Permanent Residency in Japan After One Year

The Ginza Wako Clock, Tokyo, Japan, Jordy Meow

There's a strong competition amongst countries to attract highly skilled labor, particularly those in STEM (science, technology, engineering, medicine) fields. Japan has made an interesting move in this game: highly skilled workers may be eligible for permanent residency in Japan after only one year.

Grateful For High Taxes in France?

The grocery store by our home in La Rochelle

It's been a while since I've posted. We've been very busy with our company and I've been working other projects. On my Facebook page, I've made some comments about French health care, in particular referencing this post about cancer treatment in France. Once again, I received private messages from people talking about taxes in France, so let's talk about them after we explore a bit what this means.


The highest marginal income tax rate in France is 45% (though there's an idiotic temporary 75% tax on millionaires), but you have to be earning over $200,000 US to reach that point. Most people pay far lower.  In fact, while well-off people will pay higher taxes in France, lower-income French households will enjoy lower tax rates than in the US.

That being said, it's still worth noting that the US used to have much higher income tax rates and the economy boomed. And while one study of 65 years of data fails to show conclusive evidence that raising or lower taxes necessarily hurts or helps GDP, it showed that it does impact income distribution, showing that lower taxes allows wealth to accumulate in the hands of the rich. In fact, the US now has the highest income inequality since the 1920s and the US now has more income inequality than any other industrialized nation.

This wouldn't matter if everything were fine and dandy, but it's not. Half of Americans now live in poverty and the actual unemployment rate is around 13%, much higher than the official 6.7% rate that's reported. And the large number of children going hungry in the US is growing. Student loan debt is growing and the number of US students enrolling in college has been dropping, a guaranteed long-term drag on economic growth.

So what does that mean? We know that income inequality is correlated with higher crime rates. (note: it's not poverty that leads to higher crime rates, it's the disparity). Income inequality leads to a breakdown in social trust.

And it's getting worse.

Here in France, I pay higher taxes and while we're also caught up in the world economic struggles, life here is still pretty good. So what do I get for paying my taxes?

• I'm never going to have to beg for my daughter's health care.
• My wife paid a little over €2,000 for her Master's degree in law.
• French political campaigns aren't paid for by businesses.
• Assistance to the unemployed is generous.
• French pensions are generous.

You know what? I'm OK with that. I'm OK with helping other people.

Yes, the French pay around 30% of their GDP for this, compared to 9.8% entitlement spending in the US (though these numbers are likely far from a fair comparisons). But you have to remember, the French people voted for this. This is a democracy. The French fight hard to protect their welfare state because they believe it's more fair and so far, the French have "hung in there" for a long time. France has some serious problems, but it's not going the route of Greece any time soon. When the overall world economy rebounds, France will too.

I'm happy to pay my taxes here. I often hear people in the US say they'd be happy to pay more if they knew they were really helping others. I'm putting my money where my bouche is.

We're back from New York ... sort of ... (pics)

Doubtless you've noticed the lack of updates recently. This was a combination of a significant work load, lots of work last month to get out the survey results (and I still haven't posted the last part) and a business trip to New York, the latter of which was a huge amount of fun but left me a bit wiped out. I was only there for a day and couldn't get many photos and had to apologize to friends for not being able to meet up with them (you know who you are).

The New York Stock Exchange

Buying citizenship in Malta, a gorgeous Mediterranean island country

Now, for a mere €650,000 (~$880,000US), you can buy citizenship in Malta. It's a beautiful Mediterranean island now known to many as one of the settings of HBO's epic Game of Thrones series.

Malta
Photo courtesy of Thyes

Originally it was going to be a private sale, with people buying citizenship having their names withheld. After outcry from the opposition party, the government agreed to publish the names of those who buy Maltese citizenship.

I've written about Malta before because my wife and I investigated moving there. The climate is lovely, most people speak English, and prices are low. That being said, is buying citizenship a realistic option? I don't think so.

The Nationalist Party has promised, when they return to power, to revoke the the citizenship of anyone buying their way in. The Maltese Labour Party argues that selling citizenship is an excellent way of raising money for the country and attracting "high value" immigrants. While initial estimates suggest that the first year of this program would raise €30 million for the island, it's not clear that this will necessarily work. There is no requirement to be a resident or even invest in the island.

There's also the question of what citizenship really means. Is the right of citizenship something one should be able to buy, or does culture matter? I plan to apply for French citizenship as soon as I'm eligible. I live in France, my wife is French, our daughter is French-American, I speak French, and US and French cultural values are (on paper) largely similar. But does having that passport make me French?


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It's also worth noting that the Maltese government is targeting wealthy Russian and Chinese citizens. On one hand, this makes sense because these citizens often find themselves in the crosshairs of their government's ire. However, and not to put to fine a point on it, many other European countries may not be happy with this. You see, Malta is part of the Schengen area, giving its citizens the right to live and work in 28 different countries. The spectre of the "Russian Oligarch" or Chinese criminals is one that is popular in the news and it's impossible to ignore the potentially racist overtones of some objections, though the Maltese government promises to carefully screen all candidates.

As for myself, I continue to hold that people should be free to move to countries that they feel might be a better fit for their personal values. However, I realize that this is not going to happen and there are very practical reasons why it can't. I also confess that offering citizenship for the rich is disturbing.

Fortunately, if you really want to move to Malta, you can put aside those concerns and take advantage of several less costly routes. Then if you want Maltese citizenship, you merely need to wait five years to apply for naturalization. That should give you plenty of time to integrate into the culture.

How do you feel about citizenship? Should it be for sale?

An American's Adventures in London

The unglamorous Hayes and Harlington Train Station
Photo by Sunil060902

If you're an American living abroad, please complete the Overseas Exile expat survey.

