I'm American and moved to Europe (Switzerland) 17-years ago. Sometimes I laugh to myself when I think how whatmy long-dead immigrant grandfather (from Vilnius to Midwest USA) would think of my reverse move.
Growing up we always thought my grandparents were the weirdest people. They roasted and ate whole chickens, not cut up chicken parts from the grocery store. They drank tea and ate weird Russian tea cake cookies. They made their own sausage. They hunted ducks and deer. They ate raw beef.
Since moving to Europe I buy a lot of my food from neighborhood farms, roast whole chickens, make tartare, make cheese and sausage... hunting and fishing isn't so easy here though - I can do that when I visit relatives in the USA though.
Ironically enough, Vilnius is now a very beautiful, safe and high quality of life city that is a better place to live than, probably, quite a lot of American cities..
When I was a kid, "starving children in Ethiopia" was a reason to eat your whole dinner. My formerly Swiss grandma once said "starving children in Europe" and I was very thrown for a moment.
I'm moving from California to Portugal this week. I get to retire much earlier with low-cost healthcare and a cost of living lower relative to CA, and the Portuguese people I've met have all been wonderful. The food is great too!
I'd rather be on the side that supports Ukraine, clean energy, and stable trade agreements. I don't feel safe in the US anymore.
I know a guy that worked for good UK salary (fintech) that moved to Portugal(Lisbon) almost a decade ago. It seems to be a lovely place, he also happily tell me how much he manage to save and how early he will be able to retire. He got many friends there too, but mostly expats.
If I'm to believe my Portuguese friends however, the extreme influx of digital nomad types have really changed Lisbon. There's almost no authentic Portuguese thing there anymore, just thing LARPING as it. The rent is too high for any local young Portuguese to pay for, while the landlords are super happy for these influx of wealthy expats, so the young either move out of the city or move all together.
In a very utopia like set up, there's something depressing about that reality.
When I asked about to my expat friend living there, he acknowledged it, shrugged, and said "don't hate the playa, hate the game".
I'm not moving to Lisbon, but my experience in that city aligns with your friends'.
Other cities offer much better value for money and hold a lot more of the Portuguese culture intact. There are beautiful cities and towns all throughout the country.
Couldn't agree more. If you have any pointers (to web sites) that were helpful to you as you were making your decision or preparations, please do post them.
Also, did you consider any other countries that you later struck from your list?
I used an immigration service to help me through the process. Alongside that I spent several months learning the language then weeks traveling through PT before making the decision.
You can do the immigration process yourself, but it's a long process with a lot of i's to dot and t's to cross. It was helpful to have experts guiding me through the process. Learning the language also helped a ton. The Portuguese in cities all speak English extremely well, but they really embrace you when they see you putting in some effort to speak Portuguese. I learned with Pimsleur for native pronunciation and Anki frequency vocabulary decks. I had some background with Spanish, so it was easier for me to learn Portuguese than starting from zero.
I also considered Uruguay and Malta but preferred the safety of Portugal and its bigger size.
My uncle moved from Germany to Portugal for the same reason. He loves it and the main pain point is healthcare - low-cost, but in his 70s he travels back to Germany for health issues due to quality. It's unpopular opinion in Portugal and everyone will tell you how nice the hospitals are, zero wait times and no hidden expenses. May be my uncle was unlucky, but minor heart issue wasn't properly diagnosed for about a year there, and required a single visit in Germany to get it under control.
I think this is probably useless information considering that legal restrictions largely limit the ability of people to move from one to the other.
Speaking as an American that “accidentally” moved to the EU a decade ago, my impression is still that ambitious EU citizens, particularly those in tech or finance, would move to the US in a second if it was possible to.
That said, I don’t personally plan on moving back anytime soon, although I do miss certain aspects of the American identity and experience constantly.
Yeah, given that it's much easier to get a visa to work in the EU (albeit still not easy) than in the US, the default position ceteris paribus would be that more people would move from the US to Europe than vice versa.
The fact that wasn't the case before just goes to show how big an impact the economic disparity has.
If they can work remotely and keep their American salaries then they can live like Emperors here.
If not, I imagine they will get tired of the low salaries and high taxes and move back to the US. It might be better here for artist types etc. who can benefit more from the social welfare systems than they have to pay in. But for engineers, it makes little sense - you are the one who has to pay for the party.
Yes and no. American salaries are great but our cost of living is insane. The amount of time wasted in the US doing basic stuff also can't be discounted. Our cost of healthcare adds up, as does the cost of everything here.
I think this data shows that a lot of Americans are waking up to our brand of "freedom" being bullshit. The American dream is a bit of a myth nowadays.
Americans lie to ourselves. If one isn't wealthy in the US, think top 15%, you're better off living outside the US. But Americans are "not yet billionaires" so most of us don't realize this. Our media pumps our hubris and egos using "freedom" and nationalism. Most Americans never travel outside of the US and believe our lives here are infinitely better than anything else in the world. It's something I see constantly when I talk international stuff with rural Americans(and the suburban cosplayer), an absolute fantasy version of the world.
Cost of living in comparable EU cities is very high as well, except salaries aren’t really correspondingly higher.
The American dream is and has always been kind of a national myth but honestly if you limit it to purely making a lot of money by working hard, I think it’s still quite true, and the best place in the world to do so.
When you say that EU cost of living is comparable, are you taking into consideration the cost of health and higher education? In the U.S., if you're not currently priced out on those two points, just give it time & you will be!
The U.S. isn't the shining-city-on-the-hill beacon it once was. I think that's pretty clear.
Sorry if my comment was confusingly written, I didn’t mean that certain cities are the same price, just that comparable cities (e.g. similar populations and amenities) are still expensive and that the salaries are lower too.
I think realistically a person with a good job has about the same financial experience in both the US and EU; except they’re making more money in the US to pay for more expensive things.
> if you limit it to purely making a lot of money by working hard, I think it’s still quite true,
Wholeheartedly disagree. I see countless hard workers struggling immensely to get by here. Costs and inflation have spiralled the last 5 years while healthcare and education have been pricing out the middle class for over a decade. The job market is awful and getting worse by the day.
