My Partner/SO/POSSLQ and I are in the early stages of thinking about
emigrating from South Africa to another English speaking country but
obviously each country has it own pros and cons. I work as a UNIX sys admin and Oracle DBA while she is a SAP ABAP programmer/developer so I assume we should be able to find jobs relatively easily. The countries and the pros and cons of each of them are -
The UK
Pros
I have a UK passport so no problems with residency
Close to Europe for nice holidays. We boith like traveling and it would be
great to be so close to so many countries
Cons
the weather
cost of living - it appears that the price of accomodation is horrendous
Canada
Pros
Close to the USA for travels. Closer than South Africa to Europe
Seems like a nice laid back place
Cons
The weather
Australia
Pros
Weather
Cons
More isolated than Canada/the UK
New Zealand
Pros
Seems to be easy to get a residence permit
Cons
Geographical isolation
Obviously this is a very short list of pros and cons but I would be interested to see what residents of these countries could tell me about the pros and cons of each of these countries in terms of living there.
Go to SAP’s own worldwide webpages. Many IT and consulting companies get the willies when thinking of “hiring someone from abroad” (which is weird because they end up doing it the whole time, only it’s as freelancers), but SAP tends to be more open. I know SAP Australia will hire “anybody qualified” (ok, I’m exagerating, but they really don’t care where you’re from so long as you pass muster and they will do the paperwork necessary). Getting to wherever with a job or two is a lot easier than “simply” getting there.
If you end up deciding to come to Europe (or now if you prefer), you can send me your resumes and I’ll forward them to the agencies I’m working with; I’m SAP QM/PM/PP. There’s a lot of agencies in the UK.
Cost of living in London is murder, but (in spite of what Londoners think) it’s not the only town in the country.
You don’t indicate Ireland. A british passport makes you a european citizen, so you can add Ireland to your list. I think the climate is slightly better than in Great Britain.
Where it’s warm all year it’s tropically humid and cyclone-infested, and where it’s ‘Mediterranean’ climate it’s in extended drought. In the middle, it’s desert.
If you’re looking at the UK, don’t forget that there are plenty of places outside London with very reasonably priced accommodation. As Paul in Saudi says, Scotland and Ireland are both great places to live and are much more economic than Lunnon.
You may want to check on the size of the place. Yes, Canada is close to the US. But it is not necessarily so to Europe. If you were living in, say, Toronto, you have a seven hour flight to London; longer to other destinations. From Calgary, London is nine hours away. The further west you go in Canada, or the further from a major city (which is easy to do in a place this size), the more likely it is that your European trip will require you to change planes somewhere at least once. I don’t know if that qualifies as “close” in your mind, but there you go.
Also, “the weather” is an awfully broad statement. Again, size matters. Southern Ontario sees very hot and humid summers. Calgary can see hot and dry summers. Even in the north, summers can be quite warm and pleasant. The important thing to note is that we’re not always covered in ice and snow.
But winters are not impossible. Vancouver and Victoria do not often see snow, but they do get cloudy and rainy in winter. Snow is common elsewhere in winter; sometimes with bone-chilling temps, but not always. A pleasant winter day, with blue skies and sunshine, is not unusual in Calgary, for example. You’ll need a coat, but you won’t need to bundle up like an astronaut just to go get the mail. Of course, we’re well set up for any kind of cold; buildings are heated, and crews are dispatched to clear roads of snow when it happens. You’ll safely stay warm and able to get around.
I know a few Australians and South Africans here, and while they have all told me that they were initially a little worried about the weather, they didn’t find it to be quite as bad as they imagined. Certainly, they all got used to it fairly easily.
With your qualifications you would have no problem finding suitable employment in Ottawa. By the way it was minus 30 yesterday morning. Much warmer today at minus 15.
A variety of reasons. Security is one of them although I am not paranoid. Two of the things most concerning me are getting retrenched and not finding a job because of affirmative action and also I am slightly concerned about South Africa eventually following Zimbabwe’s path. Although South Africa is doing well at the moment so was Zimbabwe 10 years ago. Unfortunately no matter how much I hope that things continue to go well here, in the end I do have to look out for myself and those close to me.
The USA doesn’t appeal to me much. It just seems to me that the USA can be very conservative, religious, intolerant and elitist and this will probably bug me if I lived there. While I realise these are generalisations it appears that a lot of the SDMB agree with me. Also I hear it’s quite difficult to get a green card.
Not to point out the obvious, but all the countries you have cited have the same things.
The scope of continental nations like the United States or Canada or Australia cannot be overemphasized. If you are seriously thinking of emigrating, those countries are not single destinations. They’re MULTIPLE destinations. South africa is a very large country, but Canada and the US are eight times bigger and are astoundingly culturally diverse; Maine is as different from Arizona as South Africa is from the United Kingdom, in cultural, weather, and (almost) distance terms.
Don’t like conservatism? (and to be honest, the conservatism of the USA is exaggerated) Move to California, or New York, or Minnesota, or any number of liberally inclined places. You can find pretty liberal and cosmopolitan cities in conservative states. Really, such huge countries offer a variety of destinations.
The list of things in this post doesn’t really describe where I’m from, and we do a bit of computer/IT work here, too.
To tell you the truth, the USA doesn’t appeal to me much at times either, but it’s so diverse that NorCal isn’t the “USA” any more than Atlanta or Portland or Boston are. Good luck; I’m interested to hear where you decide to land.
If you want to move to Australia, it might make the US Green Card look easy by comparison. You’ll obviously not be coming here on humanitarian grounds, so you’ll either need to be extremely wealthy or be able to prove to the Australian government that there are no locals who can do your job. Getting in here is pretty tough these days, as with many industrialised countries.
Sorry to briefly hijack your thread (but you may find it a useful hijack, who knows) but a lot of my fiance’s colleagues think of London being a great destination for software engineers - to hear them talk you can earn something like four times the salary doing the same work. Does anyone have any experience of this, or is it an exaggeration?
