship (spoiler alert: it's quite literally impossible). But is it really easy to convince people? Actually, my family gets very mad when I say this because they're super patriotic and shit.
I don't even practice religion. I've never cared about it. I do believe in God, but I really lack that spirituality and whatnot that would make me "religious". But unfortunately everyone would wanna kill me for apostasy.
I could go on, but we'd be here all day. Basically, I hate my country so much and I just want out so bad.
US Here, I'd like to but not having the skill sets right now makes for difficult to move to another country.
Which leads to another problem, if I do I leave my entire social network behind to a culture that I don't know and trying to live there. While I'm not against that, I realize that can be VERY isolating so not sure where the place I'd want to go right now.
Only if the living wage is far better or the job market in that country is better, so I can find another job if things don't work out as expected.
Moving the country means I have to sacrifice some benefits that I already have like my family, dog, and house. Would have said yes in a heartbeat years ago, but not now.
I would 100% pack up and move to either Finland or New Zealand, but that's about it. Unfortunately, both of them have exceptionally long quarantine times for animals, and I have multiple cats.
North Americans, I'm one of you. You have to leave for a while. You gain perspective.
Back in '07, I left. I was in Australia in '09 and some Aussies asked me, 'what's it like living over there?'
The only thing I could come up with at the time was " causes neuroticism.' It's so much worse now that we have social media, smartphones, and a penchant for duelling forms of misinformation.
What I learned is that there are many ways to live. There are lots of goals people have — and can have — many of them are quite modest: a safe place to live, love, and feel part of community. There are much worse daily experiences than those we hear about in the news, or see on TV, or read about it books. There is truly grinding poverty and privation that does not translate well into a novel or an article — readership is fickle. Yet, from those ashes, there is still joy, levity, and grace.
So, we residents of the most powerful economies must see outside of our bubbles. We must see, first hand, how we are duped into believing there is only one set of goals, one North American dream, one prestige, and one centre of power. When you spend enough years away, you just might forget about homeownership, career-building, and fretting over retirement. You might find that life is about living, about doing good work, and about being with people you care to pass the time with.
At least, that's what 12 years outside of NA taught me.
If I was to move away from my region, I'd consider other countries on that list.
It's the best. I live abroad and highly recommend it.
Better food, no shootings, lots to see and learn.
I'd be happy with most countries in that situation.
Laos, Ireland, Portugal jump to mind.
My main problem is that I work in a healthcare role that doesn't really exist in other places besides the US
SE Asian here. Currently doing my best to move myself and my family outta here to the west. Lemme know if any of you here got an IT job opening.
I'm likely to be forced to do so soon.
Circumstances today say no, but I would definitely consider it in the short-term, like maybe next year or so.
I've done that, I think I've found my place.
I've already done it once. I have a list of countries that I'm considering just in case I have to do it again
I have the choice of moving to Brazil, not Rio or São Paulo but to the north eastern part. I have too many family ties here in the US to make the move, but when I get older or if shit really goes off the rails here I will. I'll probably just buy a small shipping container and bring my irreplaceable stuff in it and send it down on a boat. Would it be expensive? Sure, but if I sell off what I won't be bringing it'll more than outweigh those costs. Or maybe I'll win the lottery, if I ever bought tickets.
Wouldn't mind moving somewhere where the government gives a fuck but I do think the transition would be difficult for me. I was the "gifted" kid growing up so now anything I'm not instantly good at (like learning a new language) can be a struggle.
Maybe once my college is paid off, if that ever happens lol
I do have that option and choose not to exercise it because it would take me too far away from my kids.
Maybe Cuba or Vietnam? Hard to say without having visited.
By all accounts, Vietnam can be a very nice place to live. Cuba, maybe not.
If you want to keep living like a slave you can try a 1st world country, if you want to find out how much shit you can buy with some dollars move to a third world country.
Personally I moved to a third world country and I'm doing pretty fine, you can always spend in some extra security and you should be fine.
USDs can do a lot of shit when you move to an America worshipping country.
Edit: According to the premise of your first post I suppose you are talking about someone who it's already a slave in the US, if you doesn't have any debt and you are making good money I suppose you are capable to move to any country.
WO mention even natives treat you better if you are American, IDK I believe they have seen too much Hollywood shit or whatever.
Avoid any communist country btw they don't like Americans.
God you sound like the most ghastly "expat" and the reason people have a dim view of yanks lol
My fault I forget to mention I just care about real stuff, whatever someone else think(in their own head) about me I don't give a flying fuck.
Yes, precisely