So you want to emigrate to the West, but how?

Hello again. I've had loads of inquiries over the years from people who want to emigrate to the West, these are usually Singaporeans pretty desperate to leave Singapore but have no idea how to get to the West and there's so much misinformation out there in Singapore about the process that I thought I'd just compile a simple checklist for the most commonly used routes and I would also deal with a number of misconceptions. For those of you who are not familiar with my blog, hi my name is Alex, I was born in Singapore but moved to the UK when I was 21 for my university education - I've pretty much lived in the UK ever since (along with a number of stints in places like Germany, France, Belgium, the UAE, Turkey etc) and have naturalized as a British citizen. Thus having gone through the process, I have become aware of a number of different routes available to emigrate to the West. I can't cover every country in the world so the focus will be primarily on the UK but I will be referring to a number of other countries as well for comparison and to give you some food for thought. So if I may make a very important disclaimer at this point: none of what I say is secret, this is all information that you can find in the public domain and common knowledge, I am merely putting them all in one blog post for your convenience so if you're looking for some kind of secret formula to cheat the system, you're hard out of luck dude! You just have to follow the rules like everyone else, so with that in mind, let's see what the three main routes are.

1. The highly skilled migrant route

This is the most common route taken by the majority of people who have moved to the West. Essentially it works like this: it is very hard to get a work permit to secure any kind of employment in the West because their governments will protect their own citizens against competition from foreign talents - however, there will be gaps in the labour market with certain jobs that they are simply unable to fill with the locals and that's when they throw the doors wide open, roll out the red carpet for anyone with the right kind of skills to fill the gap in the labour market. If you're wondering if this is reserved for nuclear scientists or bitcoin experts - think again: the name of this route is somewhat misleading, because it depends on where the gaps in the market are, not whether or not you are super intelligent or highly skilled. Make sure you do your homework and check what is on those lists - this is so important! So a highly experienced journalist from Singapore may struggle to qualify under this scheme whilst a Filipino nurse with no more than a nursing diploma would be granted the visa in the blink of an eye. Note that every country would have a list of professions which they would issue these highly skilled worker visas for - so if your profession is not on that list, tough, you're hard out of luck and you'll have to either give up your dreams of moving to the West or take the brave step to retrain in a field that is on that list and that's exactly what one of my readers Choaniki has done. He gave up a successful career in IT to retrain in the field of radiography, to facilitate his move to the West. After a few years on this work permit, you can apply to for permanent residency status (that's sometimes known as indefinite leave to remain) which will then allow you to naturalize as a citizen in due course.

How long does it take to get that new passport? 

It varies from country to country: between 7 to 8 years minimum - sometimes more (such as in the US).

Why this has proven to be difficult

There could be a huge disconnect between what your dream profession and what is on that list: many young people end up being faced with a difficult decision, do they follow their dream career but give up their dreams of emigrating to the West (at least for the next ten years or so) or do they give up their dream career, pursue training in a field that will facilitate their move to the West and hopefully find fulfillment in that new career? So if you grew up fascinated with animation and your dream job is to become an animator, would you be willing to give up your dreams in order to move to the West by choosing a different career path (say in nursing)? In some cases of course, there are young people who don't quite know what they want to do with their careers yet and that's a perfectly normal situation to be in - thus having a list of occupations that are deemed more useful than others may actually prove to be quite a valuable guide to helping these young people pick a career path which will give them a lot more options, including seeking employment abroad. In any case, I have also known of cases when people have ended up being exploited by their employers: take for example this Israeli guy in California who was working for an American company, he was highly skilled and was dependent on his employers sponsoring his work permit visa. They knew they could terminate his employment and withdraw his work permit at any time - since they knew that he didn't want to return to Israel, they treated him unfairly: overworking him and underpaying him. Eventually, he gave up and found another job in Canada because things got so bad with that Californian company. That's just one story - there are plenty of others of people on work permits being totally exploited.

My Israeli friend was treated very poorly in America by his employers.

2. The marriage / civil partnership route 

This one is really simple: simply get married to a local and you will be granted some kind of residency rights which will then enable you to stay on in the country as a spouse. The rules vary from country to country: for example, Italy automatically offers citizenship to anyone married to an Italian citizen (you don't even have to live in Italy or speak a word of Italian) whilst the UK would offer you the right to live in the UK for two years after your marriage, following which you can apply for indefinite leave to remain. This is actually a fairly common route and a popular one, because once you have married a citizen of that country you don't have to prove yourself worthy as a highly skilled migrant of a work permit. Thus I have heard of cases where for example, a rich British-Indian man goes back to India to get himself a bride from the countryside through an arranged marriage, the bride is uneducated and barely speaks a word of English but she just breezes through the immigration process as a spouse of a British citizen. Is this fair? That's another debate for another day I suppose. There are no (or very few) restrictions about what kind of work you can do if you migrate using this route and that's a huge advantage because you're free to pursue whatever career you want in the West. And of course, many countries now have gay marriage as well so this route is open to members of the LGBT community in those countries.

