Show HN: Nomad Visa – Working remotely? Explore your visa options
nomadvisa.io
nomadvisa.io
I'm not sure how accurate these are though.
https://ticotimes.net/2021/08/11/costa-rica-signs-law-to-att...
Highly suggested! This country is the best, I've been here for the better part of a decade now and can't recommend it enough. There's fibre to the home rollout in more of the country than I've seen in north america, I don't want to strangle anyone here and the people are so open and friendly, the weather is great as long as you can stand some 15-60 minutes of heavy rain every day during the rainy season. Bring battery backup for internet on a 4g modem and you're good to go for a couple of hours of power outages before the cell tower battery goes out too (Rare that it's out that long!)
Personally I'm up in the mountains instead of the beach because I prefer the climate but it's crazy how little I pay comparatively on rent and food in this part of the world. The most expensive thing here is honestly just electronics -- Bring them in from out of the country because they tax those like mad. People ask me if it's dangerous here, and whenever something bad happens to Puerto Rico my inbox gets flooded with people asking if I'm OK (haha check a map for once!) but pretty much as long as you stay the fuck away from the 10$ grams of cocaine you'll be fine. Don't do that shit in any country, they grind up the bones of narco victims into the cut and it's just a general bad karma magnet. It's my first bit of advice to anyone in the country asking me if it's safe because 95% of the problems I see people encounter have to do with them not being able to heed this type of advice.
it's actually incredibly easy if you just hang out with locals and avoid tourists/expats
Currency in my home country is crap, USD stretches out really far in any country that's not in North America or EU
https://www.bnventadebienes.com/
My best advice is to be competent in Spanish before starting any business negotiations here and that includes buying properties.
Edit: One other thing - How about international/English schools for middle school kids?
Response to edit: Yeah the international schools here are really good, I actually have a friend teaching at a German language one for kids which is well renowned so there's even options outside of English immersion
CR has been my top retirement destination for long.. between the forests and scuba diving, it would be my ideal country.
Another thing that I'm always wondering about with tropic countries is: How about malaria and other diseases there? Is that a problem?
Because actually two weeks ago I had to kill seven mosquitoes in one single night here in my flat in Berlin/Germany. So I’m wondering how this would be if I lived in Costa Rica lol
Over the past few months I've been coding my first side project (Nuxt Frontend, Django Backend). It's been quite a learning experience tumbling down the rabbit hole of web development, as a data scientist. Nomad Visa is a database of tourist visas and visas suitable for digital nomads, remote workers, founders and expats.
More and more countries issue special visas for digital nomads to stay in their country for an extended period of time though they often come with high income requirements or high fees. Therefore, Nomad Visa allows you to compare all types of visas that are eligible for remote workers.
Let me know what you think.
That said, I'll note that e.g. Indonesia 30 day visa-on-arrival seems to theoretically be only for non-business purposes but when I've gone there's never been any question of using anything else.
I really like the site design, by the way! Did you use anything to achieve the consistent look?
Not sure if this is the feedback you were looking for but I noticed its a bit slow though. I would look at the GET to https://api.visum.so/api/country_data/
It returns all countries data which is slow and uncompressed. Either hit it once and keep it in memory so you can switch countries easily, or better yet break it up to api/country_data/<country> and just send back the info for that country
I would also get rid of stripe if you're not using it yet.
edit: Just noticed this gives a Server Error btw: https://nomadvisa.io/betteruptime
The culprit appears to be "Atkinson-Hyperlegible" in font-family. If it is commented out, text becomes visible. The TTF [1] is recognized and rendered by Windows Font Viewer just fine (though in a dear need of hinting), though I'm not sure if Firefox uses Windows native font rendering engine or has its own.
[1] https://nomadvisa.io/_nuxt/fonts/Atkinson-Hyperlegible-Regul...
Or you could use a font-family list that includes a few specific Windows and Mac fonts that you like, with the generic sans-serif as a fallback in case none of them are present.
Out of curiosity, where's your personal favorite places to be a digital nomad in? Also do you list places with a specific digital nomad visa like the new one in Costa Rica which lets you stay for an entire year? (Didn't see this yet!)
