Leaving the US

The "welfare trash" are the absolute worst things about Dublin. There are other negatives but loads of positives too. If you live in a nice part of town though, you don't have to see much of them until you venture into the cc. There are very lovely parts of the cc as well as the downtrodden parts. I absolutely love being back in Dublin, I just take the rough with the smooth and try to do my bit to make the city a better place ( so much as any average Joe can!)

Why don't you come over for a couple of weeks and suss it out first?

If any of your grandparents were born in Ireland you can claim Irish citizenship.

citizensinformation.ie is an invaluable resource.

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/moving_country/moving_to_ireland/

My family all came to the US before the revolution, so i can't take advantage of the citizenship piece unfortunatly.

Lafreak, i assume that you are being sarcastic. I have given some thought to Sweden, Norway, possibly Japan as well. But culturally, from my research, i think i would be most comfortably in Ireland, the UK, New Zealand or Australia. Really i am looking for a richer culture and a better quality of life, for me and possibly for my children latter on.

A lot of Irish people love a good moan (including me) but honestly, life can be pretty good here. I was in the UK for eight years and my life is infinitely better here, not to slight the UK, that's just my personal experience. I agree you should come over for a holiday, maybe spend a couple of weeks here and the UK.

Dublin really is an excellent city to live in. You can go to a pub or restaurant literally any night of the week and there will be people there and a good atmosphere, I know its a cliche but Dublin really is a great city to go for a drink. With the O2 and the Grand Canal Theatre we get top shows and performers and have plenty of other cultural assets liker smaller venues and cinemas (I mean the IFI and the Lighthouse, not the local multiplex). The city also regularly has large sporting events with GAA matches, Leinster and Ireland rugby and occasional international soccer matches.

In my opinion, the main thing that lets Dublin down is the public transport, it can be a difficult city to get around. Luckily it is a small city and cycling is really growing as the preferred method of transport for those living in and around the city centre. I think the key to living in Dublin is to live in the right location for you. Unfortunately, there is huge demand for rental properties so finding the right place is difficult and rents are steep. For me personally, I think living in a well established leafy suburb which is just a stones throw from the city centre gives me an excellent quality of life.

My girlfriend recently moved to Dublin from another European capital and she loves it here. There is a large immigrant population here and they add a lot to the indigenous culture. Dublin still retains a lot of its charm which sets it apart from other cities and is less formal in many ways. It genuinely is a city where you will find something interesting to do every night of the week. People here complain about how expensive Dublin is but its not bad compared to other European capitals.

The weather can be a problem here but when the weather is nice, it is great here. One thing that most here dont appreciate is that being further north gives us more hours of sunlight during the summer than most cities. When its warm, the extra hour or two of sunlight is a big bonus.

OP, I would recommend Dublin to you if you are young, bored of USA and have the right occupation. Dublin is crying out for workers in certain areas and if you can fulfill one of these roles you should definitely look into coming here. You can earn a good wage here and there is a great time to be had spending your disposable income.

PeteC said:

OP, I would recommend Dublin to you if you are young, bored of USA and have the right occupation. Dublin is crying out for workers in certain areas and if you can fulfill one of these roles you should definitely look into coming here. You can earn a good wage here and there is a great time to be had spending your disposable income.

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It's also the best place to base yourself for getting to the rest of the EU and back to the US. Seattle is just a connecting flight away from the new Dublin-San Francisco route Aer Lingus has launched. Dublin is also connected to virtually every other capital city in the EU which is convenient if you want to sample Paris, Rome, Athens etc. while you live in Dublin. It can be your gateway to exploring all of Europe while you spend most of your time in Ireland.

Dublin is also very well connected with Ulster if you decide to search out the ancestral family homestead. The M1 motorway and Enterprise railway line connect Dublin with Belfast and much of east Ulster. It would be a much longer trek if you were coming from Cork.

@MPatte: Having read your initial post with more consideration, somewhere like Howth would be quite ideal. It is right on the coast so would have a sailing club which you could join to continue that interest, it's on the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) line which is a metro-style route which can take you right into the city centre and along the coast to many destinations, has a hill at its centre which can be hiked along with a cliff walk. There are also some nice restaurants and bars. That said, it is very far out of the centre which could make going out at night somewhat challenging. It's also an affluent area of Dublin which means that rents and property prices are not a bargain.

If you want the best possible standard of living, buy a big house in a suburb of an American city. It's a sort of dirty secret that the American middle class has the best standard of living of any in the world. It's also worth pointing out that if you hate anti-intellectualism and the rights of business being preferenced over the rights of individuals, you're not going to do much better in Ireland.

