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Comment by atlasunshrugged | Hacker News Reader

No longer in Berlin, I ended up moving to Estonia to work for their government and then just bounced around Eastern Europe until Covid happened. If your work was sponsoring your visa you have to leave after a set amount of time unless you get another one (assuming non EU citizen). That said, if you're an engineer or have access to capital it's not that tough to get a visa somewhere in Europe. I'm personally considering doing the Dutch American Friendship Treaty path once Covid is over but haven't decided yet.

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Ah, DAFT. The glorious deal where US citizens can work and live in the NL and the Dutch can.. welcome you to NL.

I'm not Dutch nor familiar with the DAFT[1] scheme but from the wording I sense there is a hilarious insider story buried here somewhere?

[1] what a name

Bad for the individual but probably good for the country? They get US developers and don't lose their Dutch employees to higher paid SV jobs.

Brain drain in tech is a big issue in Europe due to salaries paid in SV, not everything bad for the individual is actually a bad deal for the country.

Brain drain is really not an issue at all in Western Europe. Sure, some people move to SV, but the majority likes sane working hours, streets without poo, and schools without metal detectors at the entrance.

Anecdotally, the amount of European programmers I know that moved to the US slightly exceeds the amount of American programmers that moved to Europe. I strongly doubt a different visa system would impact that significantly.

I don't see any brain drain from Belgium to US actually.

Everyone knows US pays more, but you are left in the dirt when something goes wrong.

People stay mostly here since there is work enough, friend & fault is here, travel between countries is easy, pay isn't bad and you get a decent healthcare.

Some people work in the US for a couple of years, but all the ones I know come back ( outside IT I have seen some friends going to the US)

What a scheme! Unfortunately, if that deal was being negotiated today I doubt the US would have the weight to get such a one-sided transaction done.

Why is that unfortunate? What would the US have to lose allowing (mostly) highly educated Dutch people into the US?

I meant more that the loss of US power is unfortunate (and was being a little glib, obviously upsides and downsides to the US not being the only superpower anymore) - I would love if more Dutch came to the US, maybe SF would finally get some bike lanes

> No longer in Berlin, I ended up moving to Estonia

I've been in Berlin for a number of years and have always liked the idea of Estonia, how did you go about finding a job working for the government? is speaking English OK?

>"hat said, if you're an engineer or have access to capital it's not that tough to get a visa somewhere in Europe. I'm personally considering doing the Dutch American Friendship Treaty path once Covid is over but haven't decided yet."

Which other ones besides DAFT are you referring to? I think all of them that I have read about(Portugal, Malta, Cyprus) require hundreds of thousand of Euros no?

I think there are quite a few startup and freelancer visas that aren't all that hard to get access to. I guess I also should have specified how much capital, but I was thinking sub 100k euro. For instance there's the new Estonian digital nomad visa if you make 3k and change and work for a foreign (non Estonian) entity, Germany has their freelance visa that didn't seem all that hard to acquire from the folks I met who had it while I was in Berlin. Below is an article I found after a few minutes of Googling that outlines a few worldwide.

https://startupswb.com/startup-visa-heres-15-countries-that-...

I can confirm that the German freelance visa is really easy to get. I documented the process here: https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/how-to-get-a-german-freela...

Interesting, thanks for the link. I've been curious about the Estonian one. I'd be interested in hearing how that has worked out for people.

Of course - any specific q's on the Estonian one? It's run by a bunch of former colleagues and I was around for a bit of the early planning/discussion. Happy to share what I can

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