How long does it take to get a new passport? 

It varies from country to country: in Italy for example, it is immediate but in the UK for example, from the day you get married to the day you get your British passport, it will take a total of 4 years.

Why this has proven to be difficult

Oh man, where do I begin? It is hard enough to find love, harder to fall in love with someone from a particular country you may have in mind! Marriages can fall apart quite easily even when two people are in love - it is a very hard social contract to hold on to throughout your life and many people; what if your relationship falls apart before you have fulfilled the minimum required period to gain residency status? Like in the previous case of the Israeli guy being mistreated by his employers, there are also cases of spouses being mistreated because they are stuck in the same situation of not wanting to go back to the countries they came from. Furthermore, some countries like the UK have imposed restrictions on these foreign spouses: the foreign spouse will have no recourse to public funds for at least the first two years in the UK and the British spouse has to demonstrate that s/he earns enough money (currently set at £18,600 a year, rising to £22,400 if they have a child and then £2,400 for each subsequent child) to support the spouse during the period. Currently in the US, the figure is set at US$20,575 and if I may stress please, neither the figures for the UK or US are unreasonable because these are very modest sums of money that anyone who is gainfully employed ought to be able to earn, given that the starting pay for a teacher in the UK is already at £23,720 and if you're in inner London, that figure is a staggering £29,664. So it is only those who are unemployed or retired (and are very poor) for find themselves unable to bring a foreign spouse into the country. Furthermore, if you're stuck in Singapore and you want to marry your way into Australia, trying to find a quality Australian spouse in Singapore would be very difficult, compared to say if you are in Sydney. That's why many people who go down the marriage route are already in that country as a foreign student or on a work permit.

3. The investor visa route

Most countries in the world will have some kind of investor visa for extremely rich people to simply buy a new passport. We all love the crazy rich billionaires and have a different set of rules for them when it comes to immigration. Let's take the UK for example: there is the tier 1 investor visa whereby you simply invest £2 million into the UK and that will grant you residency status. That £2 million is still yours in principle, you're simply obliged to invest it into the UK (so anything from a British company to stocks & shares to government bonds etc) and if you make good investment decisions, you could still make a handsome profit on that £2 million investment. If £2 million sounds a lot, try somewhere like Malta - you only pay a fee of €650,000 into Malta but note, this is just a fee (you don't get your money back, it is not an investment) and there are still other requirements on proving that you're living in Malta for at least renting a property in Malta (minimum €16,000 spent in rent) and you still have to invest €150,000 in Malta. But once you have that Maltese passport, you can go live anywhere in the EU - that's pretty neat. And over all, you're still spending €816,000 in total for that Maltese passport as opposed to £2 million in the UK. Many other countries from Canada to Australia to the USA have similar schemes to attract ultra-rich migrants as this is an easy way for governments to make loads of money.

How long does it take to get a new passport? 

This will vary from country to country. In the UK for example, the more you invest, the faster you can naturalize as a British citizen - so if you invest £10 million, you can get residency status after 2 years and a British passport 2 years after that, in total 4 years only. In Malta however, the entire process takes just 8 months! Why does the UK government ask for so much more than Malta? Despite Brexit, the UK is still a very attractive place to live whilst Malta is a tiny country with rather limited opportunities for education and employment. It was okay for a short holiday but I won't want to live there.

Why this has proven to be difficult

Well the answer is obvious: do you have that much money sitting around? Probably not. This is a route that is for crazy rich people who wish to obtain a second passport. For them, a few million dollars is nothing. And the irony is that if you do have that much money, then your life would be pretty comfortable no matter where you are: you could afford to have a really nice quality of life and if your life is that great, why would you need to move to another country? As a case study, I present this Chinese family from Beijing - the parents are one of those crazy rich Asians and their only son has really bad bronchitis which is made so much worse by the awful air pollution in Beijing. However, during a trip to the beautiful countryside in Austria where the son was able to breathe fresh air for a change, his symptoms cleared up very quickly and he felt great but the moment they returned to polluted Beijing, the boy quickly fell ill again. After all, when the air is the cause of your misery, no amount of money can protect you from breathing in the awful pollution. So they decided that for their son's health and future, they would move to London and simply use the tier 1 investor visa to secure their residency status in the UK. The father is still maintaining some of his business interests in China and travels back and forth between Beijing and London regularly, whilst the wife is happily playing housewife and taking good care of their son.

