To wish it was easy to move to the USA

[Highway65]

I've been watching The Pioneer Woman on Sky the past few evenings. It's utter drivel but I LOVE it!! It's this blog writer/cook living in Oklahoma and it just looks ace! All cowboys, horses and massive ranches. I want to live there.

Infact, there are loads of places in America that I would like to live. Europe has plenty of highlights too of course. Not where I live, it's just grey!! But I reckon I should have been born American.

I have family living in California. They both married Americans to get their green cards. I would be up for that if I wasn't happily married

Highway, you are VERY naive if you think living in the USA is all cowboys, horses and massive ranches.
The few people that do live like that probably spent generations working towards it, generations of sheer hard graft.
You don't honestly think that if you stepped off the plane, all that would automatically fall into your lap do you?

What the heck I feel a bit mean - Every tree is dripping with oranges and the rivers are flowing with milk and honey, there are jobs for EVERYBODY and every other person is a film star! and it never rains. Ever. And you can get all that without lifting a finger!

Is that better?

A 1%er is derived from motorbike clubs where they describe the outliers. So, a 1% is the top 1% of income earners in the US which in 2011 was defined as something low like AGI of $400k. To be clear, $400k does not go far in most parts of SF, LA or NYC and AGI is income after deductions such as mortgage interest, pension contributions etc. You can contribute up to $50k a year for your pension and mortgage interest is deductable on the first $1m of a mortgage. Then there is property taxes which on a $1M home can be anywhere from $15-50k with some parts of NJ having property taxes of up to $70k a year for mega houses. So, a household with an AGI of $400k could be earning as much as $600k a year. DH's boss makes about $1M a year with his wife not working. I looked up the property taxes for their house and they pay $35k a year. I would therefore classify him as in that top 1% income group.

The top 1% pay something crazy like more than 90% of the taxes in the US. That is why they are considered their own group and generally speaking they are the equivalent to the UK upper class.

Now the joy is when you go to areas outside of the tristate and have a top 1% income without the expenses. That would be great for the finances but I love my town and I am a Jersey girl at heart.

And an important thing to understand is that a good number of the 1% actually come from fairly modest backgrounds. Few would come from dire poverty, but many will be from ordinary middle class families, and will have worked their way up the corporate ladder.

That's good to hear that many will be people who have worked their way up the corporate ladder and it's not restricted to Walmart and Domino's Pizza heirs.

One thing I would find very different if I lived in the USA is the lack of employment contracts and 'work to rule'. In my working life (20+ years) I have seen so much more protection being given to employees with grievance procedures etc. Yet people in the USA who have worked somewhere for decades move on with barely any notice required from either side.

Having worked as a consultant looking at ways to help small business start ups, the protections given to employees by European employment law is not always a positive thing though.

Life is very tough here for the poor and it is why I focus our family charity efforts on helping this group. I am very opposed to the illegal immigrants here because of the impact the illegal immigrants have had to the poorest groups in America. In my town most cleaning jobs are done by hispanics and most are here due to arriving illegally and having anchor babies. Many are here illegally. I am simply shocked that people are willing to hire illegal immigrants to look after their children. I have zero sympathy for this group. The rules are very simple and if you follow them you can come to the US legally.

So, back to the thread, if you want to come here legally the easiest way to do it is by persuing an education. Either get qualified in a specialized field in your home country and come over with an employer or come to an American school. Colleges are not as expensive as one would think. There are a lot of scholarships available for foreign students and you are permitted to work while studying. Interns at my employer are paid $20/hr with 1.5 pay for overtime (anything over 40hrs a week). Talking with my peer group, most were making $40-50k a year when they were students through the jobs they had. Schools give credit for work experience if deemed relevant and material.

Other than that I would say be in business and do a Rupert Murdoch! He was given citizenship I think when he bought Fox. I did it by being skilled at my job and knew all about how to settle difficult trades through various exchanges in different countries as well as how to trade odd lots. Made me very valuable to trading desks in the US where people at my level thought this type of work was beneath them. My Dad did it by being a mad scientist. He came over with GE and was lent by his employer to Nasa for some energy work they needed help with.

Gun law lunacy
Right-wing religious lunacy
Obama's murderous warmongering lunacy.

I'll stay here in UK thanks.

Want2b Is your Dad a rocket scientist? How cool is that?

I could move to the USA tomorrow to live.
I have a ready made address on Manhattan.
I'm staying here thankyou.

BigbyWolf You never know... Past life or glimpse of the future?

