Where would you go????

[Boyd]

Since the USA is the freest country, if things got so bad here you would want to leave, it's time to take up arms and carve our your own free republic.

just what I was thinking... the Peoples Democrat Republik of Boyd's land.... I'd stick to either my main house or our cabin.. And although you can find the actual cabin by map, as soon as we hit the woods the compass is useless because of all the magnetic iron ore deposits.... plenty of ways to hide

 

[Beekissed]

New Zealand

 

[Bubblingbrooks]

My take on this? I am glad there was not a mass exodus during events like the Civil War. Being self sufficient and independent is great and all, but what good does that do us when we need to stand together?

 

[Boogity]

. . . but what good does that do us when we need to stand together?

Legal American citizens have forgotten how to do that. It's all me, me, me and neighbors be damned.

 

[patandchickens]

If you want to move to another country, you can't do it on a spur of the moment thing. It takes planning. We started my process 18 months before I even moved. Dunno about other cuntries, but here you don't become a citizen just because you're married to one anymore. And they'll make you jump through tons of hoops and red tape.

It is not merely a matter of planning and waiting and paperwork, though.

I know that, when I immigrated here 9 years ago, there were certain criteria you had to meet to even be ELIGIBLE to apply for immigration (including what job sector you were qualified to work in) and then it could take several to many years, and several thousand dollars, to process your application. It also varies quite a lot depending on where you're immigrating FROM (the fastest, for Canada, being other members of the British Empire, with the US being a close second... if you are trying to immigrate to Canada from some small less-westernized country it can realistically take up to ten years EVEN IF you meet all immigration criteria; even spousal immigration from some countries can take two to five years).

Bear in mind that most countries -- certainly US, Canada and NZ -- have multiple types of immigration applications. There is applying as a new spouse of a citizen; applying as a family member of a citizen; applying as an investor bringing bags o' money into the country; and applying as a self-employed or "skilled worker" person who has no existing ties to NZ but jsut wants to move there, which is what most of y'all would presumably be doing.

I did a little googling for NZ since it is so popular (bear in mind that it is an expensive place to live in some ways due to its island-ness, does not have the very strongest economy at the moment, and is on an AWFUL lotta peoples' lists of 'places I'd like to live, at least in an imaginary way'). This http://www.immigration.govt.nz/migrant/ is where most of yer information is. Here http://www.immigration.govt.nz/pointsindicator/ is a points calculator to see if you qualify for possible admission in the skilled worker category (self-employed is a very difficult way to immigrate in most countries).

Go run yourself thru the calculator (also, go try to find the list of careers/jobs that QUALIFY for skilled immigrant applications; I didn't try real hard, but it's there somewhere. Not all jobs/careers qualify). Even if you imagine that you can get a job offer from a NZ company, you may still find that you don't make the minimum point threshold. If you *do* make the minimum point threshold, my reading of their webpages is that processing times are fairly swift, like 6 months or so (for skilled immigrants without job offers), unless I'm missing something.

Of course if some event causes you to want to leave the US for NZ, you can expect many many other people to want to do the same and immigration criteria and processing times are likely to change

Most people in Sweden speak English (to different degrees, of course).

Most of the Scandinavian-country citizens I've met over the years speak better more-correct English than most Americans do (although obviously they usually speak it with an accent)

Pat

 

[Neko-chan]

Speaking from the immigrant spouse angle (I got real tired of poring over those websites, I'll tell ya). I've got my temporary visa now, and my application comes up for consideration in a year or two. I moved here last August, so I think it's going all right. I can't vote, but then, I never enjoyed voting in the first place (hatehatehate politics). I think I have to live here for three years or something before they give me that "privelege".

My MIL moved from Australia to Canada. It took her something like 10 years to get everything processed.

Still, I do not regret my decision to move. Specially seeing how everything else is turning out.

 

[TanksHill]

My in laws visited New Zealand a few years back. They got an "estimate" of how much it would cost them to move there. They were required to have hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings because of their age. I imagine because they would have been retired there.

g

 

[lorieMN]

I am staying right here in the good old USA on my farm till my death..unless I decide to move to the Black Hills, SD..I dont see myself ever WANTING to leave the US.

 

[ORChick]

We could move to Germany as DH is still a German citizen. But he has been here for 35 years, and we are pretty well settled where we are. Somehow I can't imagine, if it is bad enough here to want to leave, that anywhere else would be better. I think that a wildfire in these hills would be about the only reason that could make me think of leaving ... and then I would be back again as soon as I could.

 

[baymule]

I already live in a 'nother country.......I live in TEXAS.