Leaving USA for someplace saner- easier said than done?

In My Humble Opinion
21

It’s doable, my wife and I had a plan if Trump got elected and now that it’s happened we’re discussing it. It might not be possible for us to get our dog there and that’s a deal breaker. We are traveling there soon and have asked a friend if he has a good immigration lawyer we can consult. Our friend builds houses, largely for Americans looking for vacation houses. It helps that we have both lived overseas for much of our adult lives.

Places like the EU and Canada are going to be very hard, but there are nations that make it easy to live as a retiree. It comes down to your comfort level with change.

22

*Citation needed.

23

I see from your first link that two of the countries I know about, Portugal and Costa Rica, are at the top of the lists. We have a good friend to emigrated to Portugal and they love it, but it did take significant time and effort, as mentioned by Cervaise.

24

I too have a friend who moved to Portugal with his wife. They consciously moved to a small town, not one of those expat enclaves that have really stirred up resentment among many of the locals. His blog posts about the transition have been hilarious. Essentially the paperwork and bureaucracy there have the same set of rules as Calvinball. The forms you were told to gather yesterday are not the ones you need today. Mail is delivered to your house. Except for the days the mailman sits in the center of town and honks his horn. Well, that and the days where mail can only be picked up at the post office. If you have the right forms…

Still, they seem to love it there and have invited us for a visit. Who knows what seeds that might plant.

25

Fortunately for me and the Mrs. our eldest kid is a Canadian citizen and as such that enables us to reside in Canada for some length of time (up to 10 years if the right paperwork is filled out and approved) before we would have to briefly leave before returning again.

However, the idea of leaving my home of 67 years is quite unappealing.

26

My wife was born in NY to her Greek Cypriot father in the 50s just prior to his US naturalization. It is certainly possible for her to pursue a path to relocating to Cyprus. But her main objection would be the significant travel involved. (She has two children and five grandchildren here in the US.)

My main objection would be that I’m not sure that Cyprus would be a big improvement (other than being less expensive). We’ve gone back to visit her father’s village several times and she still donates to support a chapel her father helped build. But there’s an increasing Russian presence there and I wouldn’t consider the culture to be (significantly) more liberal than it is here.

27

Yeah, she’s going to need to show her work on that one.

28

Does anyone here know how hard it is for a spouse of a Canadian citizen to get residency? I guess I could try searching it, but I would like to know in practice, not in theory. My kids and grandkids are all dual US/Canada citizens but their spouses are not and would need residency and work permits.

29

This!
Emphasis on this. Getting by in a tourist area isn’t the same as being immersed with locals who don’t know a lick of English.
Based upon seeing an ad & then separately investigating (for about 5 mins), I think I could qualify for Polish citizenship but I need to learn Polish* & live there for some period of time.


To me, Polish is probably the toughest language there is. They’re using ‘our’ letters but pronouncing them with totally different sounds. I think it would be easier to learn Cryllic or Chinese, at least the different sounds have different letters/characters to go with them.

30

I could go to Israel, but that’s not something I’d do right now for several reasons.

31

So here is a data point. I have friends well acquainted with the expatriate life; they spent most of their lives working outside the US. The husband carries both EU and Israeli passports. Their finances are solid. When they visited me a few months ago, they vowed that if Trump got elected they would leave the US, possibly moving to Hawai’i first for a couple of years while deciding where to land permanently.

I wrote them as soon as the bad news was clear, letting them know that I’m on tap to help plan a move here.

And now that the unpleasant reality is staring them in the face? They are taking stock and realizing that moving now (she’s in her 60s, he is early 70s) would be a huge hassle and would leave their adult daughter (married and working as a public defender in Virginia) behind.

Hawai’i is still maybe in the cards, but I think they’ll abandon that when they realize that moving here is not much better than moving to a foreign country, in terms of being near their daughter. (My son is in California so it’s not so bad for us.)

