No, you don’t. You don’t need a lick of the local languages to teach throughout Asia.
Not really. There are immersion style programs where they specifically want teachers who don’t know the native language.
This isn’t true.
Foreign English teachers generally teach conversational classes, which are conducted entirely in English. Their role is to improve accents and idiomatic usage, as well as to provide prestige and visibility to the school. They generally aren’t doing the heavy lifting teaching grammar and the like, and they usually don’t need to learn the local language any more than is needed to navigate town and manage basic needs.
Even with translating, a piecemeal living can be made just correcting poorly translated signs and the like.
Migrating to Aus took us most of year, and that was a long time ago. Typically takes 2 or 3 years now.
Lots fo exceptions of course, but even marriage would normally take more than “a few months”.
The more money you have, and the less particular you are about which country you want to settle in, the easier it is to settle in another country.
Being American, as such, isn’t a particular advantage. When it comes to tourist visas, business visas and other short-stay visas, there are lots of countries which pay attention to what passport you’re carrying, and which look with a kindly eye on (among others) a US passport. But when it comes to long-term and migrant visas, this is much less true. It’s much more the case that all applicants will be assessed against the same criteria, regardless of what passport they hold.
There are exceptions - the rights of EU citizens to settle in any member state are an obvious example, but there are also cases where a historic link, or close economic ties, between two countries may give you an advantage (e.g. New Zealanders moving to Australia and vice versa). But I don’t think US citizens benefit from many such deals.
Of course, coming from a first-world society like the US, there’s a greater chance that you will meet whatever financial, educational, skills etc criteria will qualify you to settle somewhere. But in the end the question will not be whether you come from a country where such characteristica abound, but whether you personally possess the necessary characteristics. Similarly, where citizenship of or residence in a country is available based on descent, a society built up by immigration like the US will contain a higher proportion of people who can qualify for some country on the basis of descent. But a US passport will be no help to you unless you, personally, can claim the required descent.
It’s true that laws are being tightened in Thailand and elsewhere in the region. However, there are exponentially more farangs (Westerners) living there now than just 20 years ago. They’re arriving in droves, tighter laws or no tighter laws. I remember when I used to be considered exotic by the locals even in Bangkok. Farangs are no longer seen as such but instead are recognized as just humdrum now.
It’s also important to note that citizenship is only a major concern for a comparatively small proportion of Western expats. Most care about some kind of permanent residency status and security from sudden deportation but relatively little about being allowed to have a say in the civic institutions of their new country. For expats, having a powerful passport is generally more important and if you have an American one, there’s not that many benefits to acquiring a second one (unless you want to renounce your American one for IRS meddling reasons).
Thus, a focus on citizenship requirements tends to be misleading as there’s lots of countries in which acquiring citizenship is very difficult but acquiring 5+ year residency visas are much much simpler.
Not from such deals, since they have to be billateral and the US doesn’t want to give, but for countries with “blood rights” along the lines of being able to claim citizenship if one of your grandparents was their citizen, often the country of birth of the applicant doesn’t matter.
That’s about like Douglas Adam’s instructions for flying: “Throw yourself at the ground, and miss.”
How are you supposed to support yourself, since as an illegal you most likely won’t be able to get a decent job? What about buying property or even signing a lease? Getting a driver’s license? Opening a bank account?
You either have to have a LOT of money to be a successful illegal immigrant, or live in fear and poverty.
The UN figures that there are around 230 million migrants in the world.
Do you think everyone in the US has a decent job? Buys property or gets a drivers license? 7% of American households don’t have a bank account.
If you’re already living in poverty or close to it you’re not risking that much.
You risk being deported at best, thrown in jail at worst. There are people here (in Indonesia) in prison for immigration violations. Believe me, you do NOT want to be in an Indonesian prison.
But that’s just my own point of reference, and only one country. I suppose being an illegal immigrant in a country where you can blend in (so you aren’t so likely to be caught), where you speak the language (so you can conduct daily life without undue hassle/extra cost), and where you have a skill or strength that allows you to work illegally, and the jails are clean and they feed you so getting caught isn’t such a scary proposition, it wouldn’t be a lot worse than living in the US.
Realistically, though, just which countries were you thinking would be so cozy for Americans to illegally immigrate to?
But the Americans who are talking of moving abroad for political reasons aren’t thinking of doing so to clean houses, wipe asses, work black and have their stomach do backflips every time they see a cop. They are still expecting to live in houses large enough for a family of twelve, proclaim “I am an American citizen!” as if that meant the Marines have their back, and loudly ask “does anybody here speak my language?” as if the language was their personal property.
That does not accurately describe even a single expat family (American or otherwise!) I’ve ever met, in any country I’ve visited, in thirty years of travel. Yes, I’m certain there must be one or two.