It's not always glamorous being an expat. Rather than give you a proper post today, I'm going to take us back in time to March 2007. I was "living" in London (the quotes will become clear in a moment) and wrote a rather odd blog post. Back then, I was blogging to tell friends what I was up to, rather than blogging for a general audience. As such, the tone of my posts was considerably different from the material you get today. Before I share the post, I should explain the circumstances that my readers at the time understood.

I moved to Nottingham, a small town a couple of hours north of London, in June of 2006. Just over half a year later, the company I was working for announced they were shutting down the Nottingham offices and if we wanted to keep our jobs, we had to move to London. To make a long story very short, the company put all of us up in a hotel for three months — a hotel in Hayes, a suburb of London once described by George Orwell (yes, that Orwell) as "one of the most godforsaken places I have ever struck."

Case in point: shortly after we were herded into this hotel in the middle of nowhere, someone was murdered in the pub next to the hotel. The pub was packed, but there were no witnesses. Those of us in the hotel started referring to it as "the murder pub." We avoided that pub and either we made the long trek into London via the miserable Hayes and Harlington train station or we sat in the hotel bar, night after night, drinking. Sometimes startled guests would walk into the common area of the hotel to find my colleagues wearing pajamas, watching "footy on the telly" with a lager clenched in one hand and the remote in the other (to prevent people from changing the channel). Living in this hotel is how I came to write the following blog entry entitled "Gustatorial Adumbration and the Sheep of the Universe".

---

"Where you from, mate?"

"The U.S."

"'Ere on holiday?"

How he missed the first 'h' and caught the second is one of those mysteries of English speech that I still can't figure out. Like cricket, it's something that Americans are Not Meant to Understand.

"No, I live here in London."

"What're you doin' in the hotel, then?"

"I sort of live here. It's a long story."

And it is a long story. Or a short one. All depends on where you start, really. I've spent several weeks at the Heathrow Comfort Inn Hotel, but I'm basically living in a bar with two or three dozen of my closest coworkers. I can't really count them. Sometimes they're here. Sometimes they leave for the weekend to go home to Nottingham, Beeston, or wherever else they have a real home, traveling to London only to put in their time in a soulless business park. And drink. Lots.

Earlier I was listening to a woman's conversation in what passes for a restaurant at the Heathrow Comfort Inn Hotel. At £14.99 a plate, I would think they'd be able to hire a competent chef. Instead, they serve tasteless slop, devoid of spices, though if you're lucky, you'll get a tough, chewy papadum with it. A papadum is crisp; it snaps apart. Not these. More than once I've watched people struggle to tear one to pieces before shoving a bit in their mouth, their eyes widening in gustatorial horror. It's symbolic of the entire menu.

Curiously, my browser says the word "papadum" is misspelled. In searching through their spelling suggestions, starting, perhaps not inappropriately, with the word "escapades", I see the word "adumbrate". What the hell is that? Looking it up I see that it means, amongst other things, "to foreshadow." What a fucking perfect word. I don't have a spell checker built into my browser, I have a coauthor. I will never look at Firefox the same way again (and perhaps will be more careful about what I type to whom).

Getting back to the woman, she was nattering on about this and about that and her voice had a quality like an itch under the skin, one where you quietly sit there and scratch and scratch and get no relief at all. That's because she had an American accent. Finding American accents irritating is not something I expected upon moving over here, but then I remember I have an American accent, too.

Sitting in my bar, a few days ago, I was reading a book, turning page after page, desperately trying to figure out how our hero was going to survive my next whiskey, when I realized I couldn't figure out what language the ladies at the table to my left were speaking. Well, one of the ladies, actually. Two of them were speaking English, but the third was chattering away on her cell phone and, jarred away from my book, I wondered what country she was from. I wondered what her childhood was like, how she, too, came to be in this overpriced hotel — whose incredibly friendly staff is its only saving grace — when the awful truth hit me: she was Scottish. My brain switched to the "Scottish" filter and I could slowly make out what she was saying. She was talking about picking up some food from the store, but with a thick, burly accent that would as soon stick a knife in your kidney as say "'ere on holiday?"

Curiously, I usually don't have too much difficulty understanding the thicker accents. A couple of weeks ago, enjoying a night out at the downstairs bar with an Irishman, a Glaswegian (someone from Glasgow, Scotland), and an English lady, we found ourselves well in our cups, teasing the Englishwoman because I, the American, had no problem following the conversation but she kept asking them to repeat themselves because their accents were too thick.

Later, the conversation turned, as it naturally does, to quantum physics and cosmology. David, the Irishman, was trying to explain to the English lady something about the "shape of the universe", but we couldn't stop laughing because his Irish accent kept forcing him to say "the sheep of the universe". Eventually, superstring theory became superwool theory and we decided the universe is filled with billions and billions of subatomic sheep. God is my shepherd. The Bible, the definitive text on biology, will, in a pinch, fill in as a physics textbook.

Last week, about a dozen of us went to see the movie 300 at the IMAX theater in Waterloo. If you've ever been to an IMAX theater, you know these are the largest movie screens in the world and they have to have special film for their projectors. These things are huge. Which is why you might understand why I say that the naked women were not exactly titillating. Nipples the size of my head are not erotic.

I might add that there's not much point in seeing this movie. It's gay porn without gay sex. And like most modern porn, it's all action, no plot. After reading about the Battle of Thermopylae, upon which the graphic novel was based (which in turn inspired the movie), I was surprised to discover the movie wasn't entirely historically inaccurate. That, or the screenwriter consulted Wikipedia before setting fingers to keyboard.