Wait is that it? Are there only three ways? Well, there are other more obscure ways of course but these routes that are simply not open to many people. These are included purely to make this article more complete rather than me seriously suggesting that you can look into these four routes. So with that disclaimer in mind, let's proceed carefully with caution:

4. The ancestor visa route 

This is quite simple: if you have a grandparent whom you can prove was from a country, then you can apply to get a passport from that country - the rules vary from country to country of course but it is really only useful if you do want to get your hands on that passport and in some cases, that grandparent has to be alive to facilitate that process. For example, I have a friend in America who wanted to come and live and work in Europe, he still has a grandfather alive in Poland so despite the fact that he doesn't speak Polish or has ever lived there, he is entitled to a Polish passport. As Poland is a part of the EU, he is free to live anywhere in the EU and isn't restricted to just Poland with that new passport. However, in my case, I know I had a grandfather who was born in China - but given that he passed away before I was born so trying to find any paperwork relating even to his very existence is going to be a huge challenge. And besides, what good would a China passport do for me?  Even if I could get a China passport, I actually don't want one as it is of no use to me at all since I have no intention to live or work there. Likewise my father was born in Malaysia, but that's no good to me either. Luckily I am married to a man whose grandparents were born in Ireland, so he managed to get hold of an Irish passport which is now extremely valuable in light of Brexit, so if we ever want to say go live in France (or any other EU country for that matter) after Brexit, I'll go there as the spouse of an EU national rather than as a British citizen.

5. The UK 10-year student route 

So here's something a very rich Thai friend of mine did: he was sent here to be educated in England from the young age of 8 and grew up in this country. So in the UK, once someone like that has studied here for 10 years, the government reckon you have spent enough money on the education system as a private student to have earned your permanent residency status. Note that foreign students like that often pay a lot of money to be educated in this country. In fact most foreign students spend less than 3 to 5 years in the UK as a student as it is bloody expensive to study here, especially at university and if you're trying to reach that magic figure of 10 years as a student in the UK via the universities, oh boy - I hope your parents are like crazy rich. Heck, if you're that rich, why not just use the investor visa route instead, then you're not obliged to keep on studying. This worked for my Thai friend as he moved here when he was very young but given how rich his family is, he could easily also opt for the investor visa route as well - rich people have more options.

6. Claiming asylum as a refugee

Now this is the one route I will tell you not to pursue, hell no. People like Amos Yee and Alvin Tan may have done it but unless you're really from a war-torn country like Syria or Yemen, this route is not open to you and you should never bark up the wrong tree as it puts you on the wrong side of the law with the country you're trying to emigrate to. Don't even think about it - this is not for you. This article would not be complete if I didn't mention this route but I'm going to tell you not to even for a moment contemplate it in the same breadth. No. Don't even go there. Certainly in light of a lot of countries turning their backs on refugees whilst electing very right wing governments (from the UK to the US to Brazil), this is not the time to put your fate in the hands of others, you should not count on others to act in a kind and charitable manner towards you as a refugee unless you are genuinely from a war torn country. People like Amos Yee have only gotten themselves into trouble out of sheer stupidity and I don't even think that's worthy of asylum under any circumstances but that is another story for another day. If you ever try to claim asylum in the West as a refugee, there is a long queue of people from war-torn countries who are actually fleeing real persecution and are actually facing certain death if they ever return to their countries - so that is what a refugee is and only people like that will be granted asylum.

7. Do something so freaking incredible that they want you as a citizen at once

Finally, we have to end with one of the top stories from 2018 - the Spiderman of Paris. Mamadou Gassama was an illegal immigrant from Mali who shot to fame when he fearlessly scaled the side of a building in North Paris to save a four year old boy who was dangling by the side of a balcony. Without Gassama's actions, the child would have surely fallen to his death. The man was hailed a hero in France and thanks to the power of social media, he shot to fame in a matter of hours as footage of him scaling the side of the building to save the boy spread quickly. When it was revealed that Gassama was in fact an illegal immigrant, rather than get deported, he was invited to meet president Macron who not only naturalized him as a French citizen but also gave him a medal for courage. You can be cynical and point out that president Macron was only too happy to hang out with the internet sensation whilst his popularity has plummeted this year! Gassama was then offered a job as a firefighter and so there's a happy ending to this great story. Now I've included this story just as an example of some of the more unusual circumstances that can earn you citizenship, but the number of people who have actually used this route are tiny so please, don't you start thinking of doing what Gassama did, okay?

8. The 'Einstein' visa (for the USA), Exceptional talent visa (for the UK) 

May I refer you to the comments section below please - credit to my reader Choaniki for his contribution.

To conclude, the vast majority of migrants use the first two routes: highly skilled migrants and marriage whilst the other routes are used only for those in very specific circumstances (such as being crazy rich or fleeing a war torn country). That's it from me on this issue: what do you think? At the end of the day, unless you're extremely rich, you're either going to get a work permit as a highly skilled migrant or marry a local - but have I missed anything out, are there other routes? Have you ever contemplated which one of these seven routes you would want to take if you are going to move to the West? Which is the best route to take in your opinion then? Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.