Foreign Perspectives

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Whilst moving from one European country to another is as easy, at least legally, as moving from one American state to another, it’s a whole different matter when you want to emmigrate to a completely different jurisdiction.

Aside from all the normal differences in taxes, social security and health systems that moving countries always entails, you add the complication of needing to apply for a visa, residence and work permits which adds considerably to the time that it requires to make the move as well as increasing uncertainty somewhat.

For example, take the relatively simple case of a British citizen wanting to move to Canada.

Canada is, of course, in the British Commonwealth so, in theory, that should make the move easier. However, even if you have a pretty much perfect points score for the move, it currently takes around four years from initial application through to the point where you have your Canadian visa and can actually move.

That’s a very long time and a great deal can change during it. For example, four years ago I had one son and now I have two. The second one would obviously need to be added to the visa application for a start and there’s the complication that he has even more nationalities than the first little guy.

Such a long lead time seriously complicates matters in other areas. For one thing, you’ll be working in your existing job and not know in advance how long. You may be wanting to move house too over that kind of time. It’s even possible that the visa categories which you’re eligible for could change too if, for example, you had an inheritance you might find that you could apply under one of the investment categories or perhaps you added a qualification (eg I picked up a university French diploma within the last four years which adds significant points to my Canadian application) or skills. The list is endless.

In fact, over that time period your life could change radically so you need to be really set on moving to a particular country if you’re talking of application periods running into years. Yes, of course, you should be that determined but over such a long period many things can crop up to change your mind even if you originally were really set on making that particular move.

And, remember, that’s just for a relatively simple move!

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We’ve been without TV since December 31st when the satellite decided to down tools.

It’s not that we’ve not been trying to get it sorted but, until this evening, all our efforts were in vain. We changed the satellite dish from our trusty 80cm to a 95cm, we changed the LNB to a nice new one instead of our very weather beaten four year old one, we changed the coaxial cable and we even changed the satellite decoder. And nothing.

So we thought we’d go back to first principles late this afternoon. Within 30 minutes of going back to our old dish and old LNB we started picking up TV channels. OK, we’re not getting the right satellite just yet but we should have that sorted in fairly short order tomorrow.

However, we do need to source a new Sky box as the old one ain’t working anymore so, for the moment, we’re limited to non-subscription channels.

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As we’re confident that we’ll be on the move at some stage this year, we’ve started thinking through some of the logistics of the process.

Our first problem is that we don’t know when the sale will go through and therefore we can’t currently go out and buy somewhere else. Also, given the slow pace of sales here and likely delays in the process, it would be quite difficult to synchronise the sale here with the purchase somewhere else and especially so as each trade is separate here ie buyer/seller chains don’t exist.

That lack of synchronisation means that we’re almost certainly going to need an interim place to live in between living here and living in our new permanent home (where-ever that may be). Although simplifying the logistics of moving out of here it adds some other complications for us in terms of schooling for the kids and where to tell the removal truck to go. In that the interim place isn’t going to be our permanent home and may not even be in the country that we’ll finally settle in, it’s also looking likely that we’ll be needing to store the stuff from here somewhere but, of course, we’ll need some of that stuff whilst we’re in our interim home which means that we’re going to have to sit down and work out what we’ll need to take with us rather than put in the truck. That’s not so simple in that there’s a whole lot of kiddy stuff which takes up quite a volume not to mention items like the computer I’m typing this on, bedding and so on. Now obviously we could do without some of that stuff for a “while” but here too we don’t know how long we’ll be in the interim spot.

Far from simple, eh?

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