You are supposed to start by selecting a country. Let's say "Australia". Your website tells me: Tourist Visa: Tourist Visa. With a general link to https://nomadvisa.io/australia Working Holiday Visa: Working Holiday Visa. Besides these two visas the whole Australia is filled with information that doesn't concern Visas at all, but the country itself.
Either I have not understood what information the website shows or the information isn't there. You state I "can compare all types of visas" - what comparison can I do by knowing "Tourist Visa" and "Working Holiday Visa". Can I compare these somehow to different countries?
It would benefit greatly by using js more sparingly
EDIT: 1. https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/how-to-get-a-german-freela....
Sources: Many friends getting freelance visas, a visa lawyer.
Edit: See here https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_aufenthg/englisc...
(1) A foreigner may be granted a temporary residence permit for the purpose of self-employment if
1. an economic interest or a regional need applies,
2. the activity is expected to have positive effects on the economy and
3. personal capital on the part of the foreigner or a loan undertaking is available to realise the business idea.
Can't speak to the legal elements other than suggest work with a specialized law firm to get through arcane rules for living in x working in y (as lawyers say when you ask them a question, "it depends") - it's expensive but perhaps you can bake it into your cost of contracting. Not just the visa and work permit questions are tricky, also taxation: the UK has something called IR35, which has recently made it harder for freelancer even in the country to do contract work.
PS: From November and May onward, I will likely need 1-2 data science researchers for 36 months, so if you are potentially interested in working in Germany and have a curious mind and a background in machine learning and NLP, e-mail me at leidner at acm dot org.
But the open border part (once you are in), is just awesome.
First off, North Korea - really? Is anyone seriously considering being a digital nomad in North Korea? There doesn't seem to be any information of value on that page. Same with other places like Vatican City where one isn't realistically going to go as a digital nomad.
I also see US territories like Puerto Rico, Guam, USVI and American Samoa as their own countries, but they don't handle visas/immigration. They're just part of the USA. I suspect the same is true of the British Virgin Islands, Falkland Islands, etc as part of the UK.
Rather than have a long, noisy list that seems like it's probably dynamically generated from something like an ISO 3166 country list I think it'd be better to only create entries for countries where you have meaningful content.
Outside of those objections, I do think this idea has value - it certainly is a nice idea to have this information in one place, presented in a consistent way.
I don't know where I want to work, im flexible, but show me what is good.
Would people be willing in contributing this info for their country if I made a calculator for this on GH pages ?
In a 'normal' employment situation these are handled by the employer. As a freelancer, no. So the law requires some additional structure to make sure these taxes get paid.
If you simply declare your freelancing income as 'normal income', you are not paying these taxes, which probably makes you guilty of tax fraud.
Also, if you are freelancing, you may be required to charge sale tax or VAT or similar. In the EU, you need to be VAT registered to collect VAT. As an individual, only certain countries allow this, but only if you have a business license in that country. Otherwise you need a corporate form, or you are commiting tax fraud.
I know people who worked like this for a single client for >5 years, and the only cases I've heard of it being audited is when workers actually complained about these schemes denying them employee rights (it was never in IT).
And like the other sibling mentioned on international clients it's even more vague.
However, speaking of freelancing in France, legally, there isn't such a thing. You have to have some form of company. There is some paperwork, but all in all it's pretty easy and quite fast (by French standards).
Taxes are high, though, so it may not be the best place to incorporate. It should also be noted that anything above basic social security isn't free nor included in said high taxes, so you'll have to pay out of pocket either for a complementary insurance or for the hospital if you need it, although I think it may be cheaper than in the US.
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[0] Some criteria have to be met, but basically if you're working full time several years for the same client, you can ask to be considered a full-time employee with a full employment contract, etc.
Complementary insurance (mutuelle) isn’t all that expensive compared to the US. I cover myself and two kids for €118 a month - very reasonable considering I pay very little out of pocket for any care or medicine during the year.
Dodging taxes. They specialize in dodging taxes.
