would you move to another country if there were no legal barriers?

i love my country is overstating the sentiment a bit but it's closest to what i feel. i think this is probably the best country i could live in with the most opportunities for me and my family. there's one other country i would even consider moving to, but it seems super unlikely

I would just to give it a whirl. Fully expatriating myself from the US would be emotionally difficult and weird, and not sure I could totally do it.

maybe just for fun

Thanks to being an Army brat, I've lived in other countries and quite liked it; and I've done some travel outside the US as an adult. The US is just a piece of land. I'm not married to it, and given the right opportunity, I'd live elsewhere without hesitation.

http://www.mycellomusic.com/Pics/canada_flag_small.gif

i can do this very easily but like where i am. would only do it for a "dream job"

borders should be more open all over the world, if you want to move some where you should p much be able to, this is a v under appreciated human rights issue imho

Yeah, I don't see why not. I have family in other countries, and they're doing more than well. The biggest obstacles are legal, not sentimental. The only thing that makes me American is having been born here, and I had no say in that. I like this country jut fine, but I'm not anchored to it.

I just think you should be able to trade xp

yeah, maybe that's bc there are some more basic human rights we need to work out before we move onto open borders xxp

someone from france wants american citizenship, I want french citizenship, I'll even throw in $10, shake hands, why should this transaction be prevented

Country swap!

I don't know why I'm saying "yes" when I never even travel to anywhere else in the US, much less around the world. But if it were easier to live in more places that had the same things that make NYC good for me, then yes!

In a heartbeat. Born on the cusp between Boomers and X, born in CA but mostly raised in MS, I've never felt any allegiance to any place or generation. Amurrica gives me the karates.

Maybe not in a heartbeat, say two heartbeats?

But, seriously, fuck Britain, what a shithole

NEVER. But that doesn't mean I feel sorry for people in other countries or something. I could easily live in Britain or France, though.

Not me. I once had an opportunity to move for a pretty good job in Canada and I realized that I actually really wanted my kids to be American, not Canadian.

no great legal barriers to move within the eu xxp.....

What's difficult for me is this idea of cultural identity ... say you move to Germany, would you ever truly be German? Would you part ways with your old identity if you adopted a new one, and would people in the new culture truly accept you as 'belonging' in that new culture? How would that change your relationships with yourself and others? I could get it if you hung out with internationals exclusively, but is that really moving to a new country, or just finding a new backdrop with your 'belonging' to your old country as default? There seems to me not only the barrier of borders, but cultural and emotional barriers, too, behind really moving to a new country.

I was born and raised in the US, and have deep roots here, and no matter where I go, it'd never be the same as what I have here. If I wanted the same thing in a new country it would probably take a long ass time, or never even happen. It's a toss-up b/t loss and gain and prob depends on what you value.

i would never visit germany, let alone live there

if I moved to canada I would def hire accent coaches to prevent my kids from getting a canadian accent

I don't like Rush enough to move to Canada.

And they're one of the better things about Canada

My father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all born in different countries. I'd have no problem moving somewhere else, in theory, if i could get a better quality of life. In practice, that might be tougher though.

we're eagerly awaiting the next 'move to canada' expo, so ask again in march. if jobs are available it's looking not unlikely.

done it before, will do it again. southern europe w/in 10 years? that's the goal.

I dunno. I like the idea of pitching up in another country with no particular goals in mind, to stay for maybe a month or a year or maybe even longer if I liked it, no big deal.

But then I don't ever even go on holiday and the thought of starting over in a different town or city even in the UK is massively daunting so who am I kidding. So my fear of change is a much bigger barrier than the legal ones, especially given that in theory I should be able to move somewhere else in the EU without too much paperwork.

The minute i learned about Native Americans when i was like 5 or 6, i decided, fuck yes i would do this.

Having moved to London from Glasgow, I know all about overcoming language barriers

yeah, maybe that's bc there are some more basic human rights we need to work out before we move onto open borders xxp

― Mordy, Monday, December 17, 2012 11:00 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

freedom of movement is pretty basic, think about it

its also fwiw possibly the greatest source of untapped prosperity left in the world

i've thought about this, mostly cuz it would be easy for me to do with dual citizenship. my sister was able to get a job in london with p much zero bureaucratic hassle---in fact, the other candidate was another american, and i think the dual citizenship thing was what sealed the deal. unfortunately, my chosen field actually complicates things tremendously (licensing, etc)

shoulda done it in my 20s, tbh, at least for a little while

doctors with borders

we're exporting all our doctors, i'd advise you to not even consider us for another few economic cycles yet gbx

Real freedom of movement would see a lot of authoritarian regimes with terrible humans rights records toppled pretty damn quickly.

