Hacker News Reader

Comment by ransom1538 | Hacker News Reader

I just wish it was reciprocated. I would like to work in Spain (no really). If I work in Spain, the US should open a spot for someone from Spain to work in the US. You want to hire someone from Turkey? No problem, find someone in the US to move to Turkey. You could allow companies to even grease the wheels, "Work from Turkey and get a 30k / year extra free bonus stipend!! yay!!"

View on HN

Not on a 1-for-1 basis, but something like this is the argument for allowing free movement between comparable countries. If the UK, Canada & Australia opened up to each other, there'd be no massive net flow, but many individuals could work for the most suitable company / near their in-laws / in a climate they like.

This was I think also what was envisaged when the EU first wrote free movement into law -- general mixing, rather than one-directional floods.

EU folks can work any where in the EU right? I wonder how it is working out

Mostly... brexit is how it worked out.

Only after an influx of economic migrants. Without that influx of migrants, I don't think most of the pro brexit people would have been concerned about the free movement of people within Europe.

Doesn't free movement include economic migrants? That said, they have also had a lot of non-EU immigration.

But my point was that free-movement between near-peer countries seems like almost pure benefit. And this was where the EU started, knocking down walls in benelux... you would struggle to get many people upset about that.

Integration all the way to Romania etc. is more recent, really quite a different thing. The hope was for rapid convergence, and the evidence is mixed I guess.

I was responding to a very short post by coding123. My point is that the free movement of people within Europe may have been a necessary condition for brexit, but it was not a sufficient condition. The free movement of Europeans did not lead directly to brexit. It was only after a massive influx of migrants from Africa and the Middle East that we had brexit

I do not disagree with your claim about near peer countries.

Migration is limited because almost every EU country has its own language.

Places to rent in cities in Germany are getting harder and harder to find because we have so many migrants, most of them from the EU. This is about the only problem we have with it locally, but it is getting annoying. The housing market is not very flexible and takes a while to catch up.

Personally I would like to see freedom of movement in trade agreements. Goods and capital can already flow freely - letting labor do so as well would be more free and have potential to make the workforce something competed for more as well. Companies can already outsource so letting people flow with less artificial resistance (as opposed to natural like language and cultural barriers) seems both fair and efficient.

Granted I acknowledge that has potential to be messy in reality without a whole lot of work to get a framework - let alone one that would be accepted. Perhaps some sort of "social service fee" minimum for benefits in taxes paid to prevent free rider issues for instance.

You just invented the European Union :)

Can we try it again except this time without the power of an organization to push awful copyright laws down the throats of every country[1]? It’s like if you consolidate power it becomes easier to corrupt.

1. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/10/effs-letter-eus-copyri...

I dont know about Turkey, but at Spain 30K/year wont be your bonus. Will be you salary. And consider it good salary.

I have no idea why this comment was killed but yes, 30K/year is a pretty good salary in a lot of Europe.

Especially in eastern Europe, for example in Romania you could live like a king on $30k per annum

I wont say that about Spain. You will have a decent life. If you want to save money or invest, that's it. No fancy dinners nor trips during your PTO. You will also have to work until you are at least 65-70 years old to have a regular retirement. I wont call that living like a King. Just like a regular working class person. Decent? Sure. But that's it.

It's a figure of speech, living like a king is overrated anyway, you got no privacy. I'd say that you'd live a comfortable life nonetheless

Yeah well rural Europe is a lot of Europe, but 30k in a capital where the 30k jobs are give you is just mediocre.

This would be the extension of an already bad idea in the US immigration system that almost no other country shares. I can't think of another country that has this notion of per-country quotas.

Spain isn't interested in getting an American immigrant just because one of its nationals moved to the US.

There’s obvious brain-drain problems. Turkey doesn’t want it’s smartest people moving and working here. Nor is it in the interest of the US for high skilled workers to go abroad.

I'd argue that it is in our (U.S.) best interest for highly skilled worked to go abroad for a short period of time (2 years?). Being exposed to different ways of living can do wonders for creative thinking.

This kinda implies that countries own people.

That's lunacy. How many Americans can you find that want to work in Africa, or India or China?

Its going to be a infinitesimally small fraction compared to the number of people from those regions that want to work here.

How much will it pay? Americans work in UAE and KSA where their life looks like it was plocked from a dystopian novel.

But if your doing that as a westerner your on a full ride expat ticket with a considerably higher salary and can save a lot.

For really dodgy areas not soft postings like UAE / KSA you also get a premium. I remember a colleague who was on +80% for Angola (he got robed twice on the trip from airport to town)

I'd love to work in China. So there's one.

Underrated idea

Reply on news.ycombinator.com