He would have been bankrupt for life without that. Or dead.
Tax funded health care has saved my wife's life twice.
Not really. Their Schtick is to move to a different low cost of living country and live there.
Preferably several - one for the summer one of the winter and another for fall/spring.
It’s more radical lifestyle design than “dodging taxes”.
Another thing to know is that the US imposes worldwide reporting requirements on banking institutions for their US citizen customers. This problem is far less severe than it initially was, but depending where you go some banks/institutions may deny or restrict your access to financial products because they don't want to deal with the reporting requirements attached to you. Again, it's probably fine anywhere in Europe (nowadays anyway), but elsewhere in the world it may be extremely difficult to do something as simple as get a simple checking account.
https://brighttax.com/blog/expats-self-employment-tax-foreig...
The site claims I need a tourist visa for all EU countries (wrong), and do not need a visa to visit Russia (also wrong).
Please provide links back to official information pages. For something as important as a visa, I'm just never going to trust a random third party source.
But basically as long you work for a foreign company or clients and don't draw attention to yourself I doubt they care too much.
There was a startup founder on HN circa 2017 that blogged about bouncing between Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore.
Working in Singapore on a tourist visa is particularly stupid because they will actually enforce their laws.
Something that lets me plan for a multi month to a year long campaign while minimizing flight costs/living expenses or takes my budget into account would be amazing.
Also, and this might just be me, I need a "Skiing" filter much more than I need a "Warm" filter.
Would be interesting to type in your current town, and then generate a list of the other countries (+major cities?) on the same time zone or like +/- 1-2 time zones away.
I do think the time zone thing can be crucial.
https://ilga.org/downloads/ILGA_State_Sponsored_Homophobia_2...
The obvious answer is that they have a similar impact as long term holidaymakers. But I'd like some sort of evidence, rather than my own uninformed gut feeling
I don’t know of many countries that allow regular work of any kind, on a tourist visa, regardless of where you’re technically employed.
Yeah sure if you’re on holiday and answer a work email no one cares. But rocking up and working from a cafe 5 days a week for 6 months is clearly a different case.
It is also very common. Everybody I know who's done the "digital nomad" thing in South East Asia did so on tourist visas.
The note: Disclaimer: This is not legal advice. Generally you'll need special visa or permit to enter a country and work there. That means, that a tourist visa would not be enough. But remote work means that you are not working there, but working from there? The problem is, that these clauses or exceptions are often not yet defined by the law which makes remote work on a tourist visa generally illegal or at least a grey zone. If you are not hired by a local company or interfere with local business, then remote work on a tourist visa seems to be sometimes tolerated (e.g. Thailand - https://e27.co/immigration-officers-raid-co-working-space-pu...). This is not the case with every country, so if you are planning to work remotely on a tourist visa, make sure to research specifically for the target country. The solution: Check out the special digital nomad visas or research work holiday visas. No visa runs needed.
But many (the vast majority in my personal experience which tends not to extend to countries with a lot of paperwork requirements) either explicitly allow business purposes like conferences and meeting with customers or don't care.
If you decide to remote work from someplace for a month or two, I might not get a co-working space or blog about it, but in most cases no one cares.
Other countries are far more explicit in law that any paid (or unpaid) remuneration is a visa violation. Thailand for example.
> don't care
That's the key phrase here. Personally I don't care that authorities don't enforce their immigration laws but it should be explicitly stated that you are violating your visa on sites such as this and Nomadlist.
Most do a digital nomad setup in order to have fewer living expenses and therefore more quickly save up and retire early. Nothing about working for less money while doing it.
But actually move? Lots of implications for visas, salary adjustments, and whether your company even has employees in a given country.
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at f.orderedAPIData (f552d2d.js:1)NordVPN spends a ton of money on marketing, but their security and customer support are garbage.
For one thing, you can't cancel your subscription easily, which is a dark pattern, which is a big no for a company you want to trust. First link in DDG for "nordvpn reddit cancel": https://www.reddit.com/r/nordvpn/comments/kryt69/can_someone...