There was a recent thread here with one of those "psychological surveys"http://britishexpats.com/forum/images/smilies/wink.gif
"How British are you" I think it was - try it, if you get a low score, then emigration might be for you.....

I'm sorry, but if you wife has never been here, what she likes is some fantasy idea of America. The realities of both the country and day to day life here are very different from anything she might imagine.

Has this agency told you which visa they intend to apply for on your behalf? Presumably an H-1B, which means that if they apply next April, you would get to the States in October 2015.

Agency? Visa?

Has he been offered a job already?

Did you go alone or did you have a family with you?

Changes things considerably.

So she doesn't have a clue.

Also, just thinking that just because the language is the same, that this is easy is a mistake a lot of folks make. Fitting in, is usually much easier when you don't speak the language, because you don't have all the wrong preconceptions.

If you can use the VWP, spending close to 90 days here, you'll get a much better sense of things, doing a daily grocery shop and getting about etc.

And the learning a new language, well, it's not like many countries in the EU don't have a good grasp of English :/

That's a nice sound bite, but is effectively BS. Few employers in non-English speaking countries will look at someone who isn't fairly fluentin the local language. My sister lived in France for seven years and was never fluent enough to get a job.

There was a very subtle emoticon at the end of Bob's comment.

Didn't realise English was a common language in France :/

Was thinking more along the lines of pretty much every Scandinavian country, the Netherlands, Belgium and a few others.

I know a couple of people who teach in both of the last two, without speaking a word of anything but English when they got their jobs either.

Plus we don't have to translate "postilion" into foreign any more!

Has he finally been struck by lightning for the last time?

Exactly! Not worth going on the Grand Tour any more.

Maybe simplistic but it has worked in three continents so far. Everybody is different but it has worked for me and my family.

Well, let's see, the agency may well come up with an employer willing to sponsor him, and the US will live up to all his dreams.

I have to say that my experience is completely different to this. Maybe you're a much more natural linguist than I am but I can assure you, speaking a foreign language every day, especially in the first year or so, is exhausting. It completely wears you down. I never found it easier to integrate in those countries. You may not understand and so ignorance might be bliss but believe me, you absolutely do not fit in more easily.

In the Netherlands, maybe Germany and Scandinavia, it might be easier on the face of it but not speaking the language will always be a barrier to full integration. My first European job was in Italy and although the workplace language was supposed to be English, it wasn't in practice. One or two staff spoke English sufficiently to communicate but the others didn't and so they preferred not to. And at lunch or breaks, English was never spoken. You just had to fit in. I was lucky and got 2 Italian lessons a week and within a year I was probably sufficiently fluent to hold a decent conversation and go to the cinema/watch TV. And I'm a pretty decent linguist.

It is a lot easier if everyone is peaking the same, fluent language. Sure, there will be misundertandings in the UK/US dialogue but they pale into insignificance when you're struggling to just buy food or get around

Thats because Belgium has more than one language and there's the need to communicate as it's an international hub / manufacturer, and the Dutch appear to be natural linguists in my business experience and speak better English than many English people :-)

Getting a job or communicating on a day to day basis in for instance in Spain or Italy is a whole different ball game altogether