With all the dismal news about America lately, my home, I’m starting to seriously look at where else to move.
Putting aside for now the difficulty of actually immigrating to some countries, I’m curious on the opinions of others (especially people living outside the U.S) on this.
What I’m looking for in a country is, I imagine, similar to many people. I’m trying to find somewhere that will exhibit:
- Low racism
- Low sexism
- Low LGBTQ-phobia
- Strong laws around food quality and safety
- Strong laws about environmental protection
- Strong laws against unethical corporate practices (monopoly, corruption, lobbying, etc)
- Strong laws for privacy
- Good treatment of mentally ill, homeless, and impoverished people
Those are the real important things. Of course the nice-to-haves are almost too obvious to be worth listing, low cost of living, strong art and cultural scene, nice environment, and so on.
My actual constraints that might really matter are that I only speak English (and maybe like A1-2 level German). It seems incredibly intimidating to try to find employment somewhere when I can hardly speak the language.
I know nowhere on Earth is perfect, just curious what people may have to suggest. I hope this question isn’t too selfish to ask here.
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Denmark seems to fit fairly well and there are some English-only jobs in Copenhagen. I have a lot of colleagues that don’t speak Danish.
After been in 5 continents in 30+ countries and living in 6… the best for your requirements is Spain. Spain, even the opposing parties are unlikely to touch most of those protections since it has wide support among the population. Now, Spain is not panacea, it still has stigma against Gypsies, older people face job discrimination, etc.
Regarding privacy is OK, more due to inaction than protection but far better than most neighbors in the north.
On corruption… the ‘perception’ is that there is plenty but no more than I witnessed in countries like Germany, UK or USA… the difference is that corruption in Spain is highly exposed by rival parties/media while in the other countries it is no so sensationalized, that is why of the increase ‘perception’. By the way, Scandinavia, that I used to admire, above local governments, I don´t see it much better on corruption levels, specially since late 2000s.
Regarding foreigners, Spain has many offers in certain jobs, where English is a requirement, but not easy at all for more common jobs where the local language is what is mostly used, even if you dominate it well. Now, you will be surprised how many companies are moving jobs to Spain since it is easier to attract talent to Barcelona or Malaga than to Berlin or Grenoble… and they save in salaries.
Now, if you put less emphasis in sexism and LGBTQ, certain countries in Latin America like Mexico or Uruguay, or across the ocean others like Malaysia may be more appealing, it is not that they are expressively against those groups, it is just they demand a more quiet sexual expression from you.
Lastly, countries like Australia, New Zealand and the like have become so corrupt at high level and against privacy and freedom of expression in certain topics, should be disregarded if you emphasis on that. Ireland, is the only exception in the Anglo world, now, like Switzerland and Norway, they are floating in money o every one is okay while economies are good… the test comes, as always, come in challenging times. Till, then, consider those three too.
Spain is one of the main supporters of the infamous chatcontrol and wants to ban encryption. So, please tell me more about Spain and its stance on privacy …
Chat control, ban encryption? Where do you get that? I follow occasionally Spanish politics and never came across that. It may have been raised by some lone politician but highly unlikely to happen, unless other countries like France or Germany does it first, nor the people will follow with any mandate. The problem is if the main opposition party gets in power… they are more inclined to do that but even there I don´t see it spearheading any of that by themselves.
The Spanish government has a very strong opinion on this:
https://www.techradar.com/news/spain-seeks-to-ban-encryption-leaked-document-reveals
Spain’s vision appeared to be the most extreme, with the nation’s leaders apparently seeing the access to citizens’ data as “imperative” to allow authorities catching criminals in the virtual world.
Spain wasn’t just the strongest fan of the bill, but it also argued how EU-based providers should be ideally prevented from implementing E2E in the first place. Of a similar stance was Poland, suggesting that parents should have the power to decrypt children’s chats. Among other supporters for the Chat Control proposalare Cyprus, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia and Romania.
