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.
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!