But it is grossly unfair characterization, to project this onto any expats, American or otherwise. And accurately reveals much more about the poster than expats, in my humble opinion.
I think you’ve missed an important detail. I said “those who want to move abroad FOR POLITICAL REASONS”.
Reasonable people do not move abroad for political reasons (I don’t consider “an army/my government wants to kill me” as a political reason).
Hardly anyone statistically speaking is going to actually emigrate because of Trump. Mainly, people are throwing temper tantrums to speak of emigrating over the election.
However in fairness to left leaners, a lot of them even if they did move to other countries would be hell bent on not acting, overtly at least, as the Ugly American you described in previous post. Typically it’s a core part of their beliefs to criticize their own country’s ‘arrogance’ as they see it.
It’s not to say they’d really be willing to take a big step down in lifestyle, it’s among the reasons few will really leave. Because one typically can’t set up a good legal job in another country ‘on a whim’ (though it’s far from impossible). Although as mentioned several times now, some Americans actually could move to lots of other countries ‘on a whim’ if a) they don’t have to work locally there (independent financially, retired or otherwise, or need to work but can do it completely remotely) and b) similarly they don’t need to qualify for govt benefits in the new country, either because they don’t need them or aren’t intending to cut all ties with the US (for their Social Security etc).
Cite? Nonsense? Not my experience of those who actually move “FOR POLITICAL REASONS.” Most I’ve known live very modestly and are sensitive to the culture they’ve entered.
Planning a big party for dozens or hundreds of people takes a few months. Getting married takes maybe a few hours. A few days if you decide to do it on a weekend when the county registrar’s office is closed.
ETA: I may have totally misunderstood this comment, and you meant that it takes longer than a few months to immigrate as a spouse of someone. If so, please disregard the above light snark.
Do you know what it is that takes 2-3 years? Is that entirely waiting on the government to process forms and issue a visa? How does any employer hire a foreign employee if it takes that long? I can’t imagine most employers waiting 2-3 years to hire any but the absolute best few in their areas of expertise.
I’m well aware of what it requires (in general terms. I’m not saying I know exactly what procedures are required for any given country).
I still think that, if my goal was to legally work and reside in a foreign country that meets some reasonable standard of stability and functionality, I could accomplish that in 3-4 months. I base that on having friends who got jobs in foreign countries, and it didn’t take them a year or two to go through the recruitment process. All of them were reasonably skilled individuals, but not like, world-renowned in their fields or anything.
I think that most Americans with a bachelor’s degree and a few years of good work experience could accomplish this if they really wanted to.
I haven’t been assuming I can move to another country. What I meant is that I intend to try to move to another country. (And yes, I have started talking to colleagues who work overseas and asking about possible job openings.)
Well, Sandra met Wing online [in a MIRC Babylon 5 channel of all places] in 1998, and did the online long distance thing for about a year, then he came over to visit for a month, then he went home to Perth Australia, and then they started gathering all the assorted documentation needed, she emmigrated with her 10 year old son and it took a year of living with him and jumping through hoops before they finally got married, then it was 2 or 3 years of visa fun before she finally got her Australian citizenship. So while it wasn’t impossible or fast, it was doable. They are still together and very happy [I think Wing adopted Alan too, but I am not 100% sure.]
mrAru and I would be more problematic, he has a military retirement pay of about $960 a month, we have retired military medical care, he also has VA, and is only 51. He is a techie - I think the nearest civilian bit would be marine diesel mechanic, food service equipment maintenance and repair, HVAC maintenance and repair, plumbing and quality assurance inspector, so he theoretically would be able to emmigrate. Me with my medical history would be problematic as keeping my sorry ass alive takes a fair amount of doctoring and pills [well and insulin] so while he could go lots of places with a much lower cost of living would be golden as a single, adding me into the mix would bar many of the lower level third world countries [I need excellent doctors and hospitals as I do bloodwork every 3 months and have health issues.]
I wonder if some Americans assume emigration to other countries is easy because *their *immigrant ancestors came *here *at a time when immigration to the US was relatively simple. As I understand it, my great-grandfather’s immigration experience in nineteen-oh-something consisted of buying a ticket in Bremen and showing up at Ellis Island some weeks later. No one’s mentioned months or years of visa applications, working illegally while trying to avoid deportation, etc.
Of course it’s possible, even likely, that his children (my grandfather and his brother) over-simplified things a little when they told the story to my mother. But it’s the story we have: “Great-grandpa decided to leave Ruthenia, so he went to Germany and found a ship leaving for America, and came here.”
I wonder if the children of more recently-arrived immigrants have more realistic notions of the ease (or not) of emigration.