There are many more news articles about this.
Again, that seems to be a personal vendetta of the minister Grande-Marlaska that keeps going secretly against the government policy (like the recently Israeli munition purchase that wast promptly canceled). No parliament debate on encryption or even public debate has been brought up at all. If it does, the minute it comes up, it would be turned down swiftly by the current coalition government. The President has no made any statement on banning encryption either, nor I think he would either. However, he did talk on identification on social media, but he will not spearhead that, nor it is doable to implement for now.
Funny enough, you are looking at the countries with the most homogeneity and lesser levels of multiculturalism per capita. In this case the most white countries, like Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, Luxembourg, et al.
They all have what you are looking for. However, many of there are either fairly expensive, have less than optimal weather or have fairly strict laws, unless you are an EU member or want to ask for asylum, political or otherwise.Like other have mentioned, at a recent WEF meeting, at DAVOS earlier in the year, the President of Spain stated that he wanted to ban encryption, or have access to encrypted services… Why? For your protection, obviously. Do a search on Youtube and you will find the video. Keep in mind the presentation is fairly long. You may be able to find a clip of it.
The UK and Germany have gone down the drain when it comes to privacy laws and they are heading straight into Big Brother or 1984 territory. No joke. So those should be avoided.
Like other have said, Uruguay and Argentina are pretty good options albeit both Argentina and Chile are not doing too well economically for now. But I do have a friend who is moving to Argentina, albeit he is fluent in Spanish so for him it won’t be hard.
Other possible options are Australia but if you think owning a home is hard in the USA, then you have seen nothing yet in Australia. New Zealand is also a good option, too although like some other countries at the top of the list, moving there can be a tad difficult Re: Red tape, albeit it is a bit easier if you are part of the Common Wealth, which I assume you are not.
For real, where do you get that the President of Spain wants to ban encryption?! That debate has been held in Germany, France and UK but not precisely in Spain… like nothing at all. In that talk President Sanchez just talked about the massive and pernicious powers social media have in the society (true) and that he supports the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), at highly misguided and bad thing, but not spearheaded by Spain. None of that is wanting to ban encryption… letś no mention almost impossible to enforce properly too. If digital freedom is your aim, options like Australia is a bit off, you are good until you touch sensitive things for the US.
Where do I get it? I literally said where, there is a Davos presentation he did. Didn’t I say that? I did not say that it was debate, it was something that he was pushing for in his speech. Find the video.
With that said, it is not like this is new. You are just unaware. Example:
https://www.wired.com/story/europe-break-encryption-leaked-document-csa-law/
"The source of the document declined to comment and requested anonymity because they were not authorized to share it.
“It is shocking to me to see Spain state outright that there should be legislation prohibiting EU-based service providers from implementing end-to-end encryption,” says Riana Pfefferkorn, a research scholar at Stanford University’s Internet Observatory in California who reviewed the document at WIRED’s request. “This document has many of the hallmarks of the eternal debate over encryption.”__**"
Also you are right, he also want so remove anonymity… for your protection, of course.
Thanks for that wired link. Was not aware of it. It is 2 years old but important still. Now, that is not from the president of Spain, but its minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, a extremist and, I would say, a compromised guy that works more for foreign entities than Spain’s interest and should have been fired long ago. For instance, last week he signed a contract with a Israelś company to purchase munition… the outrage in the coalition government was such that Sanchez had to step in and canceled the already signed contract.
On wanting to stop anonymity, 100% with you, but hard to find any leader is not on board with that.
Consider your education and professional background and how well you’ll integrate in the workforce of whatever countries you’re looking at. Look into general unemployment rates as well as for your specific area of expertise. Can you work remotely?
That’s most European countries. Pick one, learn its language and immigration laws, and off you go
afghanistan
ITT: A lot of people doing the typical StackOverflow thing of asserting the question is bad and answering a different question instead.
No country’s that great but Canada’s doing aight.
