September 11, 2005

• Hey, cuz! The UN just voted Norway as the best country in the world to love in. I also hear that Switzerland and Austria have excellent education and healthcare systems.
• Tee hee.
• Heh. Oops.
• Essentially, the answer is yes. I'm not an immigration lawyer, but I am a Euromonkey who has lived and worked in several EU countries. As a citizen of an EU/EEA member state, you can travel and work freely in any other EU/EEA member state. The rules on settlement are more complex, and vary from state to state. Generally, you must have a job, be self-employed, or have sufficient means to support yourself (including health insurance). Your dependents (your wife, in this instance) can join you, and should be able to obtain working permission without any difficulties. The Immigration Advisory Service (UK) has more information on the matter.
• as a citizen of an eu member state, you have a right to work and to take up residence in another eu member state. this does not apply to eea states, afaik. many of the eu states have very good healthcare and generous vacation allowances (good balance of work/home life) - austria, france, germany, and the netherlands all spring to mind. for education, i don't know enough to make a reasonable comparison though i consider the irish system quite good.
• Switzerland is a bit of a bear to immigrate to unless you got big bucks and even then it is difficult to become a citizen. The other issue with Switzerland is, as far as I know, it's not a member of the EU, so you couldn't really move to other EU states if you wanted to. The cool part is that if I wanted to push the issue, I could probably get Swiss citizenship as my mom's father was Swiss. We'd be able to get her citizenship (according to an immigration lawyer I spoke to) and then grandfather me into citizenship. At least that is what I was told. Any female monkeys need to move to Switzerland? I'm currenly single.
• Well, looking at a globe, I notice that America is nearly as big as Europe, so to ditch the entire country seems a bit of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I've lived in towns less than 5 hours away from each other and found they were very different politically and culturally.
• squid good luck with the swiss citizenship if you decide to pursue it - a french friend of mine spent many years on her application deriving from her dad's mother. it seems to have been a bureaucratic nightmare for her, though she eventually got her citizenship recognized.
• I like Austria. OK weather, good beer, good coffee, barbaric people :-) But then, I am an Austrian, so I am used to its ideosyncracies. The small town life is probably best, though the capital Vienna is nice too. The Netherlands are nice, especially Amsterdam. The country itself is not without charm too, as long as you can stand protestant fundamentalists. About Norway I cannot say much, except: It is not part of the European Union. Also, you get very little light at that lattitude in the winter. I was in Sweden and it was positively depressing. Provided you find a job, there are many places in Italy that are very nice too. The same goes for Spain.
• A friend of mine is married to an Austrian and lived there for a few years. She loved it and raves about their excellent social services (ie. the healthcare, welfare and education systems), but she also says the men are terribly sexist and it's very Catholic so women take a bit of flak. That may not be the case in more urban areas, though -- she was in a small town in the Tyrol area, apparently not far from where the Ice Man was found in the early '90s. (Good on me, mentioning two countries that aren't even in the EU. Sorry about that.)
• I really cannot competently speak about the sexist males part - as I lack the requirements to experience it - but my guess is it is no better or worse than any other western country. You might be correct on the Catholicism charge, though. Especially in Tyrol - often jokingly referred to as the "holy land" by the rest of Austria - the church is still quite prominent.
• so to ditch the entire country seems a bit of throwing the baby out with the bathwater Jcc- well I've lived in the US for nearly 40 years and I owe a lot to being here- the US has been good for me personally until lately. But now with two young children, I'm concerned about the direction the US is going in. Specifically, the coming head on collision of an oil economy with Peak Oil scenarios with no visionary plan to deal with (I know- that's a problem everywhere but I trust Europe to do a better job preparing for it) The culture of TV, commercialism, materialism, violence and guns and the spectre of looming theocracy. (Again, I acknowledge that these problems are not confined to the US but they seem worse here and worsening). The educational standards in the US are slipping vis-a-vis the rest of the world. The education I got as a Scottish schoolboy still bests what American public schools have to offer IMO. The ridiculous way that America has conducted itself in the world in the past five years has not increased my sense of security. And the feeling that around me that nearly one out of two people voted for Bush and worse, continued to support him when it was clear that he was dangerously incompetent completes my sense of alienation. Really, it goes back to the kids- if it was just my wife and me, I probably wouldn't feel so anxious about leaving. So for me, it's more like throwing out the hideously deformed monster fetus out with the bathwater. /histrionics
• As having left Europe exactly 2 years ago on this day (ah well, not according to NZ time) I can only say to consider Canada, as I did. They speak English (at least in most part of it, not here in Montréal) share the same Queen and probably it's not too hard to immigrate if you're from the UK and your wife is from the US. Take the test. I left the Netherlands, a nice tourist destination but politically becoming more and more a mirror image of the US, but with higher taxes and many more people per square kilometre. Healthcare is good and almost everybody speaks English. Which makes you into an eternal foreigner, because practising your Dutch will be a nightmare, because everybody just switches to English whenever they hear the slightest amount of an English accent. I've many English-speaking friends who basically gave up on improving their Dutch. The Netherlands recently also have introduced a new, very stringent immigration policy and you as an UK citizen can move, but your wife and children probably have to stay were they are until they speak Dutch. Good luck to them learning Dutch in the US. Here's more info on immigration to the Netherlands.