Legion Agree w/ Scone. It's more about the money you make versus your parents / ancestors. The UK is very unique in that respect. Never saw this anywhere else in the same extent, and I find it hilarious that Brits just accepts this as "normal".

Of course, you do have "old" families in the US - look up the term "Boston Brahmin" on Wikipedia - but it's such a small sub-set it hardly matters. Note how the Catholic and famous Kennedy family with Irish descent is not one of them. In fact, they were sort of motivated by wanting to show them they can be just as good as them. Great for myths and stories but not much else these days.

The famous public schools like Eton here in the UK only hand out a few bursaries. In the US, the whole notion of "giving back" to your old school/college gives way to generous endowment funds that allows these schools to provide financial aid to a very high proportion of smart students - the whole idea of "if you get in, we'll fund you" that really doesn't exist in the UK. But yes, you have to be smart... and what's so bad about that?

As a non-Brit, I also am class-free like Scone was when she lived here. Around me (right now), there are fairly normal people and posh public school boys.

Yanbu

Our friends emigrated there seven years ago, to Los Angeles but only got in as they had millions in the bank ...and also a business which employs Americans. and they still have to renew their visas every few years so they are not even proper citizens even now

The us are so strict with Immigration, uk ought to take a leaf out of it's book IMO

Seattle (population 300,000) has more rough sleepers than the whole of England (population 50,000,000)

Wow, that's a chilling statistic Talkin.

San Francisco has had 8 days of rain in the last 2 years.
Unfortunately the mountains have had very little snow so the water is running out.

Nah he is an energy absorption scientist. He was part of a team that developed the landing gear for rockets. He then took that technology and applied it to trains. GE supported his business which today supplies most transportation systems around the world. That technology has had a huge effect on the number of deaths from train derailments and other accidents.

the UK's immigration policy is less strict on some aspects (mostly relating to EU nationals), but more strict on others. The fact that British citizens have to show they have a certain level of income to get visas for their spouses is really harsh (and morally dubious imo). By comparison I could have followed DH to the US when we were both students and penniless.

The US are so strict with Immigration, uk ought to take a leaf out of it's book IMO

I agree, but you won't be popular for saying that on here!

For good reason Alpaca.... From the work I have done with local charities I have seen how illegal immigration has done so much harm to the poorest communities of Americans in the US. Go to Newark and many of the poor there have very little hope of living a better life because they can't earn enough. Right now I can drive to a street corner and pick up an illegal for $30 for a days heavy labor (construction work). If I hire an American I would have to pay at least $8/hr so $80 for the day or far more if unionized (about $20-25/hr plus benefits to the union). Guess what, for as long as there are illegal immigrants willing to for work for $30 a day businesses will go hire them. The government should and need to step in and remove this group because the harm to the poorest groups is very evident. Also, sizable resources are diverted towards this group when there are American communities that really need the help.

The number of homeless people in Seattle was shocking. I have never seen so many homeless people before. I asked a local and they told me the homeless flock there because of the climate. No idea if that is true or not.

Seems strange that people would flock to somewhere so wet.

It's wet but not that cold. And it was the epicenter of the grunge/coffeehouse scene, which brought a lot of people who are or were homeless by choice.

Portland was pretty bad for homeless too.
Lots of well meaning yuppies feed them but do not deal with their mental health issues
and some of those being for chronic illness camp in the hospital grounds in Seattle.

Cheerful That does make more sense. I would say that a lot of homeless looked like it was a lifestyle choice. The West coast does a very different vibe to NYC at least.

We don't have a working class
If you work (anything other than at McDonald's, basically) you are middle class.

We live in a small town (2000 people or so) in a rural farming community. DH makes about $60,000. We own a little (1200 sq feet) 3 bed, 1.5 bath house. We are middle class.

Basically if you work, have a home you keep up, make an effort to be involved at school, and take decent care of your children, you're middle class. It's an attitude really. So I have known people on benefits whom I'd consider to be "middle class, having a temporary rough patch".

I had to laugh, I'm American, born in Cincinnati, OH and now in Southwest Pennsylvania, and my first thought on reading the OP was "Oh Jesus no not Oklahoma THINK OF THE TORNADOES!" Plus Ree's husband Ladd owns the largest cattle ranch in the state so OF COURSE they have every kind of view imaginable, lol.

That said, I've been re-watching Inspector Morse, Lewis, and Endeavour and am trying to get DH to apply for an open position at the Bodleian (he's a librarian but fat fucking chance he'd qualify) so I can live in Oxford :D