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Your impression of Sweden is correct if we do a little time travel, to just 4-5 years ago. But things have changed dramatically since then. And by the way, in this forum most of us subscribe to a civil style of posting. Labeling someone else's viewpoint as "nonsense" is uncalled for.
I totally with you, CFF.
My mom and her side of the family is strewn out across Western Europe, but primarily in Ireland(Co. Offaly, Galway, Sligo, and Dublin), and a middle class is barely visible there. This a fact that my family there agrees with. Parts of Dublin have become no-go zones with soaring crime rates, especially violent crime.
It's really heartbreaking to me, personally, because I spent my summers there as a kid and the only crime you would hear about would be petty theft....and horse fighting. I'm not joking. The itinerants(i.e., gypsies, or tinkers as they're known there) ran these rings where hundreds of people would show up to bet.
I also have family in the rust belt of England that pass on horror stories of what's really going on there with the "migrant" problem. How they'll ever solve this is beyond me!
Despite our myriad issues here, we're still very, very fortunate to live in the US.
I dont necessarily want to turn this into a thread about the apocalypse in Europe, but we just had Another article about how our welfare is litteraly falling apart.
The article is about how the neurosurgeons in our biggest hostpital are reaching out to media to make people aware of how our health care detoriated in just 4 years. 26 of 42 beds are shut down at the neurosurgical department due to staff shortage, and vacations haven't started yet. As a consequence, they can't even operate the most urgent brain tumors. Less urgent ones are put on the waiting list for up to one year, and the problem is also that new cases are building up faster than they can operate.
There's practically no medical staff applying for work at the hostpial, and even when a nurse does so, the hospital cant meet the market salaries and employ the nurse. These can work for a better salary in any neighbouring country, or the same one in a less expensive city than Stockholm.
The surgeons call the situation a "parody on health care" and this is what we get for the highest taxes in the world. Refusing treatment for patients with urgent brain tumors. We spend the tax money on buying criminals from war zones instead, pretty much the last thing a sane tax payer would want. There's an equally fresh report of an known ISIS war criminal that just entered the country, and we can't deport him because Sweden forbid itself to deport anyone to countries with death pentalies. So this guy can look forward to years of handouts.
Speaking of handouts, media recently found out that kids actually get handouts if they have a dead parent. So we have tens of thousands of asylum seekers that register themselves as Children (no Medical age tests are done) to apply for this benefit, as well as the other benefits of course. As our authorities can't Control whether their parent really died in Afghanistan, all they need to do is promise that they tell the truth, so they can cash cash in ca 170$ per parent.
And it gets even better. This handout can be obtained even retroactively, so most of them "promise" that their parent died two years ago. Or actually, both parents did - so they can double that sum and get paid some 10 000$ upon arrival, not counting other benefits.
Now, as we cant even afford to treat our sickest patients, can we really afford people at the social services meeting up with each migrant and investigating the case? No, so its enough to call in and get this handout. But how do you make that phone call when you only speak some unique foreign language?
Well, you can use a Swedish representative of course, a good samaritan. Then, even Swedish Citizens found out that all you need to do to obtain huge amounts in benefits, is to call in and say you're helping some Afghani kid out.
Can it get any better? Hell yeah, each of these "kids" can go to Another immigrations office and re-do the whole process with a new identity, as we dont do any fingerprint or DNA matching.
Swedes barely react to reports like these anymore, insanity is just everywhere and we are kind of used to this waste. Media are instead joking about this, mentioning how heartless Sweden is to just give these benefits to the few children that get here, when we could give them to every child in the world.
Another swede here looking into crossing the Atlantic for the American dream
I can only chip in on OP's statements of Sweden, we're losing the grip of the country, no doubt about it.
However, I might have it a little easier to move, I got a degree from an American university, I also have an American wife.
But we have a stable life up here, we live north of the Arctic Circle, so we don't wanna move until I've landed a job. Expecting our first child in a few months and wifey don't wanna work no more...
And we're interested in either Montana or CDA, ID. CDA looks so damn nice!
No worries about stealing threads - but North of the Arctic Circle?! Gällivare or Kiruna I assume...and here I am complaining about the cold in Stockholm - its quite much worse up there, and the little summer you get is severly mosquito plagued
I agree the CDA area probably suits us Scandinavians better than the Southern parts, but jobs seems to be less plentiful around there.
Montana is equally much a fantasy, but I Think Idaho has an edge over it. Seems just a little bit wealthier and Winters are less harsh, appears to have to do with how the Rockies divert winds and Pacific air.
The issue is just as you're mentioning, leaving when you've got a stable life. If I didnt have anything to lose, I would have tried a year over in North America a long time ago. While the US might or might not be hard to live in legally, Canada is much easier and Swedes are actually allowed to resettle without practically no effort at all. Canadas demography is in a crisis so I guess they simply need new people.
You guessed it right, Gällivare is where we live, born and raised. Lived in Kiruna for 3 years too.
We're not too worried about harsh winters since all of the lower 48 have milder winters than we..
But we do want all four seasons, and the western states speaks to us since we have family and friends there. Mostly in Utah, which isn't bad either but not enough forest for me..
Canada is an option but they do have pretty harsh immigration laws as well, maybe not as hard as USA but almost.
No summer this year either in Stockholm. Freezing my a** off just stepping outside. At least we had a few warm months in 2014. Luckily I took some pictures back then, so I can sit at home now on my vacation and look at them.
Here's a north Idaho summer scene for you, GoranS and seww6. This picture taken about two weeks ago on the Clark Fork River along state highway 200 pretty close to the Idaho/Montana border. It was a very pleasant 23ºC that day.
So I took a trip and visited Idaho along with plenty of other states and cities.
Career took off way more than I expected in Sweden, so I wasnt necessarily traveling to find where to relocate but...
I've been to 18 European countries in the last two years and 7 US states. Nowhere have I seen a place as prosperous as Boise, maybe with the exception from Salt Lake City.
Forget London, Paris, NYC, LA, SF or whatever - Boise appears to be the place to be, or Idaho in general. Everything newly built, from homes to hospitals and schools. Its roomy, its quite warm and nice, people are friendly...
I could just have half a day in Boise, and spent Another day exploring the Mountains to the Idaho City/Stanley/Ketchum area. Again, very impressive.
I need to go back.
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