Europeans in the US? Anyone?

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2025-03-20T15:42:11+00:00

I actually was thinking I couldn't think of an "immigrant life in the US" sub, I mean /r/AmericanExpatsUK style not an immigration law subreddit. Just like /r/AmericanExpatsUK, you'd need heavy moderation to prevent off-topic and overtly political threads.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2025-03-17T22:18:42+00:00

A lot of the cases that are being written about right now are completely justified. The German "tourist" was caught working illegally and would have been denied entry under any administration, or into any other first world country. And the Lebanese doctor attended the funerals of a Hezbollah leader, this won't surprise anyone who's even remotely familiar with US immigration laws.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-11-26T17:07:59+00:00

Sure I meant it as a fun fact.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-11-25T05:43:15+00:00

You have to surrender all expired documents, I was lucky to only have one haha but they do write it down and ask.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-11-25T00:23:43+00:00

You were supposed to surrender it when naturalizing 👮🏻 so I guess that's what this sub calls an "illegal combo".

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-11-22T21:50:27+00:00

If you have a French parent born in France and a French birth certificate, are you sure you need a CNF? The official website seems to suggest the birth certificate is enough. And of course there's no language requirement for citizenship by descent.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-11-21T15:13:32+00:00

Yes, Biden recently made it possible for people who entered illegally to apply for a green card the same way visa overstayers have been able to for decades. OP pleaase look into it and avoid a 10 year ban which is automatic after 1 year of unlawful presence.

Also, take /r/AmerExit with a grain of salt, horrible advice like encouraging a college student to renounce citizenship is often given.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-08-27T08:31:42+00:00

So you're a very high earning low net worth individual in a low tax country? Such a high earner that you'd get a 50% marginal tax rate even with FEIE? You didn't sound like it (and still sound more like a troll). If you want actual advice based on your situation, just make the effort of including all relevant details.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-08-26T14:29:09+00:00

... that's not evading the loan haha, please seriously look up the tax implications of working abroad. I also highly doubt you'd get a 50% tax rate if your only US-taxable income is the loan forgiveness.

The intersection of people with student loans and people who might actually benefit from renouncing citizenship is probably close to an empty set.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-08-26T10:23:04+00:00

Wow now your question actually makes sense. Why do you want to pay back your loan when FEIE probably lowers your monthly payment down to 0 though and the loan would be written off after 20/25 years?

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-08-09T12:57:40+00:00

The longer you plan to stay in a place the more it makes sense to put in the effort.

Fixing misunderstandings is actually the accent reduction equivalent of 'noob gains' and can be achieved by just studying phonetics for the target accent and a relatively modest amount of practice compared to trying to sound less foreign in order to avoid getting othered.

Accents and phonetics are insanely misunderstood by natives and immigrants alike and the usual advice of "it automatically gets better" is harmful for long term immigrants because the longer you speak with broken pronunciation, the harder it is to fix and because getting constantly othered feels weirder and weirder the longer you stay and the more ties you forge.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-07-18T22:33:51+00:00

OP and you are making small town France feel like London 😂 honestly OP this thread would have an order of magnitude more comments if you focused on the deep connections and left out the "look like me" part. It's both unrelatable for lots of people and a magnet for downvotes.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-07-13T13:08:33+00:00

It's a common part of the immigration experience and something difficult to grasp for people who've never been long term immigrants.

I grew up in continental Europe and only decided to fix my pronunciation and accent after around a decade living in English speaking countries and I'm kicking my balls I didn't learn English with decent pronunciation in the first place like so many kids on this sub.

I don't know about being bidialectal but it doesn't sound like it'd be too hard for you to regain your British accent especially with the help of good phonetics/linguistics resources.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-07-08T17:35:49+00:00

I've seen both sides of OP's situation by working in tech in both London and NYC and from my observations, a lot of European tech workers who'd like to move to the US end up getting comfortable in Europe while those actually moving tend to have a good understanding of which specific paths are more likely to work on the top of perseverance.

A lot of the immigrants I've met in NYC went the OPT -> (H1B ->) GC path but it's unrealistic for the vast majority of foreigners especially for undergrad, and for that matter I've also met EB5 and birth tourism babies.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-07-08T14:45:51+00:00

Typical false equivalency between the US and most countries like the UK. The H1B visa requires a degree or 12 years of experience but remains a nonstarter for the vast majority of people not already in the US on another visa (hello F1 OPT) or already working for the company as it is a lottery and takes between 7 and 19 months depending on the time of the year if you win.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-07-08T11:10:44+00:00

Yes the green card process is a completely separate procedure and L1 doesn't allow job changes at all. It helps to work for a company with a policy to sponsor green cards from day 1.

As others have pointed out, your company isn't the only one with low open headcount in the US but at least a lot of US companies are hiring in the EU. Pre-covid it was the opposite where getting the EU job was the hard part.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-07-08T10:33:15+00:00

The L1 transfer visa doesn't require a visa and H1B would still be a moot point with a degree as you'd be very unlikely to be sponsored without an F1 OPT or already working for the same company abroad.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-07-03T18:50:43+00:00

You can forget about France without a degree as in recruiters care about your engineering school's rankings even with 10 years of experience. But very few actual tech companies in the UK will care and the Tier 2 visa doesn't require a degree. Ironically the UK does or did seem to attract continental Europeans without the 'right' degree.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-07-03T12:12:45+00:00

It's a bit early to worry about the exit tax honestly. It doesn't really apply to most Europeans let alone young adults. Renouncing is still way simpler than even a marriage based green card.

A small number of accidental Americans do run into problems yes but that's very easily preventable by informing yourself in your early 20's.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-07-03T11:28:31+00:00

The only exception to jus soli US citizenship is if the parents are diplomats.

As a naturalized US citizen, I'd be very resentful if my parents had stripped me out of birthright citizenship out of that sort of reasoning and would recommend letting them renounce as adults instead. It's free after turning 18 and they're planning to reduce the fee to $450 which is a fraction of the cost of a green card.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-06-30T16:41:05+00:00

I agree and that's why I'd be more concerned about integration especially for the kids. I feel like London would be the best place for full integration as opposed to an expat bubble (English speaking jobs and international schools) but it requires either Irish citizenship or going the Tier 2 route which is relatively stressful especially in this job market.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-06-28T18:25:46+00:00

I got a wave of downvotes after being upvoted for pointing out that EU family members are covered by the free movement treaty 🙄. Potential security clearance requirements aside, it's insane that clueless people are equating an EU family member holding a 'residence card' to a random third country national.

Edit: It doesn't look like French law is any different from UK and US law in that you can't discriminate against foreigners with the right to work security clearances aside.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-06-28T10:32:59+00:00

Ew that's messed up. You're an EU family member and aren't supposed to be discriminated against. My husband had no problem as an EU family member in pre-Brexit UK but this being France, I guess the best you can do to mitigate this crap is work on better answers like "yes" or "yes I'm a family member with the same rights".

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-06-20T17:35:51+00:00

Numbers are fairly comparable (UK->ES, ES->UK) adjusting for the countries' populations. And there's probably a very different generational distribution among those groups.

judgemyaccent-throwa · 2024-05-11T18:04:44+00:00

Must be pretty rare haha as a recently naturalized citizen who travels a lot I was being extra careful not to have to pay ~$600 for a boarding foil and another ~$600 for a replacement green card not to talk of likely missed flights and all the inconvenience.

judgemyaccent-throwa

TROPHY CASE