I mean the America dream was real in the past to a lot of immigrant/recent immigrant Americans. It's cool that Europe has caught up. It's amazing that China has lifted their people up.
Let's continue improving quality of life for everyone. Europe doing better/being a viable alternative doesn't necessarily mean the USA is all bs. I'm pretty sure every country's people are more comfortable of how their country lives than foreign countries. Not sure why rural American's have a special carveout on that take.
As an engineer that moved to Europe - everyone benefits from the social welfare system.
I benefit by not having to worry about the homeless druggie assaulting me and on a more values-based level, by not feeling like shit for living like a king while the druggie has to be homeless.
The taxes are a membership fee for living in a society that isn't permeated with cruelty and violence.
Plus, they pay for stuff like working public transport etc as well.
Moving to another country where drug addicts get help instead of being left to fend for themselves and paying my taxes there is a way to vote with my wallet on the sort of system I'd like to see - namely, one of compassion.
Surprisingly, the vote on limiting Switzerland's population to 10 million may actually pass. Usually votes for things that will hurt the economy don't come close to passing but right now the limit is a few percent ahead.
Switzerland has treaties with the EU. The EU would prefer a single treaty, Switzerland prefers lots of piecemeal treaties.
Current political climate in Switzerland is a bit like Brexit before Brexit: lots of populist blathering about how the EU exploits Switzerland so there are lots of votes in being anti-EU and in demanding "fair" deals ("fair" always means "more for me, less for you").
These treaties are currently being renegotiated -- I think some of them technically expired but both sides pretend they are still valid during the negotiations.
There are forces in Switzerland that would like to break one or more of the treaties and keep the others.
The EU won't like that so we got guillotine clauses = if one treaty is no longer valid, none of them are valid, to prevent the Swiss from playing funny games.
One of the Swiss complaints is fair: they provide roads for lots and lots of EU transit traffic.
If the population hits 10 million they would try to limit the freedom of movement agreement with the eu, which means they would lose free trade with the eu. Kind of like brexit.
I expected this comment to be made anyways, so I didn't even bother rephrasing.
If it helps you, I don't support the initiative. Doesn't change the fact that rental property is scarse, public transport is full and children/teacher ratio is horrendous.
The birth rate in Switzerland (just as in many highly developed countries) is already way below 2.1 children per woman, which would be required to sustain the population. Any population growth comes from immigrants. Xenophobic people are scared by that.
Switzerland's fertility rate has been below the replacement rate of 2.1 babies / woman since the 1970s. There is zero chance of births pushing it above the 10M count. If anything, immigration is the sole reason the Swiss aren't going extinct.
Following the same logic: everyone who isn't a Native American doesn't count as American.
And how are you going to count someone with one Swiss parent and one immigrant parent? Three Swiss grandparents and one immigrant grandparent? What are you going to do about all those people in Genève who had a forefather move over from Annecy 5 generations ago?
The fact that most Swiss people speak languages pretty damn close to German, French, and Italian should be a good indication that immigration does, in fact, create Swiss people.
What counts as a Swiss person? Would children of immigrants growing up in Swiss society, going to Swiss schools, and speaking the national languages of Switzerland count?
Swiss people are more strict about this than other parts of europe, so they lean more toward swiss ethnicity, also being open to neighbouring citizens. Last being immigrants from outside europe.
I am jealous of the lifestyle of most of Europe, but not the rigid labour markets and lower salaries. I wish we had more people-oriented cities in North America, though. I don't want to be anti-automobile, but the hostility to the "15 minute city" idea was quite depressing to me.
If you look up the graph this is a 20 years old trend .
One thinks of course about Eastern Europe which had a decent economic growth.
Compare to many American HN Readers thinking, "Europe" in General tried to make a place better for living. What it means is of course very dependent on person, but consider thinks like better health care, no war (that's the EU for), better indro, but also economics but to certain percentage it worked out!
Though I can't say about American but health care and guns are still a problem.
Compare to Europe which hadn't a start up 20 years ago and "Europe" tries to fix t.
Is a green card the equivalent to a first time residence permit in Europe? It's notoriously hard to get a green card: it'll take 3 years for a normal skilled worker who's already in the US and that's assuming nothing goes wrong in the process, and something always does. Plus many visa categories don't even have a path to a green card. "Long term stay visas issued" might be a better comparison.
Each EU country has its own rules about immigration.
A green card is probably equivalent to a permanent residence permit, those vary quite a bit between countries, and skills. Some countries might give a permanent residence in as few as 3 years, I believe quite a few have the 4 years threshold. Depending on what skills you have or how much you invest in the country you are moving to this timeline also shortens.
Generally continental Europe -- except the Scandinavian countries -- makes it relatively easy to get long-term residency and even a passport. The UK is considerably more difficult, but very easy to work in for an extended period of time (intra-company transfer visas etc).
Scandinavia had Sweden until yesterday's vote in Riksdagen, I moved here 10+ years ago, got my permanent residence after 4 years, citizenship after 5.
Rules have been changed now, citizenship in 8 years will become law on June 6th, also requiring language and cultural tests which weren't required before.
Continental Europe used to vary, Germany was stricter with 8 years to citizenship but permanent residence would vary depending on work skill and language skills.
Can you give some specific examples? I would say that, unless you have some additional qualifications (European ancestors, EU spouse and similar), the majority of EU countries actually don't make it that easy. Of course, it depends on your definition of "relatively easy".
Yes, it's never a trivial process, so a lot of work is certainly being performed by that "relatively": I have extensive personal experience with the UK immigration process and know of the US equivalent through the experiences of former colleagues back home. France, for example, is five years to a passport/naturalization. Germany is three years of skilled work to indefinite leave to remain. The Netherlands is five years to indefinite leave to remain. None of those examples require European ancestors, EU spouse etc, but generally it's easier if you have a university degree and work in the various fields most readers of hacker news do.
Well, naturalisation in most EU countries would involve some other requirements: language knowledge (you'd have to pass an exam) + civic/constitutional exam or integration test + naturally, no criminal record, etc + some countries are quite restrictive on dual-citizenship (i.e. they don't allow it for foreigners, meaning that you would need to renounce your original citizenship).