The movie, in a nutshell, is 300 very buff men wearing little more than red capes and leather codpieces the size of a small car, spraying gallons of blood everywhere while somehow remaining mysteriously free of it themselves, even their blades. Oh, and a little bit of sex in the beginning just to make sure that guys have everything they want out of a movie. I am dumber for having seen it.

On the way home, Little Miss Drunk Off Her Ass stumbled onto the Tube and, after being told that she was about to sit on something wet and unidentifiable in one of the seats, asked if she could sit down in the middle of all of us. Though there were still plenty of extra seats on the Tube and inviting yourself to join strangers is simply not done, we said that was fine and proceeded to have very strange conversation with her. She was older, might have looked posh were it not for the blood vessels on her face making it clear how she spent her free time, and, after a bit of conversation about the movie and the buff men, she looked around at all of us and said "I do prefer my men a bit thinner."

Which is why I don't really feel bad for what I said next.

"So, what do you do besides drink?"

I wish, I wish, I wish I could have recorded the look on her face.

Red State France Is Doing Fine, Thank You

Released under GNU Free Documentation License

Standard and Poor's has cut France's credit rating, apparently concerned that France can't rescue itself from its current financial troubles. For would-be expats, this is important. When my wife and I were considering options other than Paris, Cyprus was one location that I was looking at because it looked great: it was inexpensive, great weather and part of the EU. And then the financial crisis hit and it looked, at one point, like everyone with a bank account in Cyprus was going to have funds stolen by the government. Cyprus would not have been a particularly brilliant move on our part.

So yes, you want to know if the economy in your target country is stable and many people may be legitimately concerned about France. In fact, I regularly get email from people who are worried about Europe in general. With half of the US poor or in poverty, it seems strange to think that Europe is worse off, but when S&P and others sound the alarm, people get nervous.

There's only one problem with Standard and Poor's credit rating cut for France: S&P is full of merde.

Unfortunately, to understand their error, you need a lot of background.

You don't need to fear moving to France, though exercising caution wouldn't be a bad idea. In order to understand that, I have to provide some background to help understand Standard and Poor's decision. The French President, François Hollande, is a Socialist. This differentiates him from President Barack Obama, who is not a Socialist, despite what certain blowhards claim. In fact, real Socialists over here in Europe laugh themselves silly at Americans who claim that Obama is a Socialist. This is because Socialism – which has as many variations as Capitalism – is basically collective ownership of an economic activity. The collective, in this case, is a community or state.

For example, when you buy a home in an exclusive gated community in the United States, you often pay dues to the community and the community often provides private security for residents. Even though the security is "private", it's collectively owned by the local community. That's an example of Socialism. In the wider world, police departments, fire departments, basic education, and many other services are provided for by taxes and run by federal, state, or local governments, thus fitting the textbook definition of socialist. As a somewhat ironic example, the US military is a branch of the government, so the free medical care it provides to its service members is also socialism (there is no requirement that an activity benefit everyone for it to be socialist).

Also not a Socialist.

Thus, in the US, there are many, many examples of socialism and the US public generally don't mind in the slightest, so long as you don't call it what it is. Ronald Reagan didn't call for privatizing the police. Does that make him a Socialist? George Bush didn't want to privatize police departments. Does that make him a Socialist? Though many Republicans want to privatize Social Security, basic education, and keep health care private, at the end of the day, all but the most extreme Republicans are happy about the collective ownership of many basic services. The silly cries that Obama is a socialist stem from those who prefer a regressive income tax and less regulation — particularly of the banking industry at whose trough they feed.

And yes, this relates to S&P's downgrading of France's credit rating, but that will have to wait a bit.

Amongst mature economies, you won't find any "pure" capitalist economies, nor will you find pure socialist ones. There's a socialist spectrum and your country falls somewhere on it. In this case, France happens to be more "left" than the US. Unfortunately, the US Republicans have been arguing for so hard and so long that the Federal Government doesn't work that they now have a perverse incentive: they can't try to made the Federal Government work better because if they succeeded, this would put the lie to the message they've been spreading for years.

A case in point is the Affordable Care Act. Every major nation aside from the US has found a solution to providing health care for its citizens, but the Republicans claim, falsely, that the US has the best health care in the world, when even a brief survey of world health care systems reveals this to be untrue. The Republicans make all sorts of wild claims, but at the end of the day, they know that if the US government manages to ensure that all are insured, the Republicans will have trouble explaining why health care for all and the end of medical bankruptcies is a government failure.

But when Republicans claim that the US can't do what every other major nation has done, why do people believe this? According to one fascinating study about misinformation:

[A]nalytic as well as intuitive processing favors the acceptance of messages that are compatible with a recipient’s pre-existing beliefs: there are no elements that contradict other things one knows and the message is easy to process and “feels right”.

In other words, once you get someone to believe a certain way, the lies you tell that reinforce those beliefs are easy to swallow.

Today, since much of the Western world is dominated by large industries, such as banking, pharmaceuticals, petroleum, and so on, we have rich politicians who further enrich themselves by playing along with industry. In the case of the world financial crisis, while the masses struggle, the rich are making a killing, and it's not just in the US. That leads us to ask: why have we followed years of austerity during the current crisis? Who is it helping?

Austerity causes a government to shrink, or at least halt the increase of, its spending. It's an attempt to reduce budget deficits. You can do this with cutting spending, or increasing taxes, or both. However, those on the right strongly object to raising taxes because they're quite happy with the wealth they're accruing, thank you. And hey, raising taxes is Socialist!!!

Germany's Secret Weapon
Photo courtesy Emilian Robert Vicol

We know by now that the primary economics paper used to support austerity was riddled with mistakes and math errors. We also know that Germany is quite happy with austerity, but they're in a curious situation. They have high productivity and their relatively low German wages means their goods are very competitive. Normally when a country sees their exports increasing, the value of their currency increases due to higher demand, thus pushing up the prices of their goods and reducing demand. Strong national exports are usually self-limiting.  However, Germany has adopted the Euro, meaning that the value of their currency can't increase relative to their major trading partners, thus capping the prices of their exports and keeping their exports strong. Thus, German business is very happy with the current state of affairs, despite the pain it's causing others.

