As we discussed in our Deciding to Migrate article, we sort of eased into the decision to try moving to another country for a few years. As it became clear that this was our path of choice, it also became clear we had no real idea of what that meant. Ideally, we’d all love to find the perfect step by step how-to guide for an adventure. Since we don’t usually find those, we looked for a combination of people’s personal experiences and some simple facts and data about processes, requirements and so on.

We like to attack from multiple angles in our research process by using a wide variety of resources.

1. Books are most likely to be overall guides
2. The Internet might have very specific information plus a range of personal stories
3. People can help up uncover things we hadn’t considered

 As Americans, we were certainly aware of legal and illegal immigration as a political issue. We also had some casual knowledge through discussion with immigrant friends about different legal immigrant statuses such as holding a green card or passing a citizenship exam. Still, we had never seriously researched what it takes to get permission to live and work in another nation. What is the process? What are the criteria? How much does it cost? What immigration statuses might be available to us? How different is the process from one country to another?

Beyond getting legal permission, we also needed to know more about the personal side of migrating. To move from the dream to a real plan we had to understand what we were getting into. Is it as cool as it seems? What are we not expecting? What are the chances it’s going to be a huge failure?  Is this something we really want to do?

This point of realizing you only have questions but no answers can be paralyzing, at least for us. The great overwhelm seems to happen just after we have actually picked a direction- maybe it’s a sort of commitment panic.  By now, though, we have pursued enough adventures that we can find some comfort in starting to research. We probably go a little overboard to make informed choices, but it’s become a habit.

1. Read a Book

We like to start with books because they typically go into greater detail than things we find on the web; you can almost always find an authority who claims to know everything there is on the topic. We usually start at the library for a few reasons. Yes, we are cheap, but also a decent library system tends to have a greater range of titles than any one bookstore, so it’s a quick way to look over several books and take something home same day. Unfortunately, in this case we came up dry; nothing close to a dummy’s guide to moving abroad. We could have then gone to local bookstores, but we felt Amazon.com was the next best since it also has a huge range of titles, and the descriptions and reader reviews can get us a long way to understanding whether a book has the kind of answers we need. We were surprised to find that there wasn’t much on moving abroad. Lots on travel, and lots on moving to specific locations and even some on working or schooling abroad. Other titles we reviewed, such as the Survival Kit for Overseas Living, seemed to be for people who had never traveled much or at least were particularly worried about culture shock. We just didn’t see any thorough, practical how-to guide for planning an international move.

A book we did end up buying was The Grown Up’s Guide to Retiring Abroad, which we later learned was the followup to The Grown-Ups Guide to Running Away from Home (although we never read it, the first book sounds much closer to what we were seeking). The Retiring Abroad book draws on the author’s personal experience living in France as well as reviewing 19 other options popular with Americans. She does a credible job of outlining many of the practical details such as finding favorite foods, setting up utilities, warning of duties on importing personal goods. She also covers healthcare, safety and some cultural issues.  Some of these details prompted us to define more carefully what criteria we held for our new locale. While we got a good sense of possible migration issues, the book was focused more on the destinations than really exploring each issue in depth, and of course had nothing about working. Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America looks like an interesting if perhaps controversial new publication that came out since we left.