Visas and residence permits are, of course, easier.
It's not that hard to get a temporary residence permit somewhere in the EU if you're well-employed. Every country has its own rules and some are more lax than others, but there are plenty of e.g. "tech worker" visas you can get. You often don't need a job to officially sponsor you.
If you're rich enough, you can buy a small local business, like a local pizzeria, and hire x amount of people or invest x amount of money and you get a permanent residence visa through investment. This path is available in pretty much countries including the US.
Some of the more corrupt ones offer straight up money for citizenship deals. Citizenship not permanent residence, meaning you get that country's passport.
I think more than one. I think Portugal's program is over but you can still do it in others (Greece? Romania? I can't remember). You can do it in the USA too.
Doesn't include another large group - repatriating Europeans.
Our friends went back to Germany last year after 20 years in USA (permanent residents, didn't naturalize).
My family plans similar move as well in a few years, mostly blocked by my postgraduate program and exact location to return to. There are other scenarios where we'd move right away, like if my spouse gets laid off.
IMO metrics are not well represented when looking into chart, eg european resident/student permits are not the same as green cards, they had to include students in us as well. another thing is the use of eu+uk+switzerland would it not be better to use eea instead (think about iceland and norway)?
it is an interesting stat, but it might be good to understand the diff among US folks getting passports vs residence permits vs studying
> The chart compares permanent green cards issued to Europeans moving to the US with first-time residence permits (often temporary, for work/study) issued to Americans moving to the EU, which are not equivalent metrics.
I suspect there are a lot of American hegemony trends that look like this. The US is burning good will and soft power that took centuries to accumulate in days or hours. This was a long term trend but the current American government is really stepping on the gas.
The american century is over, but I'm not sure what comes next will be better, we will see.
My kid moved from the US to Vienna for work. Loves it, says there is no reason to come back...I know a few more folks whose kids left after Uni to work in the EU and have no plans on returning. For a young person who values working to live more than living to work, the EU is very attractive.
In my niece's (relatively rural) US high school class several students decided to attend university in Europe with no family ties to the countries in question. It was pretty common in my generation to see, as you note, kids moving to Berlin etc after their studies, but this strikes me as relatively new. Anecdata that seems supported in some of the public numbers [0].
Yeah, it's been a relatively rational decision for a while now, but one I personally hadn't really seen taken until recently. Again, all anecdata, but I am curious to track how much of a trend it really is.
It's an infinitely higher quality of life if you're not in the 90th income percentile in the US already. You'll never make that much, but you'll never have half the worries we do here for lower income people.
I'd say even if you are on the 99th percentile, the quality of life will be much better. You'll make less money, but you also won't have to spend on things like health insurance, good schools, and so on. Your house might be smaller though, unless you opt to live further from urban centers, which will demand a car, but it'll be a safer and more efficient one.
My child’s situation is somewhat different from many others in the U.S. He never has to worry about money because he benefits from the security of multi-generational wealth. He simply finds Europe and its values to be culturally superior to the United States.
I've been pulling it off, but I have dual citizenship with EU/USA but still get paid in the US because it saves me 2k a month in taxes.
There are also workarounds in avoiding paying the higher EU taxes.
When the justice system gets fixed in Spain maybe I'll pay the taxes there again. It shouldn't take more than a year to get an okupa out. It's too slow.
I milked that cow already. But thank you Spain for the free education and the scholarships!
I hadn’t realised that’s a thing (although I probably shouldn’t be surprised) -- I thought all these dual-citizenship tax agreements worked such that you aren’t double-taxed, but the total amount paid needs to meet the minimum for each country.
For example, I thought if you’re resident in the US you might pay your main taxes there, but you’d need to “top up” in the EU.
If you're living and working in California or New York, as I suspect a large number of hacker news readers are, EU taxes on income are generally not prohibitively more expensive, especially relative to increase in quality of life. 'Native' salaries are considerably lower, however, and tax treatment of equity-based compensation is very much not in favor of employees...
Once you get used to paying less taxes you don't want to go to paying more and getting the mostly the same. Healthcare costs is different.
Also there's the high EU VAT taxes which are taxes already.
I've met a few Americans living like that in Portugal, there are communities that formed in some villages away from the main cities where real estate is very cheap since most villagers had died or moved out. They were proud of not paying Portuguese taxes, I couldn't understand how you can be proud of taking advantage of a society while not contributing financially to it to support the services you enjoy.
NHR (the tax scheme that the parent is discussing) ended. If you didn't already move to Portugal under it, it's no longer available to you, so your question should really be in the past tense.
NHR 2.0 offers much reduced benefits and in a much narrower scope.
Most European countries have surprisingly strict visa requirements - and those apply to Americans as well. Unlike a short holiday trip, you can't just move because you feel like it!
The most likely path for the HN public is probably a "highly-skilled worker" visa, but that requires you to have a sponsoring employer in Europe - which means you won't be getting that fancy American salary. And you'll also have to pay local taxes...
It is also the EU Countries and Visas. Before I moved to Denmark I just assumed they'd just welcome Americans with money but you can't just have any job, you have to be paid by a Danish company, over a certain level or found a startup with very specific requirements, etc.
Danish immigration laws are also very strict. Most of our political parties have been competed to further tighten those rules over the last couple of decades. We literally have people advocating to leave the convention on human rights, since it’s getting in the way of that
French immigration is currently allowing remote workers on the one year visitor visa, so long as your company doesn't have a presence in France. Basically, as long as you are not doing business in France or taking a job from a local they are fine with it.
However, it's difficult to proceed to a residency permit in this situation, and you can't join the national healthcare system.
VPN. Simple as that. Most companies aren't bothering to check anyway, most that do aren't detecting VPNs, and for the few that do that, there are ways to circumvent detection if you are really determined.
With 6-9h timezone difference? Even if a company will allow this (and few will), it's very hard to pull off, and your social/family life will suffer big time.
I know people who manage to do this, but it's difficult, and not really worth it unless you have a seriously amazing job.
> and your social/family life will suffer big time
Not sure about family, but you can get new friends here. When I go to the office, on my walk back home, I often pass by some very nice pubs overflowing with extremely happy and friendly people, and that is when I leave at 17:00.