France has trouble competing in this arena because French minimum wages is €9.50 an hour, but many Germans are earning less than €6 an hour. Germany is building their economic empire on the backs of cheap labor, while France is insisting upon fairness. However, France isn't cutting her budget, she's raising taxes. Thus, much of the business infatuation with austerity has led many people who should know better to assume that France is doing it wrong.

So what happened when S&P downgraded France's credit rating? Nothing much.

The International Monetary Fund seems a lot more worried about Japan, Italy, and the United States than France. In fact, in discussing revenues, they had this to say (emphasis mine):

In advanced economies, revenues (relative to GDP) have rebounded to near precrisis levels—reflecting frequent recourse to tax measures to narrow fiscal deficits. Indeed, relative to initial plans in 2010, revenue increases have in many countries outpaced expenditure cuts by enough to shift the overall policy mix more toward the tax side (Figure 7). Ex ante, about 30 percent of large adjustment efforts were intended to come from the revenue side; in the event, the increase in revenue was about twice as much as projected, so that ex post, this share has increased to about 40 percent. In some cases (including France, Iceland, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom), tax measures made up for shortfalls or delays in expenditure measures. In only a handful of countries (for example, Japan, Spain, and the United States) have revenues underperformed relative to original plans, and there they were partly offset by a reduction in spending—except in Japan.

I guess the IMF is a bunch of goddamned socialists too.

Investors want a return on their money and they're going to be careful where they put their money and they're not too worried about France, even if S&P is sounding the alarm.

Paul Krugman, love him or hate him, explains the problem nicely when he points out that S&P is worried about Hollande's refusal to cut the French safety net and they're ignoring the actual numbers. France is struggling like much of the world, but there's not much to suggest that we're going to have an economic collapse any time soon.

That being said, unemployment in France is high and growth is sluggish. Further shocks to the world economy aren't going to help, particularly if they impact the Euro. Many are waiting to see what happens, but as the Financial Times points out:

In certain respects, France has fought its way quite well through the post-2008 European financial crisis and economic recession. Most of the banking system is stable. The cumulative loss of national economic output is below the eurozone average. Government bond yields are exceptionally low. France boasts world-class companies such as Air Liquide, Danone and L’Oréal that are emerging stronger than ever from the crisis.

So for those who think national economies are all about cutting costs, it's not. Reading textbooks is OK, but paying attention to the real world is better. And for would-be expats looking for new horizons, forget about what politicians say and what your preconceived notions are: the world doesn't really pay attention to op-ed columns (even Krugman's). Yes, any place you move to has an inherent risk and I won't pretend that it doesn't, but it's pretty hard to evaluate that risk when politicians and business are more interested in ideology than information.

Future Expats: Emigrating to Mars

Natural color image of Sol 52 on Mars
Photo courtesy of NASA

Forgive me for today's flight of fancy, but given that I love being an expat and I love science fiction, the two naturally converge from time to time.

There are currently two different companies who have long-term plans to colonize Mars. SpaceX, long-term, envisions a colony of 80,000 people on Mars. Mars One, on the other hand, plans to colonize Mars and use reality TV subscriptions to pay for it. With an increasing number of space-based companies, sooner or later someone is going to try to colonize another celestial body. As it turns out, expatriation to Mars has interesting social and legal consequences.

Mars One even has an official trailer to introduce themselves:


And if you want to learn more about Mars, you can explore it with Google Earth:


But what would happen if you moved there? First, let's forget about the perils of the months-long trip in a rocket to Mars as those are already well-known. And I don't think we have any historical guides to draw from: there are no natives to subjugate, nor would emigration be large-scale enough to really have fair parallels. There will be no "open frontiers" for people to settle. You'll be in a tin can along with everyone else. So what's going to happen? Well, we'll consider this in the context of the Mars One approach of sending four people every two years.

I've previously written about the Four Stages of Expat Life:

1. Honeymoon
2. Homesickness
3. Coping
4. Living

The strategies that I generally recommend for dealing with homesickness and transitioning to stage three aren't viable. You're not going to arrange a Skype call with your best buddy. There is no local culture to immerse yourself in. You won't nip down to the shop and pay double the price for that bag of Fritos, hoping to relax with "comfort food". Just going out for a stroll can kill you and you're going to spend the rest of your life trying to build a freakin' planet for others to live on. There will be no respite. There will be no turning back. And over 200,000 people have applied to emigrate to Mars.

Of course, while we're considering this, also consider that you're now a vegetarian, if not a vegan. Some people would be very frustrated by this. Utilizing animals for meat/food production is an incredible waste of energy and even though Elon Musk has made it clear that he doesn't care what you eat on Mars, it might not make a lot of economic sense to bring chickens (I would love to see a cow in a space suit). Since there's no native culture on Mars, those who move there will be creating one and I could easily see the entire planet growing up thinking that "meat is something Earthlings eat". And the cultural changes will stick! Sooner or later children will be born there and given that gravity on Earth is three times what they'll be used to, there's a good chance they can never visit. That will create a permanent cultural gap.

Here's another fun thing to weigh on future colonist minds: can you imagine being one of the first four to land on the planet and two years later, when the second four are launched into space, their rocket blows up and multiple lawsuits shut down the Mars colonization program? The legal mess would be heartbreaking, but it would be nothing compared to those already on Mars, wondering if they'll get more supplies or even colonists. "Forever alone" takes on a whole new meaning.

