A slice of Italy

As mentioned last Wednesday, I spent a bit of time in Bologna, Italy. Sadly, due to the nature of the visit, I didn't have a chance to do much sightseeing, but I did get to enjoy some fantastic food.

Italy's always been a bit of a frustration for me. I've visited it twice before and found the people friendly, the country beautiful, but the economy a wreck. Italian infrastructure is incomplete, with many projects derailed by corruption. Traveling through Italy shows many abandoned buildings and poorly maintained rail stations and that's in the relatively rich north. I've not been to southern Italy, which I'm told is in even worse shape. It's bad enough that there is a separatist movement in Northern Italy.

None of that changes the fact that Italy is beautiful and the food is wonderful, though I made a mistake and ordered a pepperoni pizza. I've had this happen before that I've ordered pepperoni pizza here in Europe and wound up with bell peppers instead of the spicy salami we all love.

Yes, this is a real pepperoni pizza.

To say I was disappointed when I received my pizza would be about right, particularly since I am not a fan of bell peppers. But damn if that wasn't one of the best pizzas I've ever had, bell peppers or no. I've generally preferred Chicago-style pizza, but now I realize why people say Italian style is the best. When a cheese pizza with bell peppers tastes this good, I think I've finally begun to understand.

On Thursday we had dinner at Le Golosità di Nonna Aurora, a local restaurant which specializes in Bolognese food. That made me happy because quite often I go to conferences and we get taken to an "ethnic" restaurant which is completely unrelated to the local food. If I'm going to be somewhere, I want to experience as much of there as I can.

The starter was a lovely soup with ham tortellini in a clear chicken broth.

Nice and light. A great start.

This was followed by the primo course. In this case, it was two types of hand-made pasta. Both were incredibly delicious (all of the pasta I had in Bologna was very good). I particularly enjoyed a green and yellow pasta with ground beef that was unlike any pasta I've quite had before. Yummy.

Both were great, but that pasta on the left was superb!

What really surprised me was the secondo, which is main dish. This is the course where you typically get meat or fish. Nope, not here. They served what I would have called antipasto (literally "before meat"), something which is usually served before the primo. Instead, it was served with these light, puffy pieces of fried dough that you split open, slather on some delicious cream cheese (which was more like yoghurt, to be honest), perhaps add some meat and wolf down. They brought out plates and plates and plates of this stuff for the main course. It was delicious.

A surprising main course.

Dessert was a lemon custard pie. It was a bit on the sweet side, but then, I've never been a huge fan of sweets, so I'm probably not the best judge.

Lemon custard pie for dessert.

While I've been to Italy twice before, this was far and away my best food experience. I'm spoiled due to all of the delicious food here in Paris, but this trip gave Paris a run for the money.

The rest of my stay in Bologna involved me giving a couple of talks at the conference and wandering around Bologna a bit. Sadly, I never really got any good photos of the city. It's mostly an industrial town and like most Italian architecture, it's red, yellow or orange brick and stucco buildings. It's not very large and easy to walk through. Many of the residential areas we were in were very beautiful and I kept thinking, once again, that it's a shame about the state of the Italian economy. I could easily live there.

Off to Italy

Sitting at Charles de Gaulle airport making a quick post. I'm afraid my posting schedule may be off for a few days while I'm in Italy speaking at the Italian Perl Workshop. Meanwhile, here are a few photos to keep your dreams alive.

Bologna, Italy
Photo by Donato Accogli

Trevi Fountain, Rome
Photo by Zero One

Venice, Italy
Photo by Tanbako the Jaguar

Milan, Italy
Photo by Jiuguang Wang

Padua, Italy
Photo by Miles Heller

Naples, Italy
Photo by Francesco Sgroi

US immigration policy blunting its high-tech edge?

High-tech is high-value
Photo by Jamesongravity

TechCrunch has an interesting article entitled For The First Time In Decades, US Is Bleeding High-Skilled Immigrants. The situation is very complicated, but much of it boils down to a Byzantine legal system for immigration. It's hard to get a work visa for the US and easy to lose it. On top of that, Republicans attempted to shift 55,000 US visas for immigrants from lesser-developed nations to foreign-born graduates of US universities. The idea being to ensure that high-skilled talent that studies in the US stays in the US. This makes sense as they're already likely to be more integrated into US culture.

Democrats have objected, claiming that Republicans are trying to shift visas from immigrants the Republicans don't want to immigrants they do want.