You'll also get nice things like the metric system. And, in Ireland, one of the sanest political systems on the planet. It's so sane it's almost boring.
Most remote jobs don't require you to keep the exact same hours, but rather to have some overlap. So it can effectively only feel like ~3h timezone difference.
Aside from the authoritarian problems, the US is also clearly sliding into some kind of severe economic recession. I'm just envious of people who have that ability, really.
I'd even go as far as saying the authoritarianism has a causal relation with the impending recession, the acceleration of the de-dollarization of foreign commerce, and the unavoidable collapse of the "Pax Americana" that came after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Moving to Europe is a smart move, but, having complete freedom, I'd think about someplace in the southern hemisphere. I believe Chile and Brazil will be stable for the next 20 years or so and have good overlap with US timezones. And both are quite far from most of the impending clusterfuck happening in Eastern Europe.
The US has put a certain country in charge of a certain oil strait, and also banned that country from using dollars. So anyone who wants to pass the strait has to pay using a Chinese bank transfer in Chinese yuan. This is speedrunning the end of the petrodollar.
What? The gap between US and Europe is increasing at a faster rate. If anything, economically Europe looks bleak compared to not just the US but growing countries in Asia.
I had an issue at work, stuck all night on the phone trying to get a license activated. The first fellow I talked to was Australian, great guy. Really helpful, patient. He discovered the issue was indeed on their end.
I took a nap at my desk for an hour (the license was needed on an airgapped system sneaker-netted over via an encrypted drive so I couldn't do this from home and the deadline had arrived).
Woke up and called back, different fellow, European. Every answer, in perfect english, was about 3 words long on average in a very dismissive tone.
Oh, well I guess you can just read this forum to see how Europeans feel about Americans too, the Australian guy was the interesting one. I wasn’t surprised by the European.
the inflow to the US is historically low, and this increase of US to EU immigrants is a very good thing imo - the US should be more US, the EU more EU, China more China etc etc.
Almost all of these are 1st or 2nd gen European diaspora, or the spouses of such people, who 1. still have financial ties to the European country from which they originate through inheritance of assets from their parents/grandparents 2. have citizenship through descent.
The amount of "unaffiliated" Americans who move to Europe is probably negligible.
You'd be surprised. I personally know plenty of American LGBT+ people who are at least considering moving to the EU, simply because recent political developments has made the US an increasingly-unsafe country for them to live in.
Wouldn't this (unsubstantiated claim, but let's play along) be more troubling though?
It would be one thing if people who are "unaffiliated USA citizens[0]" moved to an imaginary place where the grass is greener. You could argue they don't know about all the problems of that place.
It's maybe more concerning if the people who flew Place A, because of all the problems of Place A, looking for greener grass in Country B, are looking around and going "hey you know what? Place A wasn't so bad after all. The grass only looked greener because it's plastic!" and then go back.
[0]: let's acknowledge we're just talking shades of the same color, when referring to a country that's 250 years old. Nobody's "from there" really
Doing research prior to moving is extremely important.
At the time I moved to Ireland, I learned a vicious gang war was happening in the northern regions of Dublin. Up to April 2016, when I arrived, four (four!) people had been murdered in that unprecedented violent event.
I'm American and moved to Europe (Switzerland) 17-years ago. Sometimes I laugh to myself when I think how whatmy long-dead immigrant grandfather (from Vilnius to Midwest USA) would think of my reverse move.
Growing up we always thought my grandparents were the weirdest people. They roasted and ate whole chickens, not cut up chicken parts from the grocery store. They drank tea and ate weird Russian tea cake cookies. They made their own sausage. They hunted ducks and deer. They ate raw beef.
Since moving to Europe I buy a lot of my food from neighborhood farms, roast whole chickens, make tartare, make cheese and sausage... hunting and fishing isn't so easy here though - I can do that when I visit relatives in the USA though.
Ironically enough, Vilnius is now a very beautiful, safe and high quality of life city that is a better place to live than, probably, quite a lot of American cities..
How times have changed..
When I was a kid, "starving children in Ethiopia" was a reason to eat your whole dinner. My formerly Swiss grandma once said "starving children in Europe" and I was very thrown for a moment.
I'm moving from California to Portugal this week. I get to retire much earlier with low-cost healthcare and a cost of living lower relative to CA, and the Portuguese people I've met have all been wonderful. The food is great too!
I'd rather be on the side that supports Ukraine, clean energy, and stable trade agreements. I don't feel safe in the US anymore.
I know a guy that worked for good UK salary (fintech) that moved to Portugal(Lisbon) almost a decade ago. It seems to be a lovely place, he also happily tell me how much he manage to save and how early he will be able to retire. He got many friends there too, but mostly expats.
If I'm to believe my Portuguese friends however, the extreme influx of digital nomad types have really changed Lisbon. There's almost no authentic Portuguese thing there anymore, just thing LARPING as it. The rent is too high for any local young Portuguese to pay for, while the landlords are super happy for these influx of wealthy expats, so the young either move out of the city or move all together.
In a very utopia like set up, there's something depressing about that reality.
When I asked about to my expat friend living there, he acknowledged it, shrugged, and said "don't hate the playa, hate the game".
Anyway, enjoy the game!
I'm not moving to Lisbon, but my experience in that city aligns with your friends'.
Other cities offer much better value for money and hold a lot more of the Portuguese culture intact. There are beautiful cities and towns all throughout the country.
Couldn't agree more. If you have any pointers (to web sites) that were helpful to you as you were making your decision or preparations, please do post them.
Also, did you consider any other countries that you later struck from your list?
I used an immigration service to help me through the process. Alongside that I spent several months learning the language then weeks traveling through PT before making the decision.
You can do the immigration process yourself, but it's a long process with a lot of i's to dot and t's to cross. It was helpful to have experts guiding me through the process. Learning the language also helped a ton. The Portuguese in cities all speak English extremely well, but they really embrace you when they see you putting in some effort to speak Portuguese. I learned with Pimsleur for native pronunciation and Anki frequency vocabulary decks. I had some background with Spanish, so it was easier for me to learn Portuguese than starting from zero.