• Austria? Norway? Switzerland? Great choices if you love fresh mountain air and stuffy boring people. If you ask me, mothninja and DIMMN have just about got it cracked. Taking imponderables into account, I reckon the standard of living in Northern Italy must be the best in the world - prosperous, civilised, friendly people, beautiful country, great art, marvellous food. And they're only having about half a child each these days,so there's be plenty of room for yours. Which would you rather have learnt as a child; Switzerdeutsch, Bokmål/Nynorsk, or Italian? *dons tin hat*
• Although you can move around freely within the EU, there are still some individual residency requirements that get in the way -- and purposely so. Even with the burgundy passport in hand, you'll find that you'll need to have certain residency conditions met before you can get your social insurance number or health insurance, etc. Without those in hand, immigration may be a non-starter. I found all of that out the hard way, when I waved my EU passport around, looking to pay for a PhD program at the locals' rate, rather than as a foreigner. Didn't work. I had some residence time built up, but not the three years required to shoe me in. So although I had every right to be there, reality said it wasn't going to happen.
• Yep, Norway. But no one here thinks it's that good.
• Except Norway is not a member of the EU. Yet.
• Mare, to say that we have a queen in Canada is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. She appears on our money because of history, she doesn't even have the figurehead status here that she has in the UK. Ask any seperatist what they think of the queen, after all you must know some in Montréal. If you did move to Canada you would have to know that we get most of our entertainment (if not all, depending on your tastes) from the USA. That coupled with the fact that many of our iconic Canadian businesses, such as Tim Horton's and the Montréal Canadiens are now owned by corporations from the USA. With the privatization of many of our social programs, this could be a huge problem for the Canadian identity, which is archetypically a social democracy; the cultural problems you have with the United States might still be socializing your children. The process of cultural imperialism is really starting to take a toll on us. Of course, if you wanted to try to immigrate it's become a little more difficult, but not impossible. It'd be great to have you. Good luck figuring it all out!
• Regarding leaving the U.S. for other environs, I grew into adulthood at the end of the Carter administration, Reagan got in and the U.S. has been declining ever since. I honestly cannot understand how anyone who was an adult in that era can think that 'things will just be okay if we wait it out.' Those who were children during Reagan's time and after are just little Stepford robots blindly swearing fealty to an America that is nothing and I do mean *nothing* like the U.S. of years past. This country has morphed into a repulsive monster and I cannot blame anyone for wanting to leave or feeling repulsed by it. I don't have any recommendations to make as far as relocating, but I will certainly be watching this thread with interest for suggestions on how and where to get the hell out of this nutjob country. . .
• When the Quebec Referendum was going on, and some anglos were making plans to get out of town should their side lose, there was one guy quoted in the Mirror that he would trade his house for cab fare to Vaudreuil (i.e. the first stop off the island), saying that he could walk the rest of the way. It was a joke, sure, but it showed that some people were seriously considering 'the worst'. As much as Americans talk about how their country has gone down the toilet and it's time to leave, I have yet to hear about someone actually doing it. As bad as things may be, I've never heard someone say it was so bad they'd trade their house for a ride to Fort Erie.
• (Allright, Fort Dreary may be a bad example. Windsor, then.)
• Mon Capitaine, you'd be surprised at the amount of ex-pat Americans that are profs at my school. Of course, most of them left during the Vietnam draft so I guess they hightailed when they saw it getting bad. Maybe people today are to innundated with CNN and other media outlets of social identity that there is too much inner dialogue for them to actually do what they say. Of course some of them are just bleeding heart liberals. I'm a liberal so I can say that right?
• If no-one is leaving the US, why do I keep finding Americans showing up in my social circle in New Zealand at an ever-increasing rate?
• Well, judging from all the other 'muricans here rodgerd I would say it's just a bunch of fellow New Zealanders doing damn good 'murican accent imitations. Or maybe they're wrong and there really are mass emigrations of 'muricans truly tired of the nosedive this country's taken.
• Me too, rodgerd. My new sister-in-law is from Pennsylvania, a neighbour is a Floridan(?) and there's a girl and guy in my netball team from LA and San Diego respectively. Two of them married kiwis, one is in film production and came here to start her own production company, and one is a student.
• They all saw Lord of the Rings and wanted to live in the Shire. I know I do.
• Within the EU there is indeed freedom of movement and establishment but you'll have to go through some red tape in most countries. Just because they are obliged to give you a residence and work permit doesn't mean that they are not going to make you go through the motions to get them... As for your wife, most EU countries won't give too much trouble to the spouse of a EU citizen, especially if she comes from a First World country. EU legislation actually mandates equality of treatment for EU citizens, so she'll be treated just like the foreign spouse of a citizen of that country. Thing is, some countries, especially in Northern Europe, are putting a lot of hurdles on foreign spouses of their own citizens too. Holland, already mentioned, being particularly nasty. As a rule, don't underestimate the trouble of relocating. English-speakers, in particular, tend to labour under the delusion that everybody will understand them and that, in any case, learning a foreign language can't be all that hard. Also, brace yourself for the red tape. European countries are not necessarily more bureaucratic (OK, they usually are), but the bureaucracy is different. Tax forms are different, health care paperwork is different, the whole approach to administration can be different. You'll find out that a driving license is not generally considered a valid ID, but that in many countries you'll have to carry a national ID card with you almost at all times, for instance. Banks work differently (with less paper involved, thankfully) and work contracts are also very different. As for which country to go to, I wouldn't recommend Holland or the Scandinavian countries because of the hurdles they may put on the way of your wife. Spain is nice, but finding a decently paid job could be difficult. Italy has a reputation for difficult bureaucracy. So...Belgium, France (especially the South) and Germany (especially Bavaria) could be good choices, but beware the language problem. Because of that, I'd recommend you Ireland as the best option. Same language, plenty of work, and less red tape, with special treaties further facilitating things for UK citizens. They are also welcoming to US citizens, and if your wife can find some Irish ancestor (which she probably will), it may open her way to a burgundy passport too (BTW, this can work with ancestors from other EU countries, Italy and Germany in particular very generously handing citizenship to people with only very tenuous family links).
• Finland, apparently. Also, Norway needs to hurry up and join the EU, to stop Sweden and Finland looking so damn detumescent.