The horror awaits ...
Image courtesy Mars One, used under Fair Use (I hope)

And here's another fun thought, one that would make a very nifty science fiction movie: you're in the second group of four people heading to Mars and halfway through an eight-month flight when an accident kills one of the four already on Mars. And then another. And then a third. And you have one person left who is, in all likelihood, an insane murderer and he's waiting for you. You have four months to figure out how you're going to survive. Have fun! And there's not a damned thing anyone could legally do about it.

And presumably some nation is going to want to claim that Mars colony, but the 1967 Space Treaty, one which most nations have signed, explicitly forbids any national government from claiming a celestial body, claiming them as the common heritage of mankind (an international legal principle, believe it or not). Interestingly, under this treaty, any interplanetary exploration or colonization must be carried out for the benefit of all of humanity. Get enough people on Mars to make it economically self-sustaining and they're going to say "we weren't even born when that treaty was signed". And truth be told, it will be pretty hard to force them to change their minds.

Another thing which I find particularly curious is the idea of taxes. Under current US law, any US citizen who flies to Mars will have to file a tax return every year. I wonder how that's going to be enforced? I already suspect that well-known US citizens abroad, such as Boris Johnson, a British politician with an estimated net worth of $185 million are being quietly ignored by the IRS, thus possibly setting a legal precedent of "let's only pick on the easy targets". US citizens on Mars won't even be able to relinquish their citizenship because, legally, they have to do so at a consulate. A consulate is occupied by a consul and they're a political representative from one state to the territory of another. Under the 1967 treaty, it's unclear to me if the US could even legally set up a consulate on Mars and since the US recognizes jus sanguinus, meaning that all US citizens pass their citizenship to their children, could we wind up with a planet of tax dodgers? I'm looking forward to the first interplanetary tax war.

Legally speaking, is this a "celestial body"?
Image courtesy NASA

There is, however, one simple way to avoid the legal issues presented by the 1967 space treaty: read the damned thing. That's right, read it. It's very short. I'll wait. Once you read it and think about it for a while, you'll see multiple fatal flaws. For example, the beginning of Article 1 of the treaty reads:

The exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind.

Don't think "rational", think "lawyer". What would a lawyer do? They would ask "what's a celestial body?" and all would come crashing down. The term is never defined and that's fatal in law. Is the ISS a celestial body? If so, all current corporate plans to launch space stations are moot and strangely, no nation is arguing to shut down corporation exploitation of space.

But if that doesn't sound like a compelling argument there's another one. When you read the treaty's enforcement mechanism ... oh, that's right! There isn't one! It's all talk, no action. There is absolutely nothing in that treaty which can compel any nation to obey it. And you can bet your ass that if the US-based SpaceX corporation starts colonizing Mars, the US government is going to involved. Maybe there will be an IRS office on Mars after all?

Moving Abroad by Getting Married

Your author and his wife, married at Tower Bridge

Because I no longer live in the US, I've been called a traitor more than once. This is generally from people who probably give amusing definitions of what a traitor is. Were my French wife to live with me in the US, I wonder if they would call her a traitor too? Probably not. But at the end of the day, if you marry someone from another country, at least one of you is going to wind up living in a different country. Damned traitor.

In the years of writing this blog, I have never specifically written a post about moving abroad via marriage. Though it may come as a surprise to some, this lack has been deliberate. Not only did I assume that most people knew about this route, but I also didn't feel the need to write on some rather unsavory topics in this area, but I think the time has come to talk about it.

Recently I was contacted by someone living in the US who wanted a better understanding of the job market for IT in Europe. He has read my post about how to get a job in Sweden and as it turns out, he and his wife are particularly interested in the possibility of moving there, but they have a child, and a home, and he has a secure job. The concern expressed is that he is worried that such security won't last in the US. It's a common theme that I often hear from people contacting me (though to be fair, I hear this about residents of many countries).

After sending him a lengthy reply, he dropped a bit of a bombshell statement: his wife has Spanish citizenship, so moving to Spain is always a fallback position.

What? Hold on there! If your spouse has EU citizenship, things change dramatically! If your spouse is an EU citizen, you have the legal right to live and work anywhere in the EU that your spouse lives! Your children also have the right to public education. No work permit is required. No residence permit is required. You only have to go through some pro forma paperwork and bam, you're in! Of course, there is also an assessment of whether or not your marriage is a sham, but  assuming it's not (or you're good liars), you're good to go.

Even if your spouse is not a citizen of another country, they still might be able to claim citizenship via ancestry. Getting married doubles your chances of moving abroad!

Well, sort of. Countries are quite happy to find all sorts of restrictions. For example, if you've met the love of your life and she lives in a small town in Cumbria and you marry her, the British government may very well tell you that you're not allowed to move to the UK. That's because the UK restricts the marriage visa with financial requirements and she will have to earn, at minimum, £18,600 to allow you to live with her. There are many jobs in Cumbria which pay less than this amount (particularly if you live in countryside) and you can survive just fine on that amount. However, even though this restriction violates EU law, many UK politicians are throwing their toys of our the pram once they realize that joining the EU meant cooperating with other countries and thus said politicians are quite happy to ignore EU law. Sadly, real people are getting hurt by the UK marriage visa restrictions.

If you do find yourself falling in love with someone from another country, though, just remember that if you get married, you probably have the right to live together (though there are often severe restrictions for gay couples), but be careful if you decide to go looking for someone from another country.

Many years ago when I was still living in the US, I was on a dating Web site when I stumbled across the profile of a British lady who seemed interesting, attractive, and wrote that she desperately loved American men and wanted to settle down with one. I sent her a message. She sent me a reply. "Deposit $50,000 in my account for marriage."