I also considered Uruguay and Malta but preferred the safety of Portugal and its bigger size.
Many of us hate you behind the facade though because you are driving up costs so wildly
Are you going to have a Portuguese salary or an American one?
I'm retiring alongside the move, so neither. I'll still be working on projects and companies but money doesn't factor into what I choose to work on.
My uncle moved from Germany to Portugal for the same reason. He loves it and the main pain point is healthcare - low-cost, but in his 70s he travels back to Germany for health issues due to quality. It's unpopular opinion in Portugal and everyone will tell you how nice the hospitals are, zero wait times and no hidden expenses. May be my uncle was unlucky, but minor heart issue wasn't properly diagnosed for about a year there, and required a single visit in Germany to get it under control.
I think this is probably useless information considering that legal restrictions largely limit the ability of people to move from one to the other.
Speaking as an American that “accidentally” moved to the EU a decade ago, my impression is still that ambitious EU citizens, particularly those in tech or finance, would move to the US in a second if it was possible to.
That said, I don’t personally plan on moving back anytime soon, although I do miss certain aspects of the American identity and experience constantly.
What aspects and experiences do you miss? Which country did you move to? I know I romanticize moving to Europe so would love to hear some balance.
For myself (American), I think I would miss the natural wonders and open road. But I really enjoy roadtripping.
Yeah, given that it's much easier to get a visa to work in the EU (albeit still not easy) than in the US, the default position ceteris paribus would be that more people would move from the US to Europe than vice versa.
The fact that wasn't the case before just goes to show how big an impact the economic disparity has.
If they can work remotely and keep their American salaries then they can live like Emperors here.
If not, I imagine they will get tired of the low salaries and high taxes and move back to the US. It might be better here for artist types etc. who can benefit more from the social welfare systems than they have to pay in. But for engineers, it makes little sense - you are the one who has to pay for the party.
Yes and no. American salaries are great but our cost of living is insane. The amount of time wasted in the US doing basic stuff also can't be discounted. Our cost of healthcare adds up, as does the cost of everything here.
I think this data shows that a lot of Americans are waking up to our brand of "freedom" being bullshit. The American dream is a bit of a myth nowadays.
Americans lie to ourselves. If one isn't wealthy in the US, think top 15%, you're better off living outside the US. But Americans are "not yet billionaires" so most of us don't realize this. Our media pumps our hubris and egos using "freedom" and nationalism. Most Americans never travel outside of the US and believe our lives here are infinitely better than anything else in the world. It's something I see constantly when I talk international stuff with rural Americans(and the suburban cosplayer), an absolute fantasy version of the world.
Cost of living in comparable EU cities is very high as well, except salaries aren’t really correspondingly higher.
The American dream is and has always been kind of a national myth but honestly if you limit it to purely making a lot of money by working hard, I think it’s still quite true, and the best place in the world to do so.
When you say that EU cost of living is comparable, are you taking into consideration the cost of health and higher education? In the U.S., if you're not currently priced out on those two points, just give it time & you will be!
The U.S. isn't the shining-city-on-the-hill beacon it once was. I think that's pretty clear.
Sorry if my comment was confusingly written, I didn’t mean that certain cities are the same price, just that comparable cities (e.g. similar populations and amenities) are still expensive and that the salaries are lower too.
I think realistically a person with a good job has about the same financial experience in both the US and EU; except they’re making more money in the US to pay for more expensive things.
> if you limit it to purely making a lot of money by working hard, I think it’s still quite true,
Wholeheartedly disagree. I see countless hard workers struggling immensely to get by here. Costs and inflation have spiralled the last 5 years while healthcare and education have been pricing out the middle class for over a decade. The job market is awful and getting worse by the day.
I mean the America dream was real in the past to a lot of immigrant/recent immigrant Americans. It's cool that Europe has caught up. It's amazing that China has lifted their people up.
Let's continue improving quality of life for everyone. Europe doing better/being a viable alternative doesn't necessarily mean the USA is all bs. I'm pretty sure every country's people are more comfortable of how their country lives than foreign countries. Not sure why rural American's have a special carveout on that take.
As an engineer that moved to Europe - everyone benefits from the social welfare system.
I benefit by not having to worry about the homeless druggie assaulting me and on a more values-based level, by not feeling like shit for living like a king while the druggie has to be homeless.
The taxes are a membership fee for living in a society that isn't permeated with cruelty and violence.
Plus, they pay for stuff like working public transport etc as well.
I mean, the studies are still out in the world and homeless. Moving to another country doesn't change that.
Moving to another country where drug addicts get help instead of being left to fend for themselves and paying my taxes there is a way to vote with my wallet on the sort of system I'd like to see - namely, one of compassion.
Surprisingly, the vote on limiting Switzerland's population to 10 million may actually pass. Usually votes for things that will hurt the economy don't come close to passing but right now the limit is a few percent ahead.
"A good economy" means different things to different people.
Expensive houses and low wages, vs appreciating assets and low labour costs.
>the vote on limiting Switzerland's population to 10 million
google searches 10 minutes after it passes: what is EU guillotine clause
Switzerland has treaties with the EU. The EU would prefer a single treaty, Switzerland prefers lots of piecemeal treaties.
Current political climate in Switzerland is a bit like Brexit before Brexit: lots of populist blathering about how the EU exploits Switzerland so there are lots of votes in being anti-EU and in demanding "fair" deals ("fair" always means "more for me, less for you").
These treaties are currently being renegotiated -- I think some of them technically expired but both sides pretend they are still valid during the negotiations.
There are forces in Switzerland that would like to break one or more of the treaties and keep the others.
The EU won't like that so we got guillotine clauses = if one treaty is no longer valid, none of them are valid, to prevent the Swiss from playing funny games.
One of the Swiss complaints is fair: they provide roads for lots and lots of EU transit traffic.
> they provide roads for lots and lots of EU transit traffic
Not for free though
how would that even work? mandatory contraception or something?
If the population hits 10 million they would try to limit the freedom of movement agreement with the eu, which means they would lose free trade with the eu. Kind of like brexit.
It's just a buzzword to say limit immigration with rising population.
