this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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With all the dismal news about America lately, my home, I'm starting to seriously look at where else to move.

Putting aside for now the difficulty of actually immigrating to some countries, I'm curious on the opinions of others (especially people living outside the U.S) on this.

What I'm looking for in a country is, I imagine, similar to many people. I'm trying to find somewhere that will exhibit:

  • Low racism
  • Low sexism
  • Low LGBTQ-phobia
  • Strong laws around food quality and safety
  • Strong laws about environmental protection
  • Strong laws against unethical corporate practices (monopoly, corruption, lobbying, etc)
  • Strong laws for privacy
  • Good treatment of mentally ill, homeless, and impoverished people

Those are the real important things. Of course the nice-to-haves are almost too obvious to be worth listing, low cost of living, strong art and cultural scene, nice environment, and so on.

My actual constraints that might really matter are that I only speak English (and maybe like A1-2 level German). It seems incredibly intimidating to try to find employment somewhere when I can hardly speak the language.

I know nowhere on Earth is perfect, just curious what people may have to suggest. I hope this question isn't too selfish to ask here.

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[โ€“] kwedd@feddit.nl 18 points 1 day ago (11 children)

The Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia have all those things and people tend to speak English really well.

[โ€“] mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It certainly seems that way! Some of the ESL speakers I've met from Europe are more articulate than native speakers that I work with. What I most wonder about is the prevalence of English in the workplace. I think I'd feel guilty using English at work in country with its own different official language, unless it was really like, standard even before "the guy from America" joined the team, lol.

[โ€“] kwedd@feddit.nl 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

There are some large, internationally oriented companies where you can get by speaking only English. I've also seen more than one tech company hire programmers that don't speak Dutch. So it depends on the industry.

If you want to get some perspectives from Americans living in the Netherlands, you could check out Itz Sky's and Jordan Green's channels on YouTube.

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