Sigh. From the opening paragraph of the U.S. State Department's warnings on marriage scams:

U.S. citizens should be aware of individuals they meet on internet dating websites who feign friendship, profess romantic interest, and/or express marriage intentions over the internet. Scammers commonly claim to be U.S. citizens who are engaged in international business, requiring them to frequently travel overseas. In fact, these individuals are not U.S. citizens. Many scammers also claim some sort of connection to Europe. 

This is insanely common. Many people wanting to explore the world fall victim to this, though some voluntarily pay money for sham marriages. I was recently reading an article  (which I can't find right now) claiming that after the discovery that 100% of Tunisians marrying Norwegians ended their marriages after the Tunisians got permanent residency in Norway, the marriages dropped to almost zero after Norway made it illegal to pay for marriage. If you do choose to go this route, be careful. It's generally illegal and can easily get you deported and banned from a country.

That being said, the "mail-order" marriage route is still out there. Listverse has an interesting summary of some misconceptions, including the interesting tidbit that sometimes the brides are legitimate and want a husband to move to their country. Divorce rates for mail-order marriages also tend to be lower than the US average, something that would surprise many.

And then there is Cherry Blossoms. Once a print magazine for mail-order brides, it's now a Web site for them. There's considerable controversy around mail-order marriages, but so long as there is mail/internet, the practice will continue.

Getting married is certainly one way of moving abroad, but there are definitely pitfalls. You'll also have to consider the case of what happens if you separate/divorce too early. You may just get deported, so you had better read up on the law and make sure you understand it. And it's not a step to be taken lightly, so unless you're in dire straits or in love (possibly the same thing), I would not recommend it.

How to get a job in Sweden

Stotorget, Stockholm, Sweden
Photo by Mastad

Please share this post with any of your friends who would like to find a job in another country.

Yesterday I posted about a Swedish job site that was possibly a scam, but I know that many people would love to get a job in Sweden. For some reason, my 20 Things to Know Before Moving to Sweden is incredibly popular (in that it draws a lot of traffic), even though it's merely a link to another Web site, and I often get email from people asking me about Sweden. It's also well known that the Swedish people are very happy (as are Scandinavians in general).

So how would you go about getting a job there? Thanks to changes in the law in 2008, Sweden is actually one of the easiest countries in the world to get a job in if you're a foreigner.

In reading through the Swedish government's description of the law (warning: PDF), I'm pleasantly surprised. It's both pro-business and pro-worker's rights. On the business side, if you have trouble filling your your positions, you're allowed to hire outside of the EU. What's amazing is that almost every other country imposes a "labor test". This test requires that the business prove there are no suitable local candidates available to fill the positions. The labor test has been eliminated for Sweden. When evaluating the position, the government relies on the employer telling them whether or not they need a given position filled.

While this sounds great, warning bells immediately started going off in my mind. What's to stop business from importing cheap labor undercutting wages? Well, the government claims to check to ensure that this won't happen. Theoretically these safeguards are also in the US, but the US relevant agencies don't have the budget to verify this, so US companies are using H1B visas as a source of cheap labor. Knowing that the law and reality aren't always the same thing, I was concerned. However, in Sweden, they really do check and make sure this abuse isn't happening. In Sweden.se, the official "Sweden portal", their explanation of getting a work permit has this to say (emphasis mine):

If you have successfully applied for a job and been offered a position in Sweden, your future employer must provide you with a written offer of employment. This written job offer is important to the permit process; without it, you can't apply for your work permit. 

The written offer of employment, is an official document, that clearly describes the terms and conditions of your employment such as salary, insurance and length of employment. The offer of employment must be obtained by your potential employer from the Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket). The employer then fills it out and sends it to the concerned trade union for approval of the offered conditions and then sends it back to the employer, who sends it on to you. 

Please note that the offer of employment must be signed by both employer and the concerned trade union and submitted along with your application for a work/residence permit.

In Sweden, trade unions are important and no, they don't let immigrant labor undercut their salaries. However, labor abuses do occur in Sweden and some immigrant groups do suffer lower wages than average. So while things are good in Sweden, they are not perfect and you'll still want to be careful.


View Larger Map
That being said, the OECD has this to say about the new Swedish labor immigration system (but read the entire article):

The Swedish government implemented [labor immigration] reform to better meet the needs of employers while ensuring safeguards for the local labour market. This has largely happened, reflecting both the contents of the reform and the co-operation of social partners in compliance mechanisms. 

So how do you get a job in Sweden? First, sweden.se states that the job must be listed on the EURES site. You can search for EURES jobs here. For a random search, "Hotel, catering and personal services staff", I found over 2,000 jobs listed in Sweden. Many of the job descriptions are in Swedish, so I would suspect that not speaking Swedish would be an obstacle, but English is widely spoken in Sweden, particularly in the major cities. Not speaking Swedish will limit your opportunities, but it's not an unsurmountable obstacle.

Goteborg, Sweden
Photo by Tiberio Frascari

Another important thing to consider is that if you're in Sweden and want to apply for a job, you usually have to return to your home country first ... unless you're on their labor shortage list. So what sort of jobs are on that list? There are the usual STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine), but also:

• Bus drivers
• Cooks/chefs
• Plumbers
• Roofers
• Taxi drivers
• Truck mechanics

... and many more.

And does this really work? From the OECD report mentioned earlier:

While labour migration to Sweden accounts for only a small part of the total, it provides a significant contribution to employment in a few occupations. Taking into account the duration of stay of labour migrants, inflows relative to total employment are significant in these occupations: 2.3% in food processing, 1.7% in housekeeping, and 1.6 % in computing.

It is now much easier for high-skilled migrants to come to Sweden to work and to stay. So far, especially in IT, most are short-term workers on intra-corporate transfers, but a growing number are remaining. 