I'll leave out my opinion on the topic but Switzerland has become noticeably more crowded in the last 20 years.
I was surprised to learn that Switzerland's population is still that small.
Your opinion is showing
I expected this comment to be made anyways, so I didn't even bother rephrasing.
If it helps you, I don't support the initiative. Doesn't change the fact that rental property is scarse, public transport is full and children/teacher ratio is horrendous.
The birth rate in Switzerland (just as in many highly developed countries) is already way below 2.1 children per woman, which would be required to sustain the population. Any population growth comes from immigrants. Xenophobic people are scared by that.
Immigration and naturalization restrictions.
So if they hit ten million do they start kicking people out for every native baby born?
Switzerland's fertility rate has been below the replacement rate of 2.1 babies / woman since the 1970s. There is zero chance of births pushing it above the 10M count. If anything, immigration is the sole reason the Swiss aren't going extinct.
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Following the same logic: everyone who isn't a Native American doesn't count as American.
And how are you going to count someone with one Swiss parent and one immigrant parent? Three Swiss grandparents and one immigrant grandparent? What are you going to do about all those people in Genève who had a forefather move over from Annecy 5 generations ago?
The fact that most Swiss people speak languages pretty damn close to German, French, and Italian should be a good indication that immigration does, in fact, create Swiss people.
What counts as a Swiss person? Would children of immigrants growing up in Swiss society, going to Swiss schools, and speaking the national languages of Switzerland count?
Swiss people are more strict about this than other parts of europe, so they lean more toward swiss ethnicity, also being open to neighbouring citizens. Last being immigrants from outside europe.
More like Switzerland has direct democracy so they can make their voices heard.
No, they just stop accepting immigrants.
I moved to Berlin a few years ago. Anecdotally, my friends and family back home are jealous.
I am jealous of the lifestyle of most of Europe, but not the rigid labour markets and lower salaries. I wish we had more people-oriented cities in North America, though. I don't want to be anti-automobile, but the hostility to the "15 minute city" idea was quite depressing to me.
My good friends moved to Germany before they had their kid. They are extremely happy with their decision.
Everyone I'm aware of who moved because of Trump/Republicans are happy with their choice.
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If you look up the graph this is a 20 years old trend .
One thinks of course about Eastern Europe which had a decent economic growth. Compare to many American HN Readers thinking, "Europe" in General tried to make a place better for living. What it means is of course very dependent on person, but consider thinks like better health care, no war (that's the EU for), better indro, but also economics but to certain percentage it worked out!
Though I can't say about American but health care and guns are still a problem. Compare to Europe which hadn't a start up 20 years ago and "Europe" tries to fix t.
Is a green card the equivalent to a first time residence permit in Europe? It's notoriously hard to get a green card: it'll take 3 years for a normal skilled worker who's already in the US and that's assuming nothing goes wrong in the process, and something always does. Plus many visa categories don't even have a path to a green card. "Long term stay visas issued" might be a better comparison.
While each EU country has its own immigration rules, there is an EU-level route for the highly skilled workers, called the EU Blue Card:
* https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/migration-and-asy... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Card_(European_Union)
Each EU country has its own rules about immigration.
A green card is probably equivalent to a permanent residence permit, those vary quite a bit between countries, and skills. Some countries might give a permanent residence in as few as 3 years, I believe quite a few have the 4 years threshold. Depending on what skills you have or how much you invest in the country you are moving to this timeline also shortens.
Generally continental Europe -- except the Scandinavian countries -- makes it relatively easy to get long-term residency and even a passport. The UK is considerably more difficult, but very easy to work in for an extended period of time (intra-company transfer visas etc).
Scandinavia had Sweden until yesterday's vote in Riksdagen, I moved here 10+ years ago, got my permanent residence after 4 years, citizenship after 5.
Rules have been changed now, citizenship in 8 years will become law on June 6th, also requiring language and cultural tests which weren't required before.
Continental Europe used to vary, Germany was stricter with 8 years to citizenship but permanent residence would vary depending on work skill and language skills.
Can you give some specific examples? I would say that, unless you have some additional qualifications (European ancestors, EU spouse and similar), the majority of EU countries actually don't make it that easy. Of course, it depends on your definition of "relatively easy".
Yes, it's never a trivial process, so a lot of work is certainly being performed by that "relatively": I have extensive personal experience with the UK immigration process and know of the US equivalent through the experiences of former colleagues back home. France, for example, is five years to a passport/naturalization. Germany is three years of skilled work to indefinite leave to remain. The Netherlands is five years to indefinite leave to remain. None of those examples require European ancestors, EU spouse etc, but generally it's easier if you have a university degree and work in the various fields most readers of hacker news do.
Well, naturalisation in most EU countries would involve some other requirements: language knowledge (you'd have to pass an exam) + civic/constitutional exam or integration test + naturally, no criminal record, etc + some countries are quite restrictive on dual-citizenship (i.e. they don't allow it for foreigners, meaning that you would need to renounce your original citizenship).
Visas and residence permits are, of course, easier.
It's not that hard to get a temporary residence permit somewhere in the EU if you're well-employed. Every country has its own rules and some are more lax than others, but there are plenty of e.g. "tech worker" visas you can get. You often don't need a job to officially sponsor you.
Just depends where and where you're from. Even though it's the EU each country has its own rules.
Can't you basically buy citizenship through "investment" in one of the countries?
If you're rich enough, you can buy a small local business, like a local pizzeria, and hire x amount of people or invest x amount of money and you get a permanent residence visa through investment. This path is available in pretty much countries including the US.
Some of the more corrupt ones offer straight up money for citizenship deals. Citizenship not permanent residence, meaning you get that country's passport.
I think more than one. I think Portugal's program is over but you can still do it in others (Greece? Romania? I can't remember). You can do it in the USA too.
the golden visas were banned in the EU last year https://amp.dw.com/en/eu-citizenship-no-longer-for-sale/a-72...
Wow, that's rich. Literally. So even money can't get you in anymore. You'd need money & influence.
Portugal still has citizenship by investment routes, but it will take 10+ years to get actual citizenship due to changes in the law and wait times.
Many countries, this is often called a golden visa (term predates the current US president).