I'm pretty happy in London and wouldn't move to another part of this country. The other places I'd genuinely consider upping and moving to have fairly significant language barriers unfortunately.

Yeah, I would. In a heartbeat. But there are a lot of legal barriers, so this poll is pretty frustrating.

I briefly entertained thoughts of moving to Holland, but man, Golden Earring is inescapable.

i would never visit germany, let alone live there

― Mordy, Montag, 17. Dezember 2012 17:11 (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

i don't get this kneejerk antipathy towards a place you've never been to

have done this a few times, love it, everyone should be able to do it

mordy is jewish iirc

i'm sure they've got some great beers there

oh do they ever

The ex-pats of ilx0r are sodh at this poll.

sodh off, expats

Germany is awesome.

I married a German, and I am apparently eligible for Irish citizenship as well, if I can ever figure out where my grandmother was actually born...

OK, so we lived in Germany for three years when I was a kid (1976-79), and my dad is both Jewish and a second-generation American. (His grandparents came over from Russia and Hungary in the early 1900s.) He lost relatives, however distant, in the Holocaust, and we never once visited any of the camps while we were stationed there; but we were certainly cognizant of the history of where we were living.*

Flash forward to 2002, I had to spend a month in Germany for work. While there, I went out to dinner with some colleagues and talk got around to 9/11, and our reaction to it, and George W. Bush, and one of my colleagues said, "Yes, it's just like with Hitler, he had all of us fooled, we didn't know." It was all I could do not to laugh in her face. That whole cultural blindness to their own history is still amazing.

That said, Germany is a beautiful country and I would vacation there any time.

*(I think I've told this story before, but once my older sister, who was 11 at the time, called a local German kid a "Nazi" in a playgruond spat. Obviously she didn't really know all the history and connotations, but the kid did. I though he was going to tear her face off before my dad got them separated.)

I'll probably see Cuba one day.

before moving to the bay area of California, I would have said "in a heartbeat", but now it's more of a "prob eventually". Not for any negative reason, but to experience life somewhere else. I like to consider myself kind of a "citizen of the world" or something. No allegiance or feelings of patriotism here.

no. not because of patriotism etc, but i really love where i live

if i lived in a different city i might feel differently, its def not an AMERICA #1 vibe or anything

I expatriated to Canada 3 years ago and repatriated to the US last December. I've lived abroad for shorter periods of time other places. I was married to a British-Canadian and spent enough time in England to know that I don't want to live there. I may go abroad to work again at some point in the future, but I'll always come back to the States.

No chance, even though none of the reasons quite match my "perfectly happy where I am" rationale--I'm not excessively patriotic, and maybe there are better countries to live in, I wouldn't know.

je55e i'm french, living in malaysia and have lived in india and mexico.

bo-oring

ha cross thread aggressions dmac, firing yourself up for that spurs lyon game?

in the biggest way, man, the biggest way

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Gave it some thought and realized ...that maybe the idea doesn't appeal to me because of all of the immigrants in my family. Not that I'm xenophobic, it's just the idea of living among "exotic, foreign" people...well I sometimes feel "foreign" myself.

"Dudes who leave America: you know you can always come back and visit, you know. What's there to miss?"

don't get me started! it depends where you move to. i moved to bali and i miss: indie electronica shows, art house movies in a theater, fast internet, best friends that don't move after being here for a few years, roads that aren't full of potholes, cheap drinkable wine at trader joe's, fall colors, christmas with the fams, good mexican food

on the other hand, beach, snorkeling, too-cheap-not-to-get-one maid service, really nice view from my balcony, and employment as a musician/dj

i sometimes fantasize about moving back to the west, but to, say, berlin rather than the u.s. but at this point i'd probably go back to the bay area instead, i do kind of miss that place

we manage to go and work in london, countries are just places, idk, tho obv that mordy story is fucked, but that guy may not have been speaking for all 80 million or w/e

― first u get the flower, then u get the honey, then u get the stamen (darraghmac), Monday, December 17, 2012 12:14 PM (4 weeks ago)

http://forward.com/articles/168948/german-travelogue-unveils-stubborn-anti-semitism/

tbf we have some bizarre anti-semitism in the US, too

I have met americans who thought jews have horns

youd think thered be better anecdotes for an article about a book like that than 1) nazis at a neo-nazi bar 2) empty synagogue 3) anti-israeli violinist??

heres a fairly recent report about how widespread anti-semitism in germany http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16678772

or rather did before they moved out of their hick town xp

The report's authors put Germany midway in their assessment of other European countries in relation to the spread of anti-Semitism.

They see extremely high levels of anti-Jewish sentiment in parts of Poland, Hungary and Portugal.

hungary is terrifying right now

Yeah, but who here is even joking about moving to Germany, let alone Poland, Hungary or Portugal? If I ever moved to another country, I'd only be in it for an across the board upgrade.

I would very strongly consider moving to Germany

in fact, I have

I'd have to wait for a couple more generations of bad vibes to clear out first.

They see extremely high levels of anti-Jewish sentiment in parts of Poland, Hungary and Portugal.

lol poland and hungary never change

I'd have to wait for a couple more generations of bad vibes to clear out first.

you'll be waiting forever, then

otm

it's like saying "I'll wait to move to the US until they get their racial issues figured out"

http://www.whptv.com/media/lib/8/c/3/6/c36f9fbd-cfdb-4658-871c-0778de80e609/Story.jpg

real statue u can visit in warsaw! ^

as a jew I would rather live in germany than america

jack lew is gonna give free money to all ortho jews fyi so stick around

I would only live in berlin tho

in a swank pad

Xps, the statue was by an Italian artist and put there with the permission of Warsaw's Chief Rabbi.

is jack lew not planning on giving money to all the ortho jews?

My wife's college choir went on a tour of eastern Europe during her year off so she didn't go on the trip with them; apparently, when leaving the airport in Poland there was a giant billboard the women encountered that someone had spraypainted "N*****S GO HOME" on in English. The black women in the group also ran into several really awful harassing situations of ppl following them down streets shouting shit at them.

The group later toured... Dachau I think? and there was a massive fight because some of the Jewish women felt like the black women weren't being respectful enough, while the black women basically felt like the entire country was aggressively attacking them and the white women in the group kept making excuses for the behavior along the lines of "oh just ignore them, they don't know any better/they've never seen black people before"

Most of the black women quit the group the following year. It was tense.

Was that recently? Most major cities in Poland will be pretty familiar with black tourists. I've never seen racist graffiti but you do get the occasional swastika in hick towns.

this would have been summer of '92, so no

I do expect that things are a good bit different now

jesus

Yeah, it would have been a completely different country. There was as lot of press talk about the dangers posed to non-white fans in Poland and Ukraine for this summer's football tournament but everything seemed to go really well.

as in there were lumpens fighting in the street but among the slavs and not against blacks so it's cool really

to change the subject a bit ... i think that i can get british citizenship (or at least dual american/british citizenship) since my mother is still a lol british citizen. if this is so and i go that route, it might be useful for work reasons (in the UK and the Commonwealth plus the EU countries).

also, one of my LOL childhood memories is the Canadian border guards giving us (Dad, my sisters & me) a slightly hard time when we visited Canada but being really nice to Mom when she flashed her British passport.

that says more about border guards than about canadians

pretty sure all border guards worldwide are of a single tribe of truculent borderline psychopaths who only emblematically represent their nation of origin

haha yeah the customs people at Heathrow are some of the surliest & laziest bastards i've ever encountered in my life ... and since i've had to deal with the bowel movements of NYC and NJ State bureaucracies for work purposes, that's saying a lot.

I had a cranky Canadian customs agent once but the rest of the process of entering that country has been good.

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Nothing is worse than anyone working in a US airport. My sister says that as soon as she steps off the plane and hears the yelling, she knows she made the right decision leaving.

I've found an amazing job listing that could have been written specifically for me, were it not for the fact it's based in Lagos. As my girlfriend starts to melt when the temperature gets above 17 degrees, it's probably not practical but it could be a lot of fun.