The reform also led to increased recruitment in lesser-skilled jobs, especially in restaurants, hospitality and cleaning. These labour migrants tend to come to stay, with longer permit durations and higher renewal rates.

So yes, it's working.

Of course, actually getting a company to say "yes" is a different story, but if they do, the Swedish government won't be standing in your way.

Update: And I forgot to mention that all immigrants to Sweden get free language lessons. Also, lots of Swedish job postings and information here.

This Swedish Jobs Web Site Is a Bit tvivelaktig (questionable)

This is not Simon Nordin

Note: there is a company in Australia named Swede Recruit. This post is not about that company. If you really want to get a job in Sweden, I explain the process here.

There are many people desperate to find work in other countries. There are, sadly, many others who are all too happy to take advantage of this. You'll find plenty of "we'll get you an overseas job" sites with dodgy credentials and it looks like there might be a new one in Sweden, apparently run by one "Simon Nordin, CEO".

It seems "Ecothegeek" on Reddit had his CV on Eures, the European job portal, and a company contacted him saying that they'd like to find him a job in Sweden for the low price of €195. Ecothegeek was a bit concerned and asked about them on Reddit's /r/IWantOut community. Something didn't seem quite right to me, so I started digging.

Called swederecruit dot com (not linking to avoid giving them traffic) and claiming on their Web site to have been doing business since 1998, they registered their domain a few days ago and launched their grammatically-challenged Web site (my favorite is the "Get a Work" link). It's possible that they're simply a brand-new company hoping to make themselves look mature, or maybe they're established international recruiters who inexplicably forgot to get a Web site for 15 years.

From their About Us page (emphasis mine):

Swede Recruit founded in 1998 and since then has given people and businesses to develop by being a caring, responsive and solution-oriented agencies.

We offer solutions for staffing, recruitment and outplacement. Our clients are among both private and public companies and organizations.

We at Swede Recruit make it as smooth as possible for our graduates to find jobs that suit them perfectly and as easy as possible for a recruiting firm to find the right employees . We believe that everyone is the right person in the right place, anywhere in the world. It’s just about finding the right. Here we come in and help.

We have put a focus on being a helping hand to job seekers from other countries who are looking for work in Sweden. We provide a large number of apartments for our job seekers to make it easier to make the move to Sweden.

Swede Recruit connects right manpower for the job!

And here's their Apply page (emphasis mine):

Below you can apply for a job, an apartment and a work permit in Sweden that guarantees you an optional work and an optional home. When you apply for this you will receive a letter via email on how to complete your payment.

For us to be able to process your application, you need to pay the administrative fee of 195 euros. The process goes through a work permit, an apartment and a job for you.

Within three months, we will introduce alot of job alternatives for you and a nearby apartment. After you have decided which job and which apartment you want as we have suggested to you, you will get your work permit in Sweden. Then you are welcome to your new job and your new apartment.

If it turns out that you are not satisfied with the jobs and / or the apartment that we present to you within three months, we can at your request, keep searching or refund the full payment to you.

For your and our success, we provide only the work that is under swedish and union standard salaries. Swedish average salary is 29,000 SEK (about 3,100 euros).

Wow. That's pretty impressive. €195 (~$270 US) and they'll provide you with alot (sic) of job alternatives and an apartment!

So why do I think something is odd? Well, I've been researching expat issues for a long time and my wife and I run an international IT recruiting company, so I think I have some experience here. You generally don't just pay some money and get a work permit. Sweden is still struggling with unemployment, but as it turns out, under a 2008 change in their laws, virtually anyone can get a work permit in Sweden if they can convince a company to offer them a job. So maybe this site is legit?

So I dug into their Web site. First:

• Their domain was registered on October 28th, 2013.
• Alexa has no history for them.
• The Internet Archive has no history for them.

This is not a smoking gun and there could be explanations for why a 15-year company handling international recruitment would not have had a Web presence prior to a few days ago. But let's look further.

According to their Web site (/maria-moved-from-madrid-to-gothenburg/), Maria Gonzalez is a 34 year old Spanish woman who used their services to find work in Gothenburg, Sweden. They have a short interview with her where she explains how easily Swede Recruit found her a job and an apartment. Maria sounds very happy.

Except that the image they used is actually that of Rebecca Martinez, an assistant professor in Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of Missouri.

Well, OK. Mistakes happen. Or maybe Maria didn't want her photo taken so they made do with what they could borrow from other Web sites. Or maybe they just lost Maria's photo?

And then there's the happy tale of Raila (/raila-got-a-job-and-housing-in-stockholm-via-swed-recruitment/). He struggled for two years to find a job in his native Kenya, but Swede Recruit found him a lovely job as a café assistant in downtown Stockholm.

Apparently they lost Raila's photo too, so Swede Recruit repurposed the photo of Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, a film director from Chad.

Again, no smoking gun here. Maybe they just keep forgetting to take photos of the people they help.

So are their any real photos of people on their site? Sure! They have a staff page. I took a screenshot in case they accidentally lose these photos too.

Those people are:

• Simon Nordin CEO (A "Simon Nordin" registered the swederecruit dot com domain)
• Kevin Söderman
• Dennis Nyström
• Karin Friman
• Gustav Ek
• Petra Flykt

The real Simon Nordin?

And in the mother of all coincidences, it turns out that Guillaume Cailleux, Chris Carver, Adam Finck, Laura Walker, Zachary Barrows and Liz Allen, people who work for the charity invisiblechildren.com, are all dead ringers for them, right down to the clothes! Weird, eh?

Psssst, Simon: didn't you know how trivial it is to find out if an image on the Web is used on another site?

Oh, and Swede Recruit doesn't appear to be registered as a Swedish company. Scambook already has an entry for them and the company registry number that people claim Swede Recruit is using is false.

