this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
66 points (92.3% liked)

Asklemmy

47854 readers
1036 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] frank@sopuli.xyz 26 points 2 days ago (4 children)

US ex pat here:

I think you will find more success in this if you find a place or two you want to live in and run TO something instead of AWAY from something. It'll always be a bit of both, but this post reads more like (very understandably) "get me out of here" than "I want to be somewhere new".

Being an ex pat has plenty of hard aspects of course. I think some of them are made quite a bit easier when you passionately dive into the culture and life in a new place. At least to me it would be impossible if my head was still in the US.

Of course you're doing nothing wrong! Just some advice if it gets a bit more serious.

Like many in the thread: Canada, Australia/New Zealand, Scandinavia, Germany, UK (not that they're doing fantastic right now), Netherlands would be my top choices with your criteria. Most large companies will be more likely to have English speaking as the working language and you'll learn the local language (s) while living there. Best of luck!

[โ€“] edel@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

"At least to me it would be impossible if my head was still in the US". I completely understand it... contributing with taxes to these policies from Washington DC may feel appalling... Now, the US has plenty of small and diverse type of communities some would find remarkable, like bubbles within the Empire... some can easily find peace there. Emigrating to another country is not recommended, nor feasible to everyone, but just moving within the US can be day and night different. Moving just a few miles away and and your lifestyle and friends can potentially change almost as much as moving abroad, and still close to your family/job.

load more comments (3 replies)