Moving to a different country.

I just did the whole UK student visa thing. It isn't bad. And moving there to work doesn't seem that bad either if your are a highly skilled professional either. Moving out of the US is way easier than moving in even to countries most of us would consider to be better.

Most countries in Europe make it easy for you to go and work there, but becoming a citizen is virtually impossible. They're more than happy to have you help fund their social safety nets without benefitting from them much.

The US makes it comparatively easier to become a citizen, but getting permission to just work here is much harder.

I dunno UK lets you become a citizen after like 5 years of working there I think, not too bad.

Picasso_sl said:

Going from us to Canada easy peasy if you're an engineer?

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I would imagine it's a pain, like any immigration issue. But it there are programs for people with useful skills and education.

My best friend's brother had some kind of film or multimedia degree and couldn't find any kind of job. He traveled up to Alberta and had a job working in the oil fields literally 3 days after arriving. No idea how that company managed to cut through the red tape so fast, or why they would be willing to do it for someone with that kind of background.

Welcome to the land of milk and honey. But seriously, 80% of the jobs created in the entirety of Canada last year were in Alberta, 40% in Edmonton alone. The migration numbers are starting to go stupid again.

Which means the bust is 12-18 months away, probably.

Creslin_sl said:

I dunno UK lets you become a citizen after like 5 years of working there I think, not too bad.

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So is the US. 5 years with Green Card, 3 years if you're married to a US Citizen. So it's pretty much the same as in Europe.

'Cept that UK isnt Europe, its just that big islands next to the european mainland where the inbreds tend to speak english.

Well

Spain is 10 years if you're not from a former spanish colony.
Portugal does the same 10 years (except 6 if brazilians), or 3 years if married to a portuguese
Germany is 8 + need to speak German (so you might think this is difficult, but if you've lived in germany 8 years chances are you speak some good german)
French is 5 years + speak french at some degree.

I don't think these requisites are that 'hard' compared to the US. In fact, in most countries of Europe there are well established residency programs, either through points or straightforward job offer residencies. The US immigration system is complete bullshit and at the sole discretion of the NVC (national visa center).

For the US are several pathways to a Green Card: Through job or family.
Through a job, you can get a EB class green card, which is for 'advanced' degrees (people with PhDs or masters, published, and known), there's also EB1 which is for pretty much 'Nobel' level scientists and Olympians.
Through a family, it's gotta be a family member, and depending on their level to you, so a brother of a citizen has to wait at least 12 years before he can get a green card (yes, 12 years at least).

The rest, there are several 'visas' that are NON IMMIGRANT (meaning, not permanent) and allows the person to work for a certain time; the most 'famous' ones are the H1-B visas. I once applied for one; there's a cap of 65k a year, and by the third or fourth day of the reception being open, there are around 120k applications. They all get pooled into a lottery. I wasn't selected heh. The H1-B visas last for 3 years with a ONE time extension of another 3 years, so for a total of 6.

That's pretty much it, in the EB categories everything is subjective to what the official at NVC thinks of the application, if it thinks it's not strong enough he can issue a RFE (request for evidence) and pretty much close the case if he wants to.

Now take for example Canadian, UK and Australian: There's the usual family and job offer visas (in most cases, those job offer visas don't have a cap). But there's also something like 'Self-residency' where there's a set amount of 'points' say, in Canadian is 67. Then you answer a questionnaire and send evidence of achieving 67 points or more, categories are things like, education (GED, Bachelor, master, etc), job experience (3, 5, 10 years), language skills (measured by say IELTS or TOEFL), age (people 25-40 usually take the most points). If you have the points ore more, then you can send the paperwork and can get a 'green card' for said country. I did it for Canada and moved to Toronto for a few years, became a Canadian citizen then moved to the US.

I think that point process is very modern and very objective; it's clear cut if you can make it or not, and it brings the best type of immigrants to the country. That's why I say the US system is total crap.

Creslin_sl said:

I dunno UK lets you become a citizen after like 5 years of working there I think, not too bad.

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This is vastly different in different countries in Europe. The Netherlands, for example, makes you take years of citizenship classes, you have to demonstrate a working knowledge of the language, you have to agree to a bunch of other things, and you have to rescind your other citizenship(s). It's about an 8 year intensive process that you really need to stay on top of. If you want to go to the Netherlands, it's better to just get a citizenship in some other EU nation and move in.

nm

The Netherlands is probably the most English friendly country in Europe. Everyone speaks it.

Germany was very english friendly as well, or at least Munich was.

You can always check out Romania. Doesn't really matter what the law says if you got 100$ in your pocket and we're famous for our hot girls and cheap gigabit internetz.

wiki says : According to the 2012Eurobarometer, English is spoken by 31% of Romanians.