Michael Kohl 🇦🇹🇹🇭This recent trip to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan made me question my commitment to #Thailand or at least Samui again. My wife and I were preparing to leave in 2020 and then the pandemic started, so we got stuck. But she still would like to experience living in another country and I'm pretty bored after 12ish years here.
Mathias@matthegap Good question. In 2020 we were thinking Portugal or Australia. The latter has now been dismissed for various reasons, the former is still on the table. Personally I'd like something more interesting though, maybe in Central Asia or the Caucasus. But inertia is real: we own our house and a lot of other things, so nothing may happen at all. 🤷♂️
Phil Dennis-Jordan@citizen428 @matthegap We seem to be in a near-perpetual "do we still want to live here?" state, but the inertia is even greater with kids. Languages, education systems, healthcare, running a business, etc. are a LOT to figure out from scratch. (In addition to all the immigration paperwork and consideration of loss of rights by emigration, as well as the logistics and financials of belongings.)
@pmdj @matthegap Sadly I don't have many rights here that I could lose, despite living here for so long, having paid a lot in taxes, and being married to a local. I still need to renew my visa every year, since PR has silly requirements, takes long to process, is somewhat expensive and doesn't come with many meaningful benefits. Citizenship would be better, and while I qualify they are still processing applications from 4-5 years ago and I'd have to renounce my Austrian one.
@citizen428 @matthegap Yeah Austria's dual nationality ban is a major issue for us, but sort of in reverse. We have Austrian PR but not citizenship. Moving away eventually cuts off the return path. Taking citizenship (we qualify) means dropping UK which causes us other problems; hard to imagine moving back to UK permanently, but the case of elderly relatives requiring some degree of care would be a nightmare to deal with without citizenship thanks to UK's terrible visa/residency rules.