Thanks for understanding, I do feel a bit hurt by some insinuations in some responses, but I understand why citizens of the world would feel unhappy with whiny Americans right now. I just hope it doesn’t progress into a hatred. Many of my fellow Americans are very good people, but unfortunately we are so disenfranchised politically - I think it’s hard to convey the extent of it. The state of things here isn’t a result of laziness and unwillingness to participate. But in fairness, I didn’t refine my original post deeply and it came off not quite right. I’m not looking to selfishly abandon ship or become a silent drain on another country. I would love to build community, but it’s certainly easier in some places than others, for a wide variety of reasons.
- Strong laws against unethical corporate practices (monopoly, corruption, lobbying, etc)
- Good treatment of mentally ill, homeless, and impoverished people
These exist almost nowhere in the world
Denmark is close I would like to say.
Well, in France you have 4 free consultation to psy therapy per year, and government recently stop a project of drilling oil in Acquitaine because it was in a natural preservation area.
Far from being perfect but its something.
Yes indeed :( it’s a wishlist for sure, not feasible in it’s purest form.
Reading the list, NZ does pretty well… Right to the end…
- good treatment of mentally ill, homeless and impoverished people…
We don’t do that here
- good treatment of mentally ill, homeless and impoverished people…
Privacy, food safety and environmental regulation basically mean Europe, but then Europe has crazy anti-migrant sentiment at this point. So, maybe one of the Scandinavian countries that’s still relatively welcoming? Portugal might also track, if you don’t mind a country that’s economically moribund.
US ex pat here:
I think you will find more success in this if you find a place or two you want to live in and run TO something instead of AWAY from something. It’ll always be a bit of both, but this post reads more like (very understandably) “get me out of here” than “I want to be somewhere new”.
Being an ex pat has plenty of hard aspects of course. I think some of them are made quite a bit easier when you passionately dive into the culture and life in a new place. At least to me it would be impossible if my head was still in the US.
Of course you’re doing nothing wrong! Just some advice if it gets a bit more serious.
Like many in the thread: Canada, Australia/New Zealand, Scandinavia, Germany, UK (not that they’re doing fantastic right now), Netherlands would be my top choices with your criteria. Most large companies will be more likely to have English speaking as the working language and you’ll learn the local language (s) while living there. Best of luck!
“At least to me it would be impossible if my head was still in the US”. I completely understand it… contributing with taxes to these policies from Washington DC may feel appalling… Now, the US has plenty of small and diverse type of communities some would find remarkable, like bubbles within the Empire… some can easily find peace there. Emigrating to another country is not recommended, nor feasible to everyone, but just moving within the US can be day and night different. Moving just a few miles away and and your lifestyle and friends can potentially change almost as much as moving abroad, and still close to your family/job.
Yeah, some of that is the impromptu nature of this post. I’ve thought about moving to other countries since high school. I’m very interested in a lot of cultural things that are just vastly more prevalent and thriving in Europe. Sometimes it feels like I was born in the wrong place. So there are definitely places I’d love to run to. I visited Switzerland and it felt like heaven on Earth compared to my state. I wanted to move there long before Trump’s first election. But it seems that particular country is near impossible to move to, plus Swiss German seems particularly tough.
I really like learning about other cultures and such, I’m afraid I may have come off entirely wrong in the brevity and laser-focus of my original post.
Very interesting that you say the working language would be English. That’s fantastic news. I definitely think I can get to a basic conversational level with languages pretty quickly, but reaching the technical professional level is my big fear. So that’s very encouraging to hear that it may not be so dire as that at least in the Netherlands. Thank you for taking the time to respond!
Switzerland has many protections you want and the salaries are very good too. Now, I don´t consider life there as ideal thought. It is a bit depressing, so much beauty around but something is sad… reminds it of Paris… not to that extreme, but a bit like it. Of course it is a stable economy and you sense that peace of mind when there.
