Moving to Texas.

[FairWindClearSailing]

Afternoon everyone!

I'm hoping for some advice / experiences about moving to the US, specially Texas. We are a family of 3 (hopefully 4 by end of 2023).

We currently live in a European country, have access to very good health care, cheap education, and have a good quality of life.
My husband spent a few years in Texas when he was younger on exchanges and still has connections to friends and his host family. He would love to move out there for a few years and I'm always up for trying something new but we both know it is not a simply process and our quality of life will worsen if we don't have adequate health insurance/dental etc.

Husband has an IT job, and his job is in high demand most places. I have a master degree in history, and an undergrad degree in history and foreign languages with work experience teaching / in schools / language environments. At the moment I'm at home with our toddler.

This is the first time I'm looking into it a little bit so I'm right at the beginning (and I wouldn't just move on a whim without properly researching so that's why I am totally clueless right now about the reality) I guess I'm just looking for information about what we need to take into consideration (health care and dental are top of my list), but also real stories of what it's like to raise a family in Texas? (It would very likely be Austin or Houston as that's where we have family / friends).

Thanks everyone!

Are you US citizens? Or do you have close family who are US citizens? By close family I mean parents or siblings, not cousins or great uncles. If you don’t, your chances are heavily reduced.

If your husband works for a multi-National company that regularly transfers people around the world, he can ask for a transfer and that would be an L visa, if approved. That may or may not lead to permanent residency, but don’t companies

Hit “post” too soon…

But some companies only transfer for a short period (couple of years) and don’t sponsor the transferees for permanent residency (aka green cards). He could apply for an H-1B visa but these are very limited (around 64,000 a year for the whole world) and this category is massively oversubscribed. You would but unable to work as a trailing spouse of an H-1B unless you qualify for a work visa in your own right.

Despite what people think, having “good qualifications” is often not enough to get into the US. It’s no surprise that the largest number of immigrants into the US come in through family-sponsored immigrant visas. In my experience the majority of Brits who want to move here never manage it because of the very limited opportunities for a visa.

Without a visa there is no hope. And the visa has to be sponsored by either a company or a family member. You can’t just decide you want to live here, find a job and then come here. It doesn’t work like that. A job offer is worthless without a visa sponsorship, not all job roles are eligible for visa sponsorship.

If you have around $1 million to spare you may qualify for an investor visa.

A friend's son moved to Texas with his American wife about six years ago. They're both working, two small children now and very happy. They enjoy the friendliness of American life and lots of opportunity to be out of doors.
Similar tale from friends on secondment in Colarado. If you're not especially political and have enough income and medical insurance, the quality of life is very good.

As the poster above has illustrated, immigration to the US is much easier as an immediate family member of a US citizen. My husband is a US citizen and that’s how I ended up here. I’m now a US citizen myself and can’t imagine living anywhere else now. Texas and Colorado are at opposite ends of the political spectrum but it is possible to live in a blue state as a conservative and Vice versa.

Don’t let medical costs scare you, OP. It’s most likely that the costs of your premiums are going to be “replaced” by significant savings in taxation. Texas had no state income tax, as does my state. In the U.K. I’d be in the 45% tax bracket. Here I pay 9%. My health care premiums and deductibles are not even close to 34% of my income. I’m definitely better off here.

Visa situation aside, I would not. Texas isn't uniformly bad, but Austin has become horribly expensive and traffic choked. Houston is relatively affordable because there's so much land, and it is diverse, but its economy is still very dependent on oil & gas. You had better like the heat, because you'll get plenty of it in Texas. I once had to visit Houston in July. It was 40C and the air was like soup.

The state government is awful and spends its time on stunts and the culture wars. The whole state isn't conservative, especially Austin and in Houston proper, but the conservatives are in charge. Megachurches are very much a thing. Texas is where I had people open conversations with "What church do you go to?" and where a relative of mine was asked about her horns. We are Jewish.

There is no safety net. Education is not as bad as some Southern states but not a priority (I will give Texas credit for what is actually a good, comprehensive public higher education system--getting into UT Austin is extremely competitive now, but there are multiple university systems across the state). There is excellent health care in Houston especially, with the TMC being one of the best places in the world to get it, but insurance is expensive. That all depends on your employer of course.

I may be overly negative because I am not a fan of Texas but I find the state to be an incredible culture shock. I've lived in the US for over a decade and quite like it now, but Texas is its own country, and some Texans are quite proud of that.

I am US born (although I've been in the UK for over a decade now) and would never go back to Texas. We lived there for 8 very long years. It's hot---so very hot. And yes, Texas is very much it's own (and very arrogant) place. The Austin area, the only area that is palatable to non-Texans, is crowded and becoming increasingly and prohibitively expensive. Between that and its political slant. Just nope.

We returned from Houston about a year ago. It wasn’t for us. I just found the weather horriffic 🤣 we spend a lot of time outdoors at home in the U.K. but the heat is just unreal there. We found we weren’t in easy driving distance of anything to visit which we found hard.

There is a great community of expats though and we had a pretty active social life if that’s what you’re looking for.

We got stuck there in the pandemic tho so maybe we just had bad luck as lots of people love if there.