And that proves what, exactly? If anything, the fact that people were leaving long before the war became unpopular tends to show the opposite.
I’ve heard it’s pretty difficult to move to Canada? Mind sharing how you went about doing it?
Like the employee who has never worked anywhere else, I have no familiarity with life in other countries (tourist experience doesn’t seem relevant) and I don’t know who’d want a guy in his 60s who would need income for at least a few more years (even assuming USA retirement continues to exist / the US dollar doesn’t become the new useless inflated currency and eat my investments’ usefulness).
I’m willing and able to work and I have some skills for which I’ve been paid and stuff. Anyone in some other country think your nation would want to have me? I’ve always thought it would be good to not live my whole life in just one country anyhow.
So I guess we will have to build a wall in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and the USA is going to pay for it.
ESL has nothing to do with it. The simple fact is well stated here:
America’s immigration system is designed to only admit newcomers who fall into very specific categories. If someone falls outside those cases, as many central American migrants do, lawful immigration will be challenging, if not impossible.
More here:
What it amounts to is that if you don’t fall into one of the special categories, are not a refugee claiming asylum (or, often, even if you are), and are not a visa lottery winner from a designated country, then legal immigration to the US may be difficult to impossible. We had this discussion on this board before but I can’t find it now. Someone was saying that the average Joe working the average job in a modern western country would have essentially zero chance of getting a permanent US resident and work visa, barring an international corporate transfer, having immediate relatives in the US, or being in one of the other special categories, and I completely agreed with that.
It’s slightly easier to get into Canada because of the points qualification system. Here are a bunch of stories about thousands of Americans who have moved to Canada for reasons similar to those articulated in the OP:
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21652347&postcount=75
If you are a worker, not a businessman or investor or retiree, the usual way to get a visa to reside in a new country is to have a permanent job offer in hand. Of course, you still may have obstacles if you are not in good health, or are over 60 and have to deal with mandatory retirement policies (the age is starting to increase in many countries, though.)
As for immigration TO the US, well, I know a couple of people who were able to get in with a good visa (O visa, which can be extended indefinitely) but even then it wasn’t a matter of showing up with a crumpled-up offer of employment; the sponsoring organization really had to put in some resources to generate the phonebook of required paperwork. I equally know talented people who were unable to immigrate to the US because of these visa complications and had to move to places like Australia and Sweden rather than contribute to the US economy which was their first choice. The Chinese and Mongolians are also hiring (though probably not at the salaries you want).
If you are over 60 and want to retire somewhere and have enough money to support yourself without working, you might also consider a non-working residency permit- you won’t be able to seek employment, but (if that’s OK) at least you can live out your dream of living in a different country.
I’d love to live and work in Canada, but they aren’t interested. I’m 59. I have tried a few times to get contracting jobs there, but either they haven’t nibbled or, with a couple of contracts, the project either fell through or got shelved before I started. Waah.
Wow. This is very eye opening. I can’t judge how accurate or current it is, but it certainly makes moving sound awful.
I’ve actually lived and worked in Canada, sponsored by my employer. The GTA. It was always nice to come home, because, like Dorothy says, paraphrased, there ain’t quite no other place quite like it.
How to get in: have a job, and it’s pretty easy.
Lots of celebrities have said they’d leave the USA if {Bush, Trump, whoever} was elected/re-elected. How many actually have? What does that tell you?
It is not wrong to remain. A patriotic American should stay and vote and fight to change the things he or she doesn’t like about this country, and stay and vote and fight to keep the things he or she does like. Democracy is a journey, not a destination.
I am not being snarky or facetious when I say that this is at once one of the most comforting, and insightful, posts I’ve ever read on the SDMB.
I have very seriously considered looking into moving to South America before the shit hits the fan. But after reading this, I’m convinced that staying here in Missouri (once a swing state, but has since drunk the Trump Kool Aid) is the right thing to do. Sure, my blue vote is just one of a million or so, but better I cast that vote than don’t.
Short answer- I got lucky.
Long answer- I’m a specialist, in a very specialized field, with 20+ years of experience in an industry in which the average professional lifespan is five years. Furthermore, Alberta (where I moved) was (at the time) investing heavily into tech to try to ease out of relying only upon oil for its economy. That changed, though, when the conservative party got into control a few months ago, of course- now it’s oil all the way.
A friend of mine had been working remotely with this company, and announced over Facebook that they were looking for someone with my experience. The company snatched me up, and helped me get my work visa.
I’d like to move to Sweden, I really would, but I have no job waiting for me there and know no one. They’d be crazy to let me in, and so they wouldn’t.
Thirty years ago a woman I knew married an Australian. All of his family was in Australia, while she had no family anywhere. They logically decided to head to Australia.
He, as a citizen, was welcomed back home. While his wife could accompany him, she could not work in her field, as that would potentially be taking a job away from a citizen. They struggled along for a while, but after about 5 years she was ok’d for work.
I understand why the Vietnam war was unpopular - sending our young men to die in a jungle halfway around the world seems ridiculous on its face. But consider the consequences, and the similar example of South Korea. “In 1975, it appeared that the Vietnam War was a clear loss for the United States. But while much of Indochina did become Communist, validating the domino theory to an extent, the war left mostly psychological scars in the United States. It did not affect the United States’ status as a superpower, and though North Vietnam “won” the war, realizing Ho Chi Minh’s lifelong dream, Vietnam’s postwar period was filled with more fighting, poverty, and suffering for its people. Today, as capitalism makes inroads in Vietnam, one would hardly suspect that Communists won the war in 1975.” - SparkNotes. Compare that to the economic, liberal, and democratic success of South Korea (especially vs. the North), and you cannot argue that the U.S. giving up in Vietnam was a net positive for that country.
Switzerland would welcome you if you have brains (and money of course) but the problems are the same here, except we don’t have no nincompoops at the top.
As I mentioned, I know somebody who did just that, and IMHO it ought to be, in the absence of other information, seen as neutral to move from the USA to Sweden or vice versa, no better or worse than moving from Denmark to Sweden. Maybe it was a personal career move; why assume it was a political statement? Also some Swedes move out, and not always to EU or Western or even first-world countries.
BTW you don’t have to be an Olympic gold medalist or anything, but, like most countries, generally speaking you need a job offer in hand before heading to Sweden in order to get your work permit, and, as usual, that job will need to have been advertised for ten days or so in the EU before they can offer it to you. So, realistically, they will need to have you specifically in mind for the job, so you will absolutely need to know them (perhaps from a previous temporary gig in Sweden during which you impressed them).
ETA but, yeah, like people are saying, before you move to Sweden or Switzerland or South Korea or anywhere else, make sure it’s not just because you imagine the grass is greener there.
It proves, exactly, that the specific post I was responding to was wrong. It said protests preceded draft-relayed emigration to Canada.
And here we are:
If you want to have an effect on the political future of America, you don’t have to limit yourself to voting in the presidential election once every 4 years.