However it is not that democratic as they claim, for instance, twice the country voted for restriction on EU immigration (a silly thing since it greatly benefits the Alpine country and its society) but still the politicians keep dragging their feet and give excuses to disregard the resounding already decade old mandate (and at the benefit of the economy)… so wise yes, democratic not! Likewise, Switzerland has caved much to the powers of US and EU to several international topics so it is not the independent it used to be. Then it is the ethical aspect of collecting monies from spurious sources (Ireland lives of that too, but at least, the Celtics are more transparent of that)…
Yeah, certainly depends exactly where you go. A capital city and a rural town will feel extremely different on English speaking (and cultural/political views at that).
I think it’s quite possible to do though. Happy to chat or answer any specific questions you have, especially if they’re Scandinavia based.
It’s a tough choice to do something like you’re talking about but extremely fulfilling. I wouldn’t trade the decision for the world at this point. I wish you the best of luck!
I think this is a very valid question. Sometimes the grass really is greener on the other side.
I like it here in Germany. Laws and social safety are relatively strong. Oftentimes I see an article about some chemical common in food being a cancer risk, and then I research it and see that it is a US-centered article and that the EU already banned the chemical years ago.
Right wing populism is strongly on the rise here though. Racism and LGBTQ-phobia will strongly depend, with smaller villages and regions in East Germany being worse on average.
If you’re a top earner, you most likely won’t get the crazy high salaries here that you might expect from the US (even if accounted for cost of living, childcare etc).
Bureaucracy is annoying.
Rent can be very high depending on the region.
Job market strongly favors German speakers. I heard the Netherlands are more open in that regard. I think this will be your biggest hurdle.
What I learned about Germany most recently is that it’s super-mega FOSS-prioritizing, which is awesome!
It’s not Super-Mega FOSS-prioritizing, but there are some efforts into that direction.
Oh, well, still: good enough!
My German teacher had a fairly profound impact on my life, I knew him for four years and he was absolutely enamored with everything about Germany. Like the German equivalent of a weeb. Some of that has transferred to me, I like basically every aspect of German culture I’m familiar with, especially the sense of humor. Since I already have some language familiarity, it’s always been near the top of my list, until recently with the AfD stuff giving me a bit of a fright. Although I saw they were recently classified as extremists, which was reassuring (thanks Lemmy for being such a good news source!)
It’s of course too bad to hear about the rural racism, especially since I’d prefer a rural place of living, but it seems those two things always go together to some extent.
I’m certainly going to enroll in classes for whatever language corresponds to my target country. I really want to be an exemplary citizen of anywhere I go. I feel it’s an honor to be accepted for a visa somewhere so I don’t want to take that lightly. My biggest concern is just that I won’t be that great with the target language despite my best efforts.
Thank you very much for your insights and kind words!
Just noticed I used “strongly” three times in the post. Gonna need to find new adverbs.
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also in my experience, while a lot of Germans are happy to chat with you in English in a social setting, business talk is usually expected to be held in German
Toronto and Vancouver are expensive but you definitely get what you pay for
Honestly I don’t get what the hype with Toronto is. It costs like Vancouver but with Calgary’s weather and general vibes.
Toronto is amazing. It’s a lot like NYC but clean, better run, and less densely populated. My friend describes it as NYC run by the Swiss, and I’ve loved all the time I’ve spent there
The weather can be hit or miss, but it didn’t bother me, even with the endless snow. I’m moving there soon and I’m super excited for it.
Good transit, good jobs, lots of cultural stuff, amazing food. The weather definitely isn’t great but it’s still consistently a few degrees warmer than Calgary in the winter. Vancouver obviously crushes both of them in this category.
Yeah, similar weather relatively speaking.
I’ve never been to Toronto, so I can’t talk too much trash, but I have been to Vancouver many times and experienced how awesome it is. And, they both cost a similar amount!