It appears that Simon Nordin, the "CEO", or someone using the name "Gustav Ek" (see above), was actively contacting people via Eures, the European Job Mobility portal. In fact, it looks like they may have mass mailed people on that Web site, trying to get people to pay €195. However, Eures is now calling Swede Recruit a fake company and under Swedish law, to qualify for a Swedish work permit, the job must be listed on Eures.

I contacted him under a fake name and said I couldn't apply because I didn't have a "Eures ID" (a "required" field on their "Apply" form). Someone named "Simon Nordin" replied:

Hi,

You need to register at our site and pay the administration fee to take part of our services. 

And if you do not have a eures id you can leave it blank

Best regards
Simon Nordin

Then when I checked the "Apply" page again, someone had removed the field requiring a Eures ID. I filled in my information and was sent a link to a PDF with Mr. Nordin's IBAN, and BIC/SWIFT information for transferring the money to his account. Strange that a 15-year old company would be using the CEO's personal bank details rather than their own (though I have to say, if this entire thing was set up just to make Mr. Nordin look very stupid, someone's done a brilliant job and I should be apologizing to Mr. Nordin).

Further digging turned up Mr. Nordin relatively quickly. He's probably a young man around 18 to 20 years old or so, possibly living with his mother. I found plenty of contact information for him and his family and a friend in Sweden offered to contact the boy's family for me, and he did. The boy's aunt and father have allegedly been contacted and from what I understand, the father said they'd get down to the bottom of this and go to the police, if necessary. I've made several attempts through different channels to contact Mr. Nordin to get his side of the story. Neither Mr. Nordin nor his "company" have responded to me. If you complete the "Apply" form, the Web site is still sending out "order confirmations" asking people to send him money.

I work hard trying to help people legitimately find work in other countries and it saddens me to see something like this. Perhaps Swede Recruit is simply a very unprofessional company that doesn't understand that misrepresenting themselves like this is wrong. I would suggest ignoring them and keep reading this site. I don't charge you a damned thing.

You Can Move to Pitcairn Island

Pitcairn Island Dock
Photo by Jens Bludau

On April 28, 1789, the crew of the HMS Bounty mutinied for reasons that are debated to this day. Some say it was harsh treatment by Captain Bligh; others claim it was debauched sailors attracted to the sexually liberal lifestyle of Polynesia. Whatever the cause, the mutineers split and some settled in Tahiti, while others settled on Pitcairn Island, perhaps the most remote settlement in the world. Today, over two centuries later, the descendants of the original mutineers still live there and they have a problem. With a rapidly declining population, they want you to move there.

Do It Yourself Expats

Nighttime shot of one of the towers of
The vieux port in La Rochelle

Note: click on the photos to enlarge them. They're photos of the town I live in and are unrelated to the post.

In a very interesting blog post, a man describes how moving to Thailand helped him launch a startup. The short version: by living somewhere that allowed him to keep his monthly expenses down to around $1,000 a month, he was able to have more money to build his business and because he didn't know people there, he was less distracted by his social life.

Here's the interesting bit: he didn't have a work permit. He just sold everything he owned and caught a flight. This is what I call a "DIY (Do It Yourself) Expat". We're going to be seeing more and more of them in the future.

Everyone in La Rochelle
knows where this house is.

There's quite a debate about this post on Hacker News, with at least one individual, who claims to be Thai, asserting that a Thai can get by on $500 a month (though not if you choose to live in Bangkok). The trick is one that expats the world over learn: if you live as if you lived in your home country, you can easily pay a small fortune, particularly if the culture is far different from your own. People sometimes are confused by the high rents and low salaries of many cities, such as Hong Kong, but they forget that the locals can survive there, which means there's more going on than one might think.

A street near our flat.

Since the author of that post arrived on a tourist visa, he couldn't legally stay in Thailand forever, so he had to keep doing what is known as a visa run. This is the practice of a leaving a country for a short time merely so that you can return a get your visa renewed. I actually know of a gentleman who stayed in a Paris for a couple of years doing visa runs, but he found it increasingly difficult and it's not terribly common for Western Europe. It's generally emerging economies that are more tolerant of the practice. Visa runs are fairly common in Southeast Asia and South America.

La Rue sur les Murs, La Rochelle

The author already had an online business and that, of course, is the key for making this work. You generally can't just show up in a new country and (legally) work, but there's nothing stopping a tourist from attending their existing business. So you need an online job. Editor? Software developer? Photographer. There are many ways to become location-independent. You just need to make it happen.

Rue du Minage, La Rochelle

Oh, and you either want to put most of the things you own in storage, leave them with family or friends, or better yet, learn to live with just 100 things. That way you'll still be able to carry what you need to survive if you're denied re-entry on a visa run. And you'll want to be able to say "yes" to Count von Europe.

The local market setting up in the morning

The world is getting smaller. Opportunities are opening up everywhere, but rather than wait for that opportunity, why not create it? With the increase in telecommuting and the strength of many emerging economies, I fully expect a long-term downward pressure on wages in OECD nations. More and more companies are discovering that they can hire several remote workers for the cost of a single local worker. Not all positions are amenable to this, but this situation isn't going to go away and nows the time to plan for it.

Doing Business in La Rochelle, France

Afternoon on the Bay of Biscay

Click on the photos to see larger versions.

Life has really taken a strange and interesting turn. If you travel enough and leave yourself open to adventure, sooner or later things will happen. "Luck" usually involves hard work and perseverance, not just stumbling into good fortune.

Case in point, last Friday my wife and I were sitting in a boat, watching the last Olympic sailing trials in La Rochelle. We were surrounded by local business leaders, all of this paid for courtesy of La Rochelle and the local area governments.