scrubbedexpat099

Marriage I took for granted, I sort of assumed E2 for a Construction business.

az2014

Moving to somewhere without even visiting first...only one word for that... crazy.

Twinkle0927

scot47

Historically most migrants went to the colonies with no prior information. We have gone soft in modern times. Many will only go if they have seen it on TV first ! As for the OP, looking at Pulaski's spin on Migration to the USA - no chance !

materialcontroller

This seems a little harsh. The UK passport is one of the most "powerful" in the world, in that it allows widespread and extensive visa-free opportunites.

So you do realize, with the ever increasing ease of international travel, that needing a visa to enter another country isn't always something that the uninitiated might consider from the get go?

scrubbedexpat099

Visiting is on thing, moving another.

Rete

At least one should visit in the dead of summer and in the dead of winter for a minimum of 2 weeks each to get a "feel" for the place. I know just from being in Fairbanks what it was like to go from Denali National Park with a lovely 60 degree weather to Fairbanks where the temps a week later were over 95 and darkness was all of 2 hours is like. Juneau is considered the rain forest and yes, it was just that, rainy and dismal.

Alaska is home to millions of people and not all of them work mines or panning for gold or doing and living how the Gold Rush or Bering Sea Gold shows tell us. There are beautiful metropolitan cities such as Fairbanks and Anchorage. Not all Alaskans live in mobile homes or river shacks or log cabins. It might not be what I or you might like but for millions it is their cuppa tea. Now they have to decide how they are going to do this.

Guindalf

Actually, there are LOTS of words for it. Crazy is one of the milder ones!

Dorothy

Really? I and many others I know emigrated without visiting first. Take my grandparents (both sets) for example. When my dad's family came from Ireland to Canada they didn't visit first. It seems with 4 generations of their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and now great-great-grandchildren maybe they were crazy. Same with my mother's parents when they emigrated from England. My grandfather had been in the Royal Navy and had sailed many places, but Canada wasn't one of them. They seemed to make a go of it, living there quite happily from the late 1910/early 1920s until their deaths in the 1970s. Absolute insanity I tell ya!

Guindalf

In your words, really?

You're going to compare fleeing the Irish potato famine with someone deciding to live in Alaska without visiting first?

Give me a break!

There are many places to where one could emigrate without visiting, but Alaska isn't one of them. I've actually visited the state and it's beautiful, but I wouldn't want to contemplate coping with a winter up there.

Rete

IMHO, and yes, this is just a friendly discussion, why does it matter the reason for the migration. People have been leaving their places of birth for centuries to take up residency elsewhere, sight unseen. My mother never came to America before she emigrated. Although she had a USC husband, coming to America was a foreign, strange and not exactly a welcoming place for her to take up residency, particularly without knowing the language. Both my paternal grandparents came from Poland in the 1880's to start life away from war and persecution. My husband's grandparents were the same as Dorothy's and left the shores of England and Ireland to seek new and better homes in Canada. His English grandfather was a barrister so it wasn't a matter of leaving a country where he was starving or didn't already have a good life. His Irish mother went to Newfoundland and then to Montreal. For her, it was a matter of escaping poverty. For the generation of those grandparents and even my mother, travel for pleasure to distant shores were unrealistic. No planes for a quick vacation but rather a long and expensive boat trip to explore countries one might want to live in.

Thankfully, the world is made up of adventurers as well as those of us who are more shall we say grounded people. My hats off to anyone who does something like this. If it fails, they can always move on. It is unkind to paint everyone with the same brush that we used to paint ourselves.

Dorothy

That's you, and thankfully not everyone thinks the same. Many of us actually have done exactly what the OP wants to do. My ex and I had never been to Australia when we emigrated . I know many others who've done the same.

tom169

The term "snowbird" exists for a reason.

Rete

Yes, it does. It is to designate those who are in a position financially from Canada and the US who live in areas where winter is hard for the elderly. My in-laws were snowbirds for over a decade when they would leave Montreal for Florida in November and not return to Canada until late April. The prerequisite is to wear white socks with sandals to separate you from the natives.

tom169

Ha