Come to Canada, the weed is legal
Canada is certainly tempting if only on the basis that I would be closer to my family, and my family closer to me. And the recent election results were very relieving. Weed is legal here too though, haha.
the election results are much closer than you’d think. Popular vote had only a couple % lead. Everyone had to abandon voting for their preferred small party (e.g. greens, BQ, or NDP) to get liberals enough seats to beat the conservatives.
Yeah we’re far from perfect, but for better or worse we would be to smallest culture shock (it would kinda feel like moving to a new state).
The Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia have all those things and people tend to speak English really well.
As for the ‘No racism’ part, skip the Netherlands. One of the current governing parties is openly racist and can even be considered fascist. Also, we have a huge housing crisis, so finding a place to live may be challenging.
European racism is casual compared to even everyday American racism, even considering the likes of AfD
Yes, I’ve had this suspicion awhile. Last year an ex-coworkerif mine was quoting the disproportionate crime rate among black people statistics at me and then leveled up into saying Africa is such a desolate place and so only unintelligent people would have stayed there in ancient times, thus meaning there’s a selective breeding for unintelligence in that continent. I tried to argue with him about the dubiousness of IQ measures in the first place, let alone IQ heritability, and the deep statistical flaws in the crime rate argument, which don’t disentangle race from poverty, but as soon as I tried to make these counterarguments he brushed me off as being “brainwashed” by “lies about equality”.
I don’t even know what to do about something like that other than just stop talking to the person. What’s terrifying is he’s otherwise pretty smart, totally fits in with respectable society. Not some stereotypical redneck racist type. I think about that a lot and wonder how many others like him are going totally undetected around me every day.
Yeah, racism in europe is largely stereotypes directed at whole groups that are rooted in truth but grossly overblown, eg “black people just want to commit crime”, “arabs want to install sharia”, “east asians want to eat your dog”, “indians want to outgrow the native population” and other nonsense.
If you ask the huge majority of the people who are saying these things if they interact with people in these groups, they’ll say “yes, but they’re some of the good ones” not realising it’s only a tiny fraction who aren’t, but also accepting that race doesn’t automatically make you anything.
Comparing that to the US where (from what I’m aware of) there’s both “I refuse to even speak to members of xyz race because they’re subhuman” and “xyz race needs all the help they can get because they have such a tough time” it seems so hard for individuals to just live a normal life in the US?
I agree. The difference is that we are not so polarized (yet, we are getting there) and it’s not systemically embedded in the police force (yet, depends where you look)
Thanks for this counterpoint, that’s exactly the sort of thing I think people need to see when thinking about moving (whether emigrating from America or anywhere else) - what’s the big problems for people there, what’s their equivalent of these problems. Would you mind telling me which party this is so I can do some more research on it?
The party is called the PVV. Their racism is mostly aimed at Muslims, but they’re not a big fan of most other groups of immigrants either. Highly educated expats with a work visa largely get a pass, though I think there are some plans to limit their benefits.
I wouldn’t rely on Germany to remain stable and democratic these days. The fascists are the strongest party and the new chancellor is an oligarchy stooge of the worst kind.
Things aren’t much better in The Netherlands. The PVV is part of the government now. The good news is that having to form a coalition with other parties, seems to have reigned in some of their worst tendencies. Also, their minister of immigration is a total nitwit that can’t get any sort of actual policy implemented. If they keep failing to make any kind of progress on this issue, hopefully they won’t do as well in the next election.
It certainly seems that way! Some of the ESL speakers I’ve met from Europe are more articulate than native speakers that I work with. What I most wonder about is the prevalence of English in the workplace. I think I’d feel guilty using English at work in country with its own different official language, unless it was really like, standard even before “the guy from America” joined the team, lol.
There are some large, internationally oriented companies where you can get by speaking only English. I’ve also seen more than one tech company hire programmers that don’t speak Dutch. So it depends on the industry.
If you want to get some perspectives from Americans living in the Netherlands, you could check out Itz Sky’s and Jordan Green’s channels on YouTube.
