Ask HN: Good countries for American expats

What has your experience been? - Mixed. There are good things and bad things. But, overall, I'm happier here and plan to stay.

What is your particular career? - .Net back-end programmer, back in the US. However, I'm trying to do other IT-related things here that don't involve me sitting in someone's cubicle for eight hours a day.

What were your moving expenses? - Just the price of the plane ticket. I sold everything, packed a few bags, and left.

How much is your rent or did you buy? - I'm renting a tiny apartment in one of the nicer neighborhoods in Asuncion for about $300/month. I highly recommend that you don't buy until after you've lived in a place for at least a year. It will take you that long to see if you really want to stay there, and also figure out the local real estate market.

Where did you move to/from? - US. Chicago and Texas.

How are the schools? - I don't have any kids, but I've heard that you'd probably want to send your kids to private schools here.

Have you become fluent in the native language and was the language barrier difficult to overcome? - I've become a little bit better than "functional", but nowhere near fluent. Unfortunately, it's easy to get lazy at this point. You'd generally need to be close to fluent in Spanish, to get anything done here. However, since I mostly hang out with Paraguayans who are educated IT people, many who have learned English. Since they're usually better at English than I am at Spanish, we often end up speaking in English.

How long have you lived in this country? Are you a permanent resident or do you plan on moving back to the US? - Just over three years here. I've had permanent residency for two and a half years. I plan to apply for Paraguayan citizenship at the end of this year (when I'll first be eligible). I don't plan to return to the US.

What was the process like to become a permanent resident? - Fairly easy. Get some documents from the US (birth certificate, police background check, etc.), have them legalized by the Paraguayan Embassy/Consulate in the US, deposit $5000 in a local bank (to prove financial solvency), and hire a local "gestor" for about $800 to deal with getting the paperwork stamped and submitted, dragging me around to the required appointments, etc. Six months later, I have my permanent residency and applied for my "cedula" (national ID), which took about a month to receive.

Did you have to already have a job when you moved to that country? - Nope. But I had a decent amount of savings (emphasis on "had").

What's the cost of living compared to where you moved from? Has your quality of life improved or not? How and why? - I live on around $1000 a month. I could live cheaper if I cooked at home more often. I could live more expensively, if I rented a bigger/nicer home. Overall, I'd say my life is better - even when you include the stress of still trying to get some business idea to work. I lost about 25 pounds of excess weight, from eating better and walking more. I feel less stressed, since I'm not being constantly bombarded by wars/bad economy/etc. I'm in a place that I believe will grow and improve over the next few years/decades (something I can't really say for the US).

I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that....

New Mexico: 121,599 sq miles.

Nevada: 110,567 sq miles.

UK: 94,525 sq miles.

Ireland: 84,431 sq miles.

Denmark: 16,621 sq miles.

Macedonia: 9,781 sq miles.

> experience?

Japan is a country that suits some people very well, and others not at all. It's not great if you like driving, lots of personal space, fitting in, etc. Personally I find it almost entirely very agreeable. It's such a homogeneous society that some things might depend on your background.

> particular career?

Miscellaneous web/front-end/content development; later tech evangelism.

> moving expenses?

Minimal, but that was ~15 years ago and I had very little stuff. I brought two suitcases and shipped a few boxes by sea. It was under $1K, perhaps half that.

> How much is your rent or did you buy?

Tokyo center is on par with downtown S.F. - i.e. egregious. But due to unbelievably never-want-to-leave public transport, you can live well outside the city comfortably. My rent is around $1300/mo; commute ~40 minutes.

> Where did you move to/from?

From midwest US to Tokyo environs.

> How are the schools?

Mixed. Japanese schools are excellent at many things - fostering discipline and responsibility, math/science, work ethic. Having students fetch/serve/clear up their own lunches, sweep their own corridors etc. is something I wish I could export. On the other hand schools here are terrible with initiative and English. International schools are super pricey - possibly beyond the reach of a typical programmer.

> fluent in the native language, language barrier difficult?

Yup and yup. You can live in Japan easily with very little language skill; career-wise being bilingual is a massive, massive boon. I sailed into my first tech job purely because I could speak very basic Japanese, and I could learn the tech faster than some other guy could learn the language. The language has a high initial hump, but is relatively sane and has very few rules to learn. (Apart from kanji, which are hard but for some purposes optional.)

> How long? Permanent resident? return to the US?

15 years or so, and yup for PR. I could see myself returning if there was a good reason though - I don't think it's very useful to try to plan such things very far out.

> process to become a permanent resident?

Easy if you meet a few well-defined requirements, impossible otherwise. I vaguely recall it being: 10 years residency if single, 5 years if married to a national, but there are a few addenda.

> already have a job when you moved?

Nope - just arrived as a tourist and poked around. With tech skills and a smattering of language ability you can trip over an entry-level job; with one but not the other it's doable but might take some looking. If you're a senior person with no language skills, it's still very possible but having several leads before arriving would be well-advised.

> cost of living? quality of life?

These are subjective, but for me, absolutely. Clean, safe, amazing public infrastructure, etc. It's fairly pricey but salaries tend to be commensurate. If I was more bohemian I might hate it - I've known people who came intending to live here and left within three months. But I'm not sure it's possible to know what you want until you try living with it.

Do hope this is helpful!