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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

How difficult is it for an American to move to Sweden to live long term? The author had an employer sponsored visa. Are there other paths?

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I don’t know about Sweden, but I think immigration to Europe is easier than immigration to the USA. I recently interviewed with a company in the Netherlands, and immigration was a non-issue. Get job, get residence visa (assuming you aren’t a criminal with a record that shows up in a background check).

Taxes are high in Western Europe, and salary lower than in the USA. That being said, some companies pay wages that are semi-competitive with American wages, and some countries offer a tax advantage for skilled immigrants (in the Netherlands, for qualified immigrants they offer package called the 30% rule, where you don’t pay taxes on 30% of your income & you’re exempt from the wealth tax on assets outside of the Netherlands*)

*don’t quote me on that, do your own research*

Info on the 30% rule in the Netherlands:

https://www.expatica.com/nl/finance/taxes/the-dutch-30-rulin...

From my limited knowledge, I think Switzerland is probably the only country that might be a bit more difficult coming from outside of the EU.

Sweden: For tech workers with reasonable salaries - it's very similar.

There's not that much paperwork for the employer (no lawyers need to be involved on either side, even in small companies the HR people or the CEO/Founder are normally able to handle it on their own without that much pain).

It depends on what you do professionally. Are you a software developer? If so, you're golden to pretty much move anywhere you want.

Anything else and you're SOL

Moved to Sweden from the US ~3 years ago. The most stable path is with an employer-sponsored work visa. Best bet is to interview at a multinational with a presence in Sweden (big companies are more likely to operate in English).

Next best option is to be in a stable relationship with a Swede.

It’s possible to get a visa running your own business, but the wait times for this are long and you need solid documentation that you’ll actually make enough to support yourself/your dependents.

Visas are also available for students and they’re experimenting with a visa for highly skilled job seekers, but these are a bit more limiting in terms of length and what you get access to.

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