Seeking Exotic Remote Work Locations? More Than 40 Places Now Offer 'Digital Nomad' Visas (theconversation.com) 40
"Imagine starting your work day with a fresh coconut juice perched by your laptop as you gaze over the ocean or a tropical rainforest...." writes the Conversation.
"More than 40 nations or territories now offer "digital nomad" visas to attract those able to be employed in one country while living, and spending their income, in another." Fancy the beach? A bunch of exotic islands are on the list. Prefer tropical forests? Try Brazil or Costa Rica. Looking for history? There's Spain or Greece. Love Wim Hof-style ice-bathing? Iceland beckons.
Think of a "digital nomad" visa as a cross between a tourist and temporary migrant visa — a working-on-holiday visa. Instead of the visa giving you the right to work in the country, it's allowing you to stay so long as you're gainfully employed and bringing money into the local economy. How long you can stay varies, from 90 days in Aruba in the Caribbean to up to two years in the Cayman Islands. Most are for 12 months, with an option to renew. Some places, such as Latvia, restrict visas to employers registered in an OECD country. But generally the key requirement is that you can show you have no need to find local work and can meet minimum income requirements.
Generally, the visa conditions simplify taxation issues: you continue to pay your income tax in the country of your employer. But this varies. For example, in Greece (which offers a two-year renewable visa) you are exempt from paying local income tax only for the first six months.
A key driver of the digital nomad trend is the ability to maintain a career while ticking off other personal goals, particularly travel and the ability to experience a different way of life. Moving somewhere with a cheaper cost of living could be another motivation.
The article warns that "Living a long way away from family and friends and support networks is likely to be more challenging, no matter how idyllic your location.
"If you like predictable structure and routine, the uncertainty and inevitable inconveniences that arise may mean it isn't for you."
"More than 40 nations or territories now offer "digital nomad" visas to attract those able to be employed in one country while living, and spending their income, in another." Fancy the beach? A bunch of exotic islands are on the list. Prefer tropical forests? Try Brazil or Costa Rica. Looking for history? There's Spain or Greece. Love Wim Hof-style ice-bathing? Iceland beckons.
Think of a "digital nomad" visa as a cross between a tourist and temporary migrant visa — a working-on-holiday visa. Instead of the visa giving you the right to work in the country, it's allowing you to stay so long as you're gainfully employed and bringing money into the local economy. How long you can stay varies, from 90 days in Aruba in the Caribbean to up to two years in the Cayman Islands. Most are for 12 months, with an option to renew. Some places, such as Latvia, restrict visas to employers registered in an OECD country. But generally the key requirement is that you can show you have no need to find local work and can meet minimum income requirements.
Generally, the visa conditions simplify taxation issues: you continue to pay your income tax in the country of your employer. But this varies. For example, in Greece (which offers a two-year renewable visa) you are exempt from paying local income tax only for the first six months.
A key driver of the digital nomad trend is the ability to maintain a career while ticking off other personal goals, particularly travel and the ability to experience a different way of life. Moving somewhere with a cheaper cost of living could be another motivation.
The article warns that "Living a long way away from family and friends and support networks is likely to be more challenging, no matter how idyllic your location.
"If you like predictable structure and routine, the uncertainty and inevitable inconveniences that arise may mean it isn't for you."
I'm not a digital nomad (Score:5, Interesting)
but I've lived in 7 countries, 3 of which in Europe and 1 formerly in Europe.
Guess what: if you're in the Eurozone, you only need one visa and you're free to live wherever you please. If you like to move around and you haven't experienced the freedom of movement here, you really owe it to yourself to relocate to a EU country: it's huge, it's full of wildly different places, people, languages, climates... and you're free to seek employment and housing anywhere in it as you please.
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Re:Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
You are attempting to rewrite the past. Pro-Brexit leaders campaigned on "Brexit is only way to control immigration" https://www.theguardian.com/po... [theguardian.com] , journalists understood at the time that "Total control on immigration mattered more to voters than the single market" https://www.newstatesman.com/p... [newstatesman.com] and later academic research showed connection between "Brexit and intentionally masked anti-immigrant sentiment in the UK" https://doi.org/10.1080/136918... [doi.org]
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After the referendum there was a TV debate (Question Time) where a woman was asked why she voted for Brecht. She said she was leaning towards remaining, but the day before the vote was in the supermarket and saw some bananas. Reminded of the bendy banana myth, she decided that imaginary EU regulations were too much of a burden and voted leave.
Bendy bananas is one of the oldest and most debunked lies about the EU. The rules in question were actually British. She really was just that ignorant, and impossible
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Oh, about keeping Polish people out, the UK could have done that. Countries were allowed to have transitionary controls on new member states. The UK chose not to, and enjoyed the economic benefit of that decision.
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How is Brexit going by the way?
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To some people, Brexit was about freeeedummmm. It didn’t really increase British freedoms in any meaningful way.
To some people, it was about improving their economy. News flash - it did no favors for businesses or people’s bank accounts
To some people, it was about controlling immigration. That was modestly effