US citizen here, have been actively preparing for a permanent move to Japan with my Japanese citizen spouse, dual citizenship toddler, and our dog for the past 6 months. We are fortunate enough to have the money and legal pathway to do it, and it has still been one of the most stressful experiences (if not the most) of my life.
We’ve had to:
Sell our house, Sell our two cars, Get rid of all our belongings (gave most of them away because it’s just too time consuming to try and sell everything), Apply for a certificate of eligibility for my visa Apply for my visa, Get all the vaccinations and paperwork for our dog and wait 6 months after getting them done, Make arrangements for the dog’s overseas travel, Buy our airline tickets, Find an apartment in Japan without being able to see it in person, Find work in Japan, Find a preschool for our kid in Japan, Have to enter Japan within 3 months of my visa being issued (but NOT sooner than 180 days after the dog gets his 2nd rabies shot and bloodwork results), Etc.
And if we make a mistake on any one of those steps or get delayed and miss our 3-month window, we have to do half of the steps again.
All while continuing to work full time and with a move from our house to the apartment in the middle.
We are close to the finish line, but it has pushed us all to the absolute edges of our mental and physical limits. And again, we are extremely fortunate to have enough savings and equity in our home to even be able to try this…
For the average US citizen, I’d say it’s nearly impossible.
Yeah, but isn’t Japan about the toughest country on Earth to emigrate to? I’d have a nervous breakdown going through all that. I have a special hatred for rules and forms and legal doings.
Doesn’t that mean you hate life in general? Every second of every day is performative nonsense.
No? I just hate legal and governmental obligations. Day-to-day life is fine. I can hate work if it’s a “lawful” kinda place, but I don’t last in those places anyway.
For jobs I have my “Hawkeye Pierce Theory of Work”. Be so damned good they can’t get rid of you and have to let your fuckups slide. Been working great for me!
Could have been worse, you could be a white person trying to find a place to live in Japan in person. There are lots of places that would not be open to you.
Yeah, I’ve certainly experienced my fair share of racism in Japan. Mostly micro-aggression / implicit bias type of stuff, but a few intentional instances as well.
Not looking forward to that.
Something you can look forward to: you get to watch anime without subtitles after you learn Japanese :P
I’ve been studying / speaking / reading / writing Japanese for 25 years. Lived there for 6 years, and used Japanese exclusively at work for 3 years after coming back to the states. So no big issues language-wise.
I was never a huge anime person until my wife and I started watching some during covid. We’re definitely anime people now.
My thing was always Japanese arcade games.
Immigration is only easy if you’re wealthy.
Emigrating and immigrating as they are, poor people mostly cannot.
It’s not even just the laws, it’s very expensive to move.
If it’s not sarcasm in response to americans telling other people to just move to another country/overthrow government, it can be a common misconception. Yet I struggle to see where it comes from: as far as I can tell, “just moving to another country” is not something most people who work for a wage can easily do
Francis Ngannou came to Europe by boat. 🤷 Westerners will need to tap into a different part of their Viking ancestry and move around a bit!
Did you not see word “easily” in my post?
Doable is what matters!
Lol no
I could have gained citizenship in Spain or Portugal based on my family name alone (and like €600 or so) when they had the citizenship path for Sephardic Jewish heritage. I found out too late though and they had closed the door before I even knew about my distant relatives in the first place.
Wife is Irish enough to claim her passport so we’re working that path currently. Those things are just your right to establish a life there, though, and don’t include figuring out housing, source of income and everything else.
It certainly feels like we’re going to miss our chance, but it’s definitely worth it to keep working toward IMO.
Stay and vote!! Talk to your neighbors and vote!!
Cant vote your way out of a fundamentally oppressive system.
Americans have probably the easiest migration path in the world. Strong passport, very high wages and currency value, strong migration support and programs, remote friendly economy etc etc.
No, we can’t just move some place. Most countries require a substantial income or huge investment. Incomes require jobs, and countries require employers to make an attempt to hire citizens first. Most of us speak one language too, so even if we go to the shittiest countries, we’ll be vulnerable to scams.
Nope. I’m literally a digital nomad myself though mostly settled in Thailand these syas. Americans absolutely have an unmatched privileged here very few countries come even close to matching and can relocate relatively easily.
Not everyone is a digital nomad.
While there are definitely perks to being an American trying to relocate, it’s also definitely not easy. If you think it is, you are operating under a survivorship bias. Your situation will vary greatly from another’s.
Not easy it what sense? In absolute sense it’s not easy for everyone - duuuh. But in relative sense Americans have an incredible privilege here and yall still whine.
No one is whining about having a strong passport though. You’re giving a false equivalence. In most cases it’s about not having the funds, skill set, or resources to leave.
But that’s literary the title of the post so it’s more of you moving the goal post. Sure not everyone can afford to move etc. etc. but americans are having an incredible privilege here compared to the rest of the world.
I’m not moving any goal posts. You made a statement that equates to “but it is easy if you are american so Americans are whiners” and that’s just plain false. Easier than some countries, sure. But still not easy.
Just because a couple barriers are removed, doesn’t make the process easy and accessible. Glad you can galavant about with nary a care, I wish I were so priviledged as you, but that’s not realistic for the overwhelming majority regardless of country of origin.
If you want to start a business in the Netherlands as an American, you can get a visa under the DAFT program. You do need to bring the substantial investment of at least 4500 euro into the business.
Yeah. Apparently to these people, America is the only country that people can think of that has strict immigration laws. Everyone else is apparently open borders without question.
I don’t want americans to leave the united state of fascism. I want them to stop voting in imbecilic tyrannical genocidal despots that are convicted rapists who like to fuck children so much that they are compromised by the russians.
Now let me be clear, the orange buffoon that’s in ‘control’ now is all of the above, but any one thing of the above list is bad.
If a fair election ever happens again -because, let’s face it, it’s not guaranteed- and you feel that the person you are about to vote for is a russian stooge, or a kiddie fiddling rapist, or an imbecile etc etc then STOP …and then vote in the person who will most likely not rape children, or try to overthrow your government for their own personal gain 👍.
Everyone I personally know in the Untied States who could vote, I’m pretty sure voted for Kamala Harris
You’re preaching to the choir here bub
And even then some countries like mine Uruguay are very easy to emigrate to.
You need income. If you have a job in your country, you can’t take it with you unless it can be done remotely. I have looked into moving there. I still have not figured out if command terminals are in Portuguese if a person works as an IT admin somewhere.
How do you like Uruguay? Would you recommend it?
I don’t think I can move out of Estonia any time soon, but sometimes I would like to escape to a warmer, but not super hot place… and Montevideo looks beautiful
Yeah, some countries do have very strict standards for entry as much as the US; they’ll choose only those they deem worthy by their standards – entry is only possible with either level of wealth, skill sets, pedigree, language, or a combination of those.
However, there are some people in my country who envy and would even fight to get a chance to be American, despite the ongoing horrors in there, because they still equate citizenship in a developed country with wealth and supposed freedom from corruption.
I have sort of the opposite problem. My wife and I moved to Japan in our 20s and it was pretty damn easy because I’m a citizen and I had family help me find an apartment for us. We were 100% set in terms of basic necessities in like a week and could start job hunting immediately. Now that I’m in my 40s, we’re trying to go back to Canada so we can take care of our parents more and let the kids experience Canadian schools, but it’s so god damn expensive to do anything.
I’m more realistic. I tell people to leave the Untied States if they can. I realize not everyone can but I know people who have other options and choose to stay there. People with ties to other countries