I think you need to be very clear with the reasons for leaving before you pack up. Being an immigrant myself, having left Sweden 11 years ago for work I know this first hand. If you're going for some kind of intellectual notion that the US of A isn't as humane as the rest of the world I believe you'll be utterly disappointed. The rest isn't all that much different.
I have found that the things I like about Sweden I don't like here and vice versa.
Ireland is great if you have secured money up front, have a well paid job and don't want to bother with learning a new language.
If you don't have the first two you won't afford to buy anything in the "leafy green suburbs" or even rent. Although house prices have gone down significantly housing is expensive on an average salary. You're looking at a minimum of 1000 eur for a decent flat, but closer to 1300 if you want something proper and central. Flat sharing and house sharing is common.
Sailing is great here, especially competitive.
Trekking is good too, but you're mostly restricted to defined tracks as you're not allowed to trespass.
Having kids in Ireland is ridiculously expensive. The options you have, unless you have a granny who can help with the minding, is either getting an au pair (our choice) or that your wife stays at home and gives up her career. Even on two very good salaries you end up spending one of them paying for the crèche (approx 1000 eur per month per child) and your mortgage. If you have more than one child you definitively need to assess your options.
There are large socio economic divides with large groups left in continuous poverty for generations. Looking at this as a foreigner I find that the Irish tend to look the other way and don't get involved in addressing the problem (unless you count the yearly donation to the charity of choice). Don't get me wrong, I'm a classical liberal and don't believe in state intervention but I clearly see this as a problem as the solution to date has been to move people out of sight rather than addressing the root cause.
The best place I've ever lived in was the Czech Republic, but then again, we're all different with different priorities.

Thank you everyone for your input. I suppose that part of the American experiance is lack of knowledge about how other cultures truly operate. If indeed the problems i see as endimic to my society are spread far and wide, it makes me dispair and think that i should find a ranch far away from other people. Still, living somewhere else for awhile would help me understand and maybe find more to love in my home culture, but i won't know until i leave it. Truth is, if i had a way to leave in the next couple months, i would do it in a heartbeat.

That American suburb dream is dying quickly, that is the real dirty secret. The levers of power have been skewed toward the wealthy, and they are draining the purchasing power out of the middle class. That smiling family with the big car are in debt up to their ears, and their children will have a worse life, not a better. People are flocking back to the cities and rethinking how they live. That doesn't bother me, i live in a city myself, but it will be a lot of upheaval. The next decade or two will be very painful, and in the end i do not know what America will emerge. Even if we get back to where we were in the 50's i'm not sure that is where i want to raise children.

If your a young professional Dublin is a good place to move. There's a decent atmosphere about the city centre most nights. City centre apartments are relatively cheap to rent compared to other capital cities. Stones throw away from the coast and the Wicklow mountains. City centre is very small and you can easily walk around it.

I'd also have a look at places like London, South East England, Edinburgh or Manchester.

Mpatte said:

That American suburb dream is dying quickly, that is the real dirty secret.

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Unfortunately you are bound to be disappointed. most of the, so called, "developed" countries are heading in the same direction and Ireland or the UK are not exceptions. Especially the UK.

plank007 said:

I'd also have a look at places like London, South East England, Edinburgh or Manchester.

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Unless you are dirty rich oligarch from Russia or Arab prince you can forget about decent quality of life in London. Property prices are absolutely ridiculous bordering insane and rising fast. Basically, unless you have money, I mean some serious money, London housing sucks.
One the other hand it is great city if you are young, child-free (and planning to stay that way), ready to share houses, change houses every year or so, like going out or see some interesting stuff.
Basically it is like NYC in the US, a completely detached organism and very different from the rest of the country. It is like being on another planet.

I would say that Dublin will have better quality of life in the long term (if you really want to settle "for life") but as an short time experience (a year or two) nothing in Europe beats London.

Oh, and definitely come here to Europe for a short holiday first. See if you like it. Before moving to London permanently I had four separate short working episodes in the UK. Only then I felt ready to move for good.
Then plan carefully, bureaucracy here can be a real pain. If you don't have the legal right to work you will end up cleaning or something like that.

So after the latest elections, my desire to get out of the US has peaked once more. I think I understand the difficulties in getting a work visa, but a different strategy occurred to me. Would it be easier to obtain a tourist visa and visit, then hopefully interview while there and get a work visa? My understanding is that I cannot really work on a tourist visa, but I feel that being in country and interviewing will give me a leg up. Any thoughts?

Is it difficult to get a work visa for here from the USA?

If it takes a long time, if you do interviews without a work visa I doubt that potential employers will be willing to wait until you get one, they are more likely to hire someone who is available straight away. Maybe if you have started the visa process and were well on your way to getting it they might consider you but I would be surprised if a company would hire someone without permission to work in that country.

By all means come here for a holiday, check out the city and see if it is somewhere you would like to live, talk to recruiters and find out is there many opportunities in your line of work, make enquiries about getting a work visa. If nothing else, you could have a great holiday.

PeteC said:

Is it difficult to get a work visa for here from the USA?

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Frustratingly so. I am a young, college-educated professional who would only add to the economy of anywhere i went, but it seems nearly impossible to get a work visa. The last i checked i would have to be sponsored by a company and the position i was filling would have to be impossible to fill from within the UK. I understand that there is a hard line being taken by countries right now when it comes in emigration, but i feel like the wrong people are being kept out.

The position i was filling would have to be impossible to fill from within the UK

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Well first, you might want to apply for an Rep of Ireland work visa if you want to come to Dublin. The Republic not being part of the United Kingdom. Not judging, I know a lot of Americans have this a little confused, but it's definitely something you should know before you come over to save yourself from much eyerolling from the locals.


I think the work visa problems might have more to do with large numbers of people who are unemployed and educated. Probably want to get those people in work before having to deal with the political consequences of other people coming in filling positions.

Thats just my two cents