Doesn't include another large group - repatriating Europeans.
Our friends went back to Germany last year after 20 years in USA (permanent residents, didn't naturalize).
My family plans similar move as well in a few years, mostly blocked by my postgraduate program and exact location to return to. There are other scenarios where we'd move right away, like if my spouse gets laid off.
Yeah my friends just moved back to Belgium after ten years here
IMO metrics are not well represented when looking into chart, eg european resident/student permits are not the same as green cards, they had to include students in us as well. another thing is the use of eu+uk+switzerland would it not be better to use eea instead (think about iceland and norway)?
it is an interesting stat, but it might be good to understand the diff among US folks getting passports vs residence permits vs studying
The community note gives more information on the comparison
> The chart compares permanent green cards issued to Europeans moving to the US with first-time residence permits (often temporary, for work/study) issued to Americans moving to the EU, which are not equivalent metrics.
For those that don't have Twitter.
A classic example of mistaking the finger for the moon. There's a trend there, no matter what.
Fairly steady trends since 2000 with a drop during covid, America becoming less popular for Europeans and Americans
Alt link: <https://xcancel.com/benbawan/status/2049303326999609846>.
I suspect there are a lot of American hegemony trends that look like this. The US is burning good will and soft power that took centuries to accumulate in days or hours. This was a long term trend but the current American government is really stepping on the gas.
The american century is over, but I'm not sure what comes next will be better, we will see.
Agreed. The US, as a result of basically a conservative tantrum for 60 years, has undone most of the progress after the WWs.
My kid moved from the US to Vienna for work. Loves it, says there is no reason to come back...I know a few more folks whose kids left after Uni to work in the EU and have no plans on returning. For a young person who values working to live more than living to work, the EU is very attractive.
In my niece's (relatively rural) US high school class several students decided to attend university in Europe with no family ties to the countries in question. It was pretty common in my generation to see, as you note, kids moving to Berlin etc after their studies, but this strikes me as relatively new. Anecdata that seems supported in some of the public numbers [0].
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2025/07/21/reco...
Many countries in Europe have free universities: avoiding a few hundred thousands in debt maybe be worth moving in the long run.
Yeah, it's been a relatively rational decision for a while now, but one I personally hadn't really seen taken until recently. Again, all anecdata, but I am curious to track how much of a trend it really is.
It's an infinitely higher quality of life if you're not in the 90th income percentile in the US already. You'll never make that much, but you'll never have half the worries we do here for lower income people.
I'd say even if you are on the 99th percentile, the quality of life will be much better. You'll make less money, but you also won't have to spend on things like health insurance, good schools, and so on. Your house might be smaller though, unless you opt to live further from urban centers, which will demand a car, but it'll be a safer and more efficient one.
Don't know why you were junked, you're not wrong.
My child’s situation is somewhat different from many others in the U.S. He never has to worry about money because he benefits from the security of multi-generational wealth. He simply finds Europe and its values to be culturally superior to the United States.
Notice that a lot of the graphs count people from the Americas. Not USA.
I've been pulling it off, but I have dual citizenship with EU/USA but still get paid in the US because it saves me 2k a month in taxes. There are also workarounds in avoiding paying the higher EU taxes.
> it saves me 2k a month in taxes. There are also workarounds in avoiding paying the higher EU taxes.
Interesting how in a different comment you say
> I want the same for all Spaniards and will gladly pay high taxes if my family, friends, and my neighbors can also have that same opportunity.
When the justice system gets fixed in Spain maybe I'll pay the taxes there again. It shouldn't take more than a year to get an okupa out. It's too slow. I milked that cow already. But thank you Spain for the free education and the scholarships!
I hadn’t realised that’s a thing (although I probably shouldn’t be surprised) -- I thought all these dual-citizenship tax agreements worked such that you aren’t double-taxed, but the total amount paid needs to meet the minimum for each country.
For example, I thought if you’re resident in the US you might pay your main taxes there, but you’d need to “top up” in the EU.
What’s your specific workaround?
It helps to travel with different legal names and different passports.
If you're living and working in California or New York, as I suspect a large number of hacker news readers are, EU taxes on income are generally not prohibitively more expensive, especially relative to increase in quality of life. 'Native' salaries are considerably lower, however, and tax treatment of equity-based compensation is very much not in favor of employees...
So you want to take advantage of European quality of life, social nets and infrastructure, but you don't want to help pay for it? How very American.
Once you get used to paying less taxes you don't want to go to paying more and getting the mostly the same. Healthcare costs is different. Also there's the high EU VAT taxes which are taxes already.
I've met a few Americans living like that in Portugal, there are communities that formed in some villages away from the main cities where real estate is very cheap since most villagers had died or moved out. They were proud of not paying Portuguese taxes, I couldn't understand how you can be proud of taking advantage of a society while not contributing financially to it to support the services you enjoy.
It's hard for me to understand this mentality...
The real question is why the Portuguese government is allowing this to happen?
NHR (the tax scheme that the parent is discussing) ended. If you didn't already move to Portugal under it, it's no longer available to you, so your question should really be in the past tense.
NHR 2.0 offers much reduced benefits and in a much narrower scope.
How much do you pay for health insurance in the US?
Very low, minimum amount that covers only emergencies. I use Europe for cheaper healthcare.
Do you spend more than 6mos in the EU?
I, for one, welcome our new American fellows.
They are nice people fleeing an oppressive regime. We must work hard to integrate them into our societies, despite the large cultural differences.
"Ein Burger und ein Bier, die Amis bleiben hier."
Americans enjoying their huge American salaries while working remotely from poor European countries
What makes you believe you'll be able to do so?
Most European countries have surprisingly strict visa requirements - and those apply to Americans as well. Unlike a short holiday trip, you can't just move because you feel like it!
The most likely path for the HN public is probably a "highly-skilled worker" visa, but that requires you to have a sponsoring employer in Europe - which means you won't be getting that fancy American salary. And you'll also have to pay local taxes...
I'm always surprised by how many American tourists have to turn back because they thought they wouldn't need a visa.
Were they wrong? American tourists mostly don't need a visa to be tourists in Europe. Working is a different matter.