While I agree with the Democratic reasoning here, I'm unsure of how this is an indictment against Republicans. All developed nations control immigration tightly because they have to. Unrestricted immigration would overload the the social services of states and "low value" (in economic terms) immigrants are more likely to cost the state more money than they generate. Thus, "high value" immigrants are not only desired, but sought after. After all, they benefit an economy. The US, however, appears to be ignoring the benefits and focusing only on the costs.

Part of the problem is probably due to the anti-immigrant sentiment sweeping across much of the US. As a politician, it can be tough tackling immigration reform when many people would be happy to stop immigration. I've explained why importing workers in a bad economy is still often a good idea, but I doubt policy makers read this site. Further, given the current combative nature of US politics, I don't see a compromise happening any time soon.

There are other issues which are going to play into this long-term. The US PATRIOT Act has made US-based cloud services less popular outside of the US, hurting the ability of US cloud businesses to compete. Thanks to FATCA, "US persons" are now losing banking services abroad which, in turn, means that foreign businesses are now more reluctant to operate in the US market, a potential long-term drain on the US economy. It's going to be harder to attract high-tech talent when your economy is struggling and the cost of being a US person can mean lack of access to banking services in your home country.

And then we have the charming case of an immigrant to the US being imprisoned in Leavenworth for sending money home to this family. Regardless of whether or not you feel imprisoning him was justified, it's hard to argue that this will not have a chilling effect on other would-be immigrants to the US.

On top of that, EU countries are launching their European Blue Card programs in an attempt to attract more high-value immigrants. Though I initially speculated that it wasn't going to help the EU much, seeing the actual implementations has changed my mind. It's going to be much easier for many high-value workers to move to Europe. I've written before about how 5% of high-value workers go to Europe and 55% go to the US and I expect the combination of many factors is starting to shift the numbers to the EU. In this case, the US's loss will likely be the EU's gain.

Long-term it's even worse. The US cost of education has risen so dramatically that young Americans have gone from #1 worldwide in terms of having university degrees to #12. Thus, the US is not only less likely to import high-value workers, she's getting less likely to produce them. Of course, with almost half of Americans believing in the decidedly anti-science Creationist viewpoint, it's perhaps an uphill battle to promote the sciences in the US.

It seems that the deck is stacked against the US, but for the most part, the US has done the stacking.

Malaysia has a work permit with your name on it

Detail from Malaysian Batu Caves
Photo by carolynconner

Unlike anything you will likely experience in Western culture, the 400 million year old Batu Caves today is one of the most popular Hindu shrines outside of India. Dedicated to the Hindu god Murugan, with numerous caves and shrines, the Batu Caves attracts both worshippers and tourists.

Eight miles south of the caves is the city of Kuala Lumpur, the federal capital of Malaysia. Kuala Lumper is a large, vibrant, modern city that is surprisingly young, having been founded in the 1850s. Malaysia, meanwhile, is one of the fastest growing economies in Asia and is quickly becoming a high-tech wonder. Part of what fuels this is the city of Cyberjaya, a city about 18 miles (30 kilometers) south of Kuala Lumpur. Cyberjaya is a planned city that was designed to be the Silicon Valley of Malaysia, hence the name. Unsurprisingly, there are quite a few high-tech companies there and one of them, BetOnMarkets, is waving a work permit and relocation package in your general direction. Here's what they have to say about themselves:

Petronus Twin Towers, Kuala Lumpur
Photo by Shiva Kumar Khanal

Who we are

RMG Technology (M) Sdn. Bhd. is a MSC status company based in Cyberjaya, Malaysia. RMG Technology has been operating in Malaysia since 2006 and has a technical team of diverse nationalities, including people working in Malaysia as well as commuters in different parts of the world.

What we do

Our company provides IT and quant (financial mathematics) services to a major and pioneering financial platforms. We use Perl and lots of Perl-related technologies extensively. We use other technologies too such as Apache, nginx, mod_perl, PostgreSQL, Javascript, Git, Puppet, Selenium, Jenkins, OpenVZ and AWS. We use Linux for all our infrastructure and desktops. Our daily routine involves maintaining the business operations as well as developing and deploying new solutions to make life easier for ourselves and our customers.

How it is to work with us

Relaxing in the office

We have a very casual work environment and culture, from dress code to the way we communicate and work. Our technical teams are people who are deeply concerned about the quality of their work and have a passion for it. We try to improve the way things are done constantly. We don’t have a very big team so our staff have to deal with a variety of interesting tasks on a daily basis.