32

Similarly - one of my easier options would be to leverage the fact that my grandfather is from the Ukraine. Um…no thanks.

33

Here’s ABL on the many challenges for U.S. citizens seeking to move abroad (including taxes):

34

I was on an all-hands call last week, and one of the questions during the Q&A was whether the company allowed work-from-home staff to work outside the country. (The answer was no, because the company isn’t setup to allow for the payroll, benefits and other complications.)

35

I don’t need to tell you people would sell their kidneys to get here.

It’s the best place to live. We have rules. The political climate is shitty.

Name me a place that doesn’t have violence, to a degree? Or some icky rule/law, that’s a pain?

If I gotta go by laws or idiocy I don’t like I’d rather do it at home. Where I understand the language and customs. And I don’t have to be “the” ugly American living somewhere where every single thing is hard to do.

There is no perfect place.

36

Cuenca is a beautiful city, really well located, the temperatures are mostly mild, the views are gorgeous, and there’s a very vibrant expat community. Much more diverse than any other I’ve encountered. Eat great food and ride horses around the spectacular countryside. Music, music everywhere. Spanish colonial architecture, and nights just chill enough for a fire in the fireplace. And only the most excellent coffee.

37

No one is arguing this.

However, Luxembourg is a better place to live than the US, by basically every measure that matters, and you couldn’t drag me back in chains.

38

Why not do what the US illegals do? Get into a country and just stay there. You can get a visitor visa to just about any country, and renting someplace long term to live doesn’t usually require showing a passport. Do other countries do that much better job of a job finding and deporting non-citizens than the US does? Assuming you have enough money so that having to work isn’t required.

39

You’re gonna need a lot of money or move to a shitty place.

What happens when you need some kind of medical treatment?
“I have my U.S. insurance”
And that will work in Slovenia?
“But they have universal health care!”
But it isn’t free. It’s paid through taxes and if you’re not a citizen or official resident you’re going to end up in a world of trouble. Maybe not financially, but with red tape and bureaucracy. I could go to Slovenia and just stay there, because as a Swedish citizen, they’ll have to honour that I’m part of the EU. So I get emergency treatment which is then billed to my country. How would that work out for you?

Or you get in a traffic accident. Is it your car? Rented? Is your license valid in that location? You might not be at fault, but there’s going to be questions asked. And how about banking?
“I have my account with CitiBank and my card.”
Sure, and withdrawal fees, conversion ASF can be a bother. Better to have a local bank and the money transferred with the SWIFT/IBAN network, so you get the most band for your $.

There are so very many minor everday issues that you simply never think about in your everyday llife. Living as an undocumented person and trying to actually live is not a great way to spend your time.

Another thing is languages. Americans are (sorry to say) not known for proficiency in languages apart from English. Now English is the de facto lingua franca of the world•, and in many places you can get by really well without knowing the local lingo. But why would you? I’m not talking about ‘Ugly Americans,’ but your life in another country will be so very much richer if you can partake in daily life. Gabbing with the neighbor, talking to someone in the local café about yesterday’s game. Little things. But you live there now.

I don’t know if @Cervaise has picked up the utterly weird Luxembourgian language••, and I’m sure English serves him well, but my guess is that if he and the family know some German or French, their lives are a lot easier.

• Fun aside: Since Brexit, English has suddenly been reduced to a minor language in the EU. It’s the official language for Ireland, Malta (and probably Cyprus), so around 6M. In spite of that, it is the unofficial working language in the corridors in Brussels and Strasbourg. A Croat and a Dane will chat in English over coffee, even if all official dealings are done with interpreter (I know one of them).
••Luxembourgian is this really weird mix of French and German where, if you know some of either language, it sounds as if you should be able to pick out some stuff, but soon realize that no. No you cannot.

40

Also many banks are now refusing to provide banking facilities to US nationals, because of the FATCA requirements, and closing the existing accounts of US persons.