I am a tradesman with a lot of technical skills with some specialized skills in short supply (at least in the US) with a little less than a decade of experience. My partner is a skilled social worker with more than a decade of experience.
We cannot afford a golden visa in any country.
We are at least 3rd generation Americans, and do not have the right to claim citizenship in any other country without going through the immigration and naturalization process there.
Neither of us is very good at picking up a new language (lord how I’ve tried)
Where could we realistically look to go?
You need to keep working on language. It takes a lot of time to learn your first non-native language and then gets easier. As with anything, language-learning is a skill that can be learned.
That or limit yourself to english-language countries. I can’t stand people who move somewhere, never learn the language, etc. Japan has a ton and the government is finally adding language requirements to some statuses (though some of the worst offenders are English teachers who will not have any such restriction)
Most Americans I know who moved here (Norway) did so after landing a job that they then moved here for. Moving here and then trying to find a job is a great method for going broke in a couple of weeks.
Plus, lining up a job beforehand makes the visa ordeal easy.
Can I just marry my 3rd cousin? Ha.
To find jobs in Norway, try searching for the word “jobbportal”. At least some of these sites allow you to sort for English language jobs.
Thank you
Picking up a new language is much easier if you use the Comprehensible Input method, which is fun and easy. It’s essentially learning language like a child learns. You watch videos that are 100% in the target language. In the beginning, they are super easy, with lots of props, gestures, and other context that helps convey the meaning of the words. As you pick up more and more, you watch more difficult videos. It’s amazing how fast you pick up the new language. In about 3 months I learned enough Spanish to give me around 80%+ comprehension of normal conversation, and better comprehension if the person spoke slowly and clearly. Don’t count out learning a new language, as it is a lot easier than you might think if your only experience is with traditional methods.
I think this is both easy on the sense that there are a lot of feasible options, and difficult in the sense of selecting the most suitable one for you. English alone opens up many places to you. But besides language, culture is a major factor. I remember a story about immigrants in Finland feeling excluded and had difficulties building social relationships. But in Finland, even the locals don’t have so many local friends. So, the way of life is just not suitable to many.
Other than that, try to see this not only as a negative thing, but also as an opportunity. Don’t just ask where you would do okay, but include questions like where you would feel comfortable.
Final thought: often the “most popular option” is not necessarily the best. In Europe, many countries that are not Germany or France are nice, sometimes the QoL is even higher. So, consider Austria besides Germany, for example.
Most countries that you would probably label as “acceptable”, will accept you without any problem as a US citizen provided that you get a stable job.
It’s that easy.
You could always start by teaching English in another country. I recall that it pays quite well and is in demand in many countries. The requirements are also very low.
As for learning another language. You get better at it when you’re around it constantly.
This is probably the best option for the social worker partner since social work is largely about knowing the laws and culture which you won’t know as an immigrant
If you can get an employer to sponsor you, Europe is nice. In the Nordics if you stick to a capital city, you should have no problem using english for almost anything, and for everything else, there are translation apps.
A social worker would probably have to learn the local language anywhere they go, it’s a less transferable profession imo.
You’d make it more or less anywhere. At least here in Sweden, English has been a core subject since 1952/1953. That’s over 70 years of mandatory English education.
Some people struggle a little because they never used it, but as a foreigner, usually you end up struggling to speak anything but English. Lots of immigrants complain that they can’t learn Swedish because the moment someone clocks that they’re not a native speaker, they switch to English.
lol That would definitely make it hard to learn.
Australia and New Zealand have a points based immigration system that you can check online. That would be the first place I’d look.
Australia also needs trades people and has a list of jobs with scarce skills. Check the list and see if your occupation is on it.
https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/working-in-australia/skill-occupation-list
If your trade is on the list you can easily get a company sponsored visa to Australia. This is a good pathway to Australian permanent residence and citizenship.
P.S. I know many people who have done this. In the mining industry, the company moves your stuff and usually pays for about 3 months of accommodation so you have time to find your bearings.
The company will bring you over on a long stay work visa which allows you to apply for permanent residence.
There are then two options, you can go with a company sponsored permanent residence or an independent permanent residence visa.
I personally have done the latter path. When I was on the work visa my company paid my health insurance and moving costs. The process of immigrating to Australia was very easy but a lot of paperwork.
I mean the first step is just getting a job offer in any country you go to. Then you just go through the immigration process. Expected to have about 30k on hand to help with the immigration process. There are also a lot of Expat services that help walk you through the process. Just have to search expat and the location you want.
Make a list of countries that speak English or at least allow you to get by with speaking only English. Then look up their work visa categories and see if your skills fall into any of those categories. Once you narrow that down further, check if they allow working holiday visas, where you can fly in for a limited amount of time to look for a job. If there’s no such option, you’ll have to remotely apply for a job that is willing to sponsor your work visa so you can move there. You can also do try countries with digital nomad visas, but that’s temporary and you’ll have to leave and go back every couple of weeks/months or so.
Another option is a student visa, if you are willing to go back to school and can afford the tuition.
Those are pretty much your only options aside from marriage or asylum.
If you have skills that are in demand in a particular country then there will be a path to residency and possibly citizenship. Many trades are in demand in many places. In some places the demand is so high you can get by speaking English. There may even be incentives offered to people with qualifying skills to move there, like low or no income tax.
If you don’t have any savings it will be harder but you and your wife may want to try Ireland or the UK for English language jobs, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia work as well but the cost of living may go up a bit at first. If you are in the US Canada would probably be the easiest and cheapest to move to. If you are able to sit through the ESL equivalent for the respective country’s language the whole world is your oyster, just see which countries have more open immigration policies and fewer human/civil rights violations that has low unemployment that you are interested in moving to for work, south Korea has a program for people to teach English and while that may not be a long term thing you don’t need to speak any Korean when you get there from what I remember.
What I’m always wondering is how I realistically manage to still keep my money in the bank without losing access whilst in another country? Also what about my retirement? It’s like a grave fear of mine to lose my life’s savings just because I can’t prove I still live in the US.
Just talk to your bank, you are not alone in this situation! If the deposit is sizeable enough, they will transfer your account to their international operation. If not - why do you even care? Just take it out as cash, or wire it to a bank in your new place.
On the retirement savings - there is also a mechanism of transferring it to your new country of residence.
What languages can you speak?
without going through the immigration and naturalization process there.
But why do you want it all without normal processes?
You say you are the most normal American. So the normal way is the way for you.
That’s not what they said. You ignored the beginning of the sentence.
But why do you want it all without normal processes?
You’re missing the point. Plenty of Americans do have ancestry that allows them to claim citizenship (and therefore easily immigrate) somewhere or another, so the first thing an American trying to immigrate will be told is to check for that. Making it clear they can’t do that is important so they can get advice they can actually use.
Its because their concept of immigration is sitting in Mexico waiting for 20 years to be allowed into the US finally.
And because of American Exceptionalism, they expect to be an exception.
That and within the US, there are loopholes and gotchas you can use to get a visa faster.
We are at least 3rd generation Americans, and do not have the right to claim citizenship in any other country without going through the immigration and naturalization process there.
I read this as “We’d have to go through a lengthy bureaucratic process since we do not have citizenship claims anywhere else, so given this fact, how should we go about moving abroad?”