In practice almost no companies let you do this.
If you know of one that does and is hiring, please share...
It is also the EU Countries and Visas. Before I moved to Denmark I just assumed they'd just welcome Americans with money but you can't just have any job, you have to be paid by a Danish company, over a certain level or found a startup with very specific requirements, etc.
Danish immigration laws are also very strict. Most of our political parties have been competed to further tighten those rules over the last couple of decades. We literally have people advocating to leave the convention on human rights, since it’s getting in the way of that
I don't know how they do this, but Paris is full of Americans living there.
I think they stay for a few months. Maybe they just don't tell their company and the company still think they are working in the same place.
French immigration is currently allowing remote workers on the one year visitor visa, so long as your company doesn't have a presence in France. Basically, as long as you are not doing business in France or taking a job from a local they are fine with it.
However, it's difficult to proceed to a residency permit in this situation, and you can't join the national healthcare system.
Visa-wise, they are probably just committing fraud by staying on a tourist visa.
At least Europeans won't send them to labor camps in El Salvador.
edit: burn karma burn
VPN. Simple as that. Most companies aren't bothering to check anyway, most that do aren't detecting VPNs, and for the few that do that, there are ways to circumvent detection if you are really determined.
Wouldn't they figure out you've installed a VPN on their machine?
> In practice almost no companies let you do this.
And, if they do, they might have legal issues brewing they are not aware of.
QoL is more important than hustle culture to most people
Yeah, pretty much. You can make enough money in 10-15 years in tech in America to last a lifetime in Europe, even without the remote job.
You still might need a resident visa.
With 6-9h timezone difference? Even if a company will allow this (and few will), it's very hard to pull off, and your social/family life will suffer big time.
I know people who manage to do this, but it's difficult, and not really worth it unless you have a seriously amazing job.
> and your social/family life will suffer big time
Not sure about family, but you can get new friends here. When I go to the office, on my walk back home, I often pass by some very nice pubs overflowing with extremely happy and friendly people, and that is when I leave at 17:00.
You'll also get nice things like the metric system. And, in Ireland, one of the sanest political systems on the planet. It's so sane it's almost boring.
Most remote jobs don't require you to keep the exact same hours, but rather to have some overlap. So it can effectively only feel like ~3h timezone difference.
Maybe during Covid. Now many companies are making employees RTO
Where is the Frisco, TX of Europe?
Aside from the authoritarian problems, the US is also clearly sliding into some kind of severe economic recession. I'm just envious of people who have that ability, really.
I'd even go as far as saying the authoritarianism has a causal relation with the impending recession, the acceleration of the de-dollarization of foreign commerce, and the unavoidable collapse of the "Pax Americana" that came after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Moving to Europe is a smart move, but, having complete freedom, I'd think about someplace in the southern hemisphere. I believe Chile and Brazil will be stable for the next 20 years or so and have good overlap with US timezones. And both are quite far from most of the impending clusterfuck happening in Eastern Europe.
The US has put a certain country in charge of a certain oil strait, and also banned that country from using dollars. So anyone who wants to pass the strait has to pay using a Chinese bank transfer in Chinese yuan. This is speedrunning the end of the petrodollar.
What? The gap between US and Europe is increasing at a faster rate. If anything, economically Europe looks bleak compared to not just the US but growing countries in Asia.
Even by PPP, US looks better.
https://econofact.org/factbrief/fact-check-has-the-economic-...
The gap between the US GDP and the economic reality for its citizens is also very wide
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I had an issue at work, stuck all night on the phone trying to get a license activated. The first fellow I talked to was Australian, great guy. Really helpful, patient. He discovered the issue was indeed on their end.
I took a nap at my desk for an hour (the license was needed on an airgapped system sneaker-netted over via an encrypted drive so I couldn't do this from home and the deadline had arrived).
Woke up and called back, different fellow, European. Every answer, in perfect english, was about 3 words long on average in a very dismissive tone.
I'd rather move to Australia.
That’s quite a takeaway from an interaction with only 2 different people.
Oh, well I guess you can just read this forum to see how Europeans feel about Americans too, the Australian guy was the interesting one. I wasn’t surprised by the European.
Expecting a place the size of Europe or the US to be culturally homogeneous would be a huge mistake.
The US and Mexico share the same continent, and the populations are exactly alike!
so all Europeans suck, eh?
the inflow to the US is historically low, and this increase of US to EU immigrants is a very good thing imo - the US should be more US, the EU more EU, China more China etc etc.
Isolation breeds difference, but not diversity.
Almost all of these are 1st or 2nd gen European diaspora, or the spouses of such people, who 1. still have financial ties to the European country from which they originate through inheritance of assets from their parents/grandparents 2. have citizenship through descent.
The amount of "unaffiliated" Americans who move to Europe is probably negligible.
You'd be surprised. I personally know plenty of American LGBT+ people who are at least considering moving to the EU, simply because recent political developments has made the US an increasingly-unsafe country for them to live in.
Wouldn't this (unsubstantiated claim, but let's play along) be more troubling though?
It would be one thing if people who are "unaffiliated USA citizens[0]" moved to an imaginary place where the grass is greener. You could argue they don't know about all the problems of that place.
It's maybe more concerning if the people who flew Place A, because of all the problems of Place A, looking for greener grass in Country B, are looking around and going "hey you know what? Place A wasn't so bad after all. The grass only looked greener because it's plastic!" and then go back.
[0]: let's acknowledge we're just talking shades of the same color, when referring to a country that's 250 years old. Nobody's "from there" really
> Nobody's "from there" really
I once had a Native American on one of my teams. That, and a lot of my fellow Brazilians here are at least partly of the original people.
Which came from Asia, through an ice bridge between Asia and North America a couple ice ages back, so, in the end, I guess we are all Africans.
Doing research prior to moving is extremely important.
At the time I moved to Ireland, I learned a vicious gang war was happening in the northern regions of Dublin. Up to April 2016, when I arrived, four (four!) people had been murdered in that unprecedented violent event.
My family has been in America for... I dunno, 8 generations? A long time. I'm moving.
I don't have any connection to Europe. I just don't want to live under America's increasing fascism and would rather contribute to a just society.