Retire from 8 to 5 

Firstly, this was not a decision we made lightly. It certainly is a one-way decision, and one that we had to be absolutely certain we got right. It is reversible, but would be quite painful, physically, emotionally and financially to reverse.

Background on our stay in USA

When both of us came to the USA as students, neither of us had planned to stay long term, i.e., for the rest of our lives. But of course, stasis sets in and over time, it gets harder to make a change, and that was textbook us. So in 2017 we had the potential opportunity to take an “expat” assignment in Taiwan or South Korea with our employer at that time. By 2018, this did not materialize, we were quite disappointed. Over the course of a few months, we realized that we were actually not so disappointed by not-moving to Taiwan or South Korea (we visited plenty and liked it enough), but were disappointed that we did not leave the USA.

Visa situation in USA

In 2018, we had spent 10+ years in the USA, were still on H-1B visas did not have line of sight to getting rid of our H-1Bs and becoming permanent residents. This meant, visiting the USA consulate in India every 3years, preferably overlapped with a vacation in India (assuming one actually got an appointment during the vacation time, if not vacation dates changed). It was always stressful on whether you would make your return flight because the consulate could keep your passport a bit longer for no reason. For the record, the closest we got was in 2012, when we got our passports back at 4:30pm for our flights that evening 10pm. And the general restriction of career growth and inability to easily change one’s job while on H-1B immensely frustrated us. USA’s legal migration system, for Indians, is a mess with plenty of folks stuck in the problem. And we wanted out. If the system was not going to change, we would change. We hypothesized what we would need to do to actually leave the USA, and built a very basic list, outlined below.

• Ten years of paychecks, so social security, however meagre, is guaranteed when we turn 65. For K, this was 2019. For S, this was 2021. Seemed like ages away at that point. But having paid 15-20% tax, this was one we were bent on getting back.
• Simplify accounts, and line-up a path to converting our accounts into an international brokerage.
• Set-up NRO and NRE accounts in India, to facilitate back-and-forth legitimate money transfer, in case we choose to move to India. Clearly, we had no destination yet, just a plan to leave.
• Find a destination with an straightforward legal immigration path. For awhile, it felt no less similar than throwing darts at a map. But over a few weeks, and a lot of reading about immigration, we narrowed the list to Canada, Germany (or EU in-general), Singapore and United Kingdom. Even as we built that list, we had eliminated Canada. This is a very popular route for a lot of Indians stuck in the USA green card backlog and was an obvious choice for us. But we were already living in North East USA, with 2 feet of snow on the ground, and simply could not get onboard the thought of moving to a colder country.
• Selling big ticket items – house, cars, furniture, new school / nursery etc. we did not worry too much about this and figured we could do this when we actually left.

Our first attempt at the Great Escape

In December 2020, when our son came along we started toying with the idea of actually leaving the USA. In Q1 2021, while on maternity leave, S spent sleepless nights building job hunting. Clearly, S had a very productive maternity leave because she ended it with multiple interviews and one fantastic job offer. During this time, K also had multiple interviews in Germany. However, the job offer for S was in Germany, and we had to make a decision in a week. It was then we realized we would simply not have the time, interest or energy to spend on German classes to adequately overcome the language barrier. With a very heavy heart S returned to work and turned down the new job in March 2021.

This interview phase also allowed us to realize that our skillset was very much valued in the job market. And even though we had not job hunted in 9 years, we could still present ourselves well enough to have a first, second and third interviews with the same company. In hindsight, it was a very practical decision. Without German fluency, we cannot imagine calling a doctor to fix a vaccination appointment or calling an internet company to find a router installation date. This also forced us to focus on the correct destinations, i.e., with primary language English. This narrowed our location to UK or Singapore. While Singapore is only a 4 hour flight from India (and Diwali is a public holiday), S’s sister lives in Edinburgh and we want our son to know his cousin.

For awhile we debated between the two and we started to lean towards Singapore and then learnt that even foreign born boys were subject to military call, once they turned 18. With the world in its current condition, and a delicate 6month old boy, we could not make this move with a clear conscience.

The Great Escape

The UK became the front runner for a destination country and in Q4 2021, we refocused our job search in this country. Within a month, S landed a interview with a Fortune 50 company, and by Q1 2022, S accepted a role and we went from hypothesizing to planning logistics of our move.

In hindsight, it was the right decision to reject the job in Germany and accept the job in UK. Every other day, we find ourselves calling a contractor, nursery, doctor, ordering food, etc. and without a working local language fluency, this would have made our lives very challenging in Germany. United Kingdom, like all our front runner countries, has a very straightforward legal immigration path. One comes in with a Tier-2 Skilled Worker Visa, spends 5yrs on it, and then transfers to an ILR (Indefinite Leave to Remain) status, similar to the USA’s green card permanent residency, and after 1yr is eligible to apply for citizenship. That’s it. No quotas, no points, no nonsense. Given how easy this path is, I’m not sure why more Indians stuck in USA’s H-1B purgatory do not choose this option. Ping us if you want to chat on this topic and we are happy to hear you vent (return some of our own venting) and discuss any options you may be thinking about.