Jerseygirl

It was moved over to the General US Forum because it is more of a discussion thread, rather than a question/answer thread re US visa/citizenship.

zzrmark

Do you not think that this situation is allowed to exist precisely because the administration has demonised immigrant workers from Mexico southwards and is instead trying to encourage nice white Europeans to do the crappy jobs that Americans don't want?

scrubbedexpat099

This is nothing new and I can think of worse abuses,H1b comes to mind.

Mic1

[QUOTE=Pulaski;12911746]But then there are the costs of being a homeowner that nobody in the UK would ever consider - such as the perpetual cycle of replacing roofs, and heating/ AC systems, and the fact that "things" always seem to need repair or replacement in American homes. As I have posted from time to time, my US home isn't just a home, it's a hobby too! It might sound like a joke, but anyone who has owned a home in the US knows that the joke very quickly wears thin. [/QUOT

You've obviously never been involved in the UK building industry.

Pulaski

I know what my parents needed to do keep their home repaired and maintained, and what broke/ wore out and needed to be replaced; also my own home in the UK. ..... It wasn't much compared to what I spend and the time I take on maintaining and repairing my home in the US.

durham_lad

I agree. We have owned houses for 15 years in the UK and 13 years in the USA. I kept a detailed account of the money spent maintaining our house in Louisiana and over the 13 years we spent about 4%/year of the value of the house, which sounds a lot but in that time frame we had to replace the HVAC system including gas furnace, the main roof, the flat roof, termite repairs and remediation and on and on...

tom169

Yep, it's the gift that keeps giving.

Pulaski

It's not just a home, it's a hobby too!

tom169

I've learned more useful skills in the first 3 years of homeownership than I ever did in school

mrken30

You obviously have not seen the cost of housing in Western Canada. BC is very expensive compare to most of the US.
The UK has a lot of poverty issues and a poor health system.
The EU is certainly attractive, but there is of course the language barrier for the countries worth moving to.

Moses2013

Sorry off topic but in the US you can make money very quickly but are always under a lot more pressure to maintain that lifestyle. At least in Northern Europe, you can still afford retirement further South to the Hollywood Hills of Europe without being super wealthy. In the US it just seems impossible these days and property taxes alone are off putting. If you live and work in California with an average paid job, you end up poor. If you have an average paid job in the cheaper parts of the US, you don't really have many nicer retirement options.

Pulaski

Those are sweeping generalizations that are not generally true. When we moved here in 2013, my property tax bill in NC on a detached 4/5 bed home was lower than my council tax bill on a 750sqft 2-bed terraced home in Wimbledon, and has about kept place with inflation since then.

The larger cities in the US are known to have high property taxes, as well as California, Texas, and the high population density swath of the US from DC to Boston, but for much of the US property taxes are not necessarily onerous.

Moses2013

Not talking about UK alone but places in EU that offer pleasant winter climate with beaches, mountains and generally similar feel to the wealthier parts of the US like California. And even then we pay €200 property tax yearly here and in Spain it's around €280.

tht

Even then you can’t compare apples to apples.. in CT and I believe most if not all of the US public school funding comes from local tax’s, you have to look at all taxes combined, saying you have low property tax is pointless if you have high sales tax or income tax etc.

that said they may be some corner cases e.g. if you retire and don’t need good schools and have minimal income where you can actually live somewhere virtually tax free and subsidized by others. Even the services provided for by the local tax authorities vary, in NYC I paid $400 a year in property tax thanks to a 25 year 421a and had my garbage collected, out in CT I pay more than that every month and have to pay $10 a week to have my trash collected and taken to the transfer station (else I would have to take my own there, and still need a $20 a year sticker to access it).

tht

Oh wow you were right “down the hill from me” I was up the hill from Southfields station in slightly bigger detached house by Wimbledon common. We could hear the crowd on center court from the garden...