How it is to live in Cyberjaya and Malaysia

Malaysia is a uniquely multi-ethnic society. It is one of the most exciting places to live in Asia, providing expats with a vast cultural experience as well as natural attractions such as beaches, jungles, and mountains. Cyberjaya is Malaysia's fast-growing e-commerce hub, located equidistant between the capital Kuala Lumpur and the international airport, from which you can explore a multitude of other Asian countries with the low-cost airline AirAsia.

What we are looking for

Want to live here?
Cyberview Gardens apartments

Right now we have vacancies for two types of positions: Developers and Sysadmin/DevOps. As a part of our technical team, you will be involved in our daily operations to make our infrastructure and products closer to what our customers need. Development is ongoing and we deploy regularly. We really care about testing and fault-proofing our code before it goes live so there’s a great deal of QA involved. We use virtualization extensively and rely on third party cloud services for parts of our operation. We are always on the lookout for new technologies that can add value to our portfolio of tools and services. You might be a good match for our company if:

• You are knowledgeable and passionate about Linux and its nuts and bolts;
• You are comfortable with Perl code or know another scripting language that can help you pick it up. Take our word - there’s no escape from Perl here;
• You are familiar with technologies such as Apache, nginx, Git, Debian packaging, monitoring solutions and are comfortable learning new ones when needed;
• You can work as a part of a team of people as good as or better than you. You can take and provide criticism and build on the experience to build better solutions in the future;
• You are an independent thinker and can surprise yourself and the others with the new stuff you come up with;
• As a developer, you are familiar with the concepts of software quality assurance and can test your own and other’s code against best-practice standards.

What you are looking for

So after what we expect from you, here’s a list of the things you can expect from us:

• You can expect a competitive compensation package, including a range of benefits;
• A multi-national team of talented and passionate engineers;
• Friendly and casual working environment;
• Flexible working hours;
• We provide the option to provide you with housing or equal pay for you to get your own place;
• Canteen with refreshments for those times when you really need some;
• Working from home option on certain occasions/positions (not telecommuting).

For expats, we also offer relocation assistance, work permits, and dependency permits for family members.

Please visit http://www.regentmarkets.com/careers for further information.

How to apply

If you think you can be a good match for our company, drop us a line along with your resume by emailing Paul LeVarge at paul@regentmarkets.com and let them know you read about this at the Overseas Exile blog.

While not mandatory here’s a list of the things we might be really interested in:

• Projects you have been involved in;
• If you have any public repositories on places such as github, please provide a link to them;
• Contributions you might have made to open-source projects such as providing patches, new features, …
• Anything that gives us a better picture of who you are and what you do.

Dear Blog Spammers

Photo by Don O'Brien

You may be surprised to note that I've actually approved one or two blog spam comments because they really were very damned relevant. They were also reasonably well-written, but they're the exception.

The vast majority of spam on this blog is deleted immediately because you insist upon repeatedly posting crap spam, though the content would actually be useful to my readers. In fact, in visiting some of the sites you're flogging, I've actually found some of them to be interesting and further digging suggests that you're legitimate.

Do you want to get your message across? I actually accept guest posts, but they have to be relevant, moderately well-written and not a huge spam-fest of links. I don't even charge for them because I want relevant information for my readers. Oh, but that means you're going to have to put some effort into this and I guess you're not going to do that.

So I'll keep deleting your spam, but if you ever want to step up and provide real content that would actually help people move abroad, I'll be waiting. Until then, I'll be deleting away and no one will ever see your message.

This message brought to you by the "exercise in futility" department.

Buying Citizenship in Europe (Latvia)

Kolotilovka, a Latvian Spa
Photo by Ricardo Liberato

A bit of research will reveal that there are an astonishing large number of countries you can buy your way into. However, they're either not in Europe or, like Austria's 3,000,000 Euro investment program, prohibitively expensive.

Enter Latvia. Latvia is a small country on the Western border of Russia and it's a member of the European Union. As a way to help boost their economy, the Latvian government passed a law in 2010 to allow people to gain residency for a real estate purchase or investment in business. I'll focus on the former as that gives you a place to live along with residency.

Latvian immigration law allows non-Europeans to purchase Latvian property worth 72000 Latvian lats (~103,400 euro or 133,400 USD) outside of major cities, or 150,000 lats (215,400 euro or 277,800 USD) inside of Riga and other major cities. With that and a background check (immigration authorities are keen on keeping out criminals), you can get a residency permit for five years. I've read the Latvian nationality law (English PDF) and it appears that most people will then be able to apply for citizenship in Latvia, though you'll need to speak the language, know the history, etc.


View Larger Map
In short: if you have some spare cash, Europe is waiting for you.

This Latvian immigration scheme is unpopular with some Latvians, though most of my research suggests that this unpopularity is aimed at Russian immigrants due to a rather understandable fear of Russian influence in Latvia. Others are concerned about those who are heading to Latvia solely as a means to enter Europe and have no interest in the country itself.  There are fears that this will drive up Latvian housing prices to an unaffordable level, though the market was moribund prior to this law.  Here's a BBC video about the topic:


Having lived in multiple countries, I am very familiar with this concern about those who do not integrate, but it's often an abstract concern: once you start to learn the language and get to know your neighbors, people everywhere tend to be friendly.

A word of caution: like any international move, this one has some major caveats. The Latvian economy is struggling and this residency scheme does not give you the right to work in Latvia (though you can bring your spouse and children). It also has the unfortunate habit of being a crossroads for various wars between neighboring countries. That being said, Lonely Planet seems quite keen on Latvia and, truth be told, if they're far enough down, perhaps the only way they can go is up?

Having an overseas escape route

Free Art License
Copyright © Frederic Guimont

Ordinarily I try to stick to a "moderate" line on Overseas Exile, but it's impossible in researching this topic to avoid one subject which comes up repeatedly: where to go if there's a global economic collapse. Or a global police state. Or a global nuclear war. Or some other global catastrophe. I certainly don't want to sound alarmist or come off like many of the conspiracy theorists out there,¹ but I would be amiss in not addressing this topic because it's so damned popular.

There are many who talk about moving abroad to find a "safety route". The Web site Escape From America regularly publishes articles about the coming economic collapse and how to prepare yourself. They point out obvious things like learning to grow your own food, buying land, and going "off the grid" — a popular phrase which might anything from "being self-sufficient" to "leaving no electronic trace by which governments can track you." Reading through such Web sites is, I must confess, entering a strange and fascinating world.

I won't name names as I'd rather not deal with legal action, but some of these Web sites are little more than scams. First, they get you scared, then they offer salvation: buy gold coins from us! Buy land from us! Buy radiation detectors from us! That last, of course, was the variant we saw back in the 70s (and still sometimes see today), where people were warned of the impending global nuclear war, or the imminent onset of the brutal police state that would trample your rights in the name of "security". Of course, the latter, many say, is already here. Alex Jones' Infowars Web site, for example, has an article about the TSA Gestapo (and hitting your favorite search engine will overwhelm you with information about this).

Gordon Barlow's Web site about life in the Cayman Islands has a bit of a gentler take on this, in his articles "Looking for bolt-holes", part one and part two (for those not familiar with the writings in this area, trust me, Barlow's writing is indeed gentler than many you will read). He and his wife of 45 years have been living in the Cayman islands for decades and while being over 70, they're still eyeing places in Central and South America that they think would be "safe" if they need an escape route.

If you start reading through this material, keep in mind that people who write on these topics are often quite rational. While some have no problem with Obama's ordering of the assassination of  Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen, it's still astonishing that we're at the point where it's mainstream news that the President of the United States can order the assassination of US citizens . The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 allows those accused of "belligerent acts" against the US to be held indefinitely without trial and H.R. 5949: FISA Amendments Act Reauthorization Act of 2012 extends the US government's right to continue spying on US citizens without a warrant. And don't forget the bi-partisan amendment to allow the US to direct propaganda against US citizens.

There are many people who support these laws, stating that desperate times require desperate measures. Others are aghast at these laws, claiming that if we allow our basic freedoms to be stripped, the terrorists have already won. Each side often claims that the other side is the irrational one, but I claim that neither is: merely having a different set of core values is not irrational in the slightest.

Many people are now pointing to these and other issues to justify wanting an "escape route" from their home country (I've noticed that these writings are usually from the perspective of escaping the US). Regardless of why you want to move to another country, I'll keep supplying tips and tricks, uncovering loopholes, or ways to buy citizenship abroad.

Interestingly, I've noticed that those who talk about leaving the US for political (or "conspiracy") reasons usually are still in the US.  Dr. Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels, a researcher at the University of Kent at Brussels did a survey of US expatriates (PDF) (disclaimer: I participated in this survey) and found that less than 5% of them left for political reasons. Though there are exceptions, I find it interesting that those warning we should flee the sinking ship seem rather unlikely to flee.

---

1. Note that conspiracy "theorists" aren't always complete nutters. There was a time when claiming that the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government in Iran in the 1950s was a whacked-out conspiracy theory, but today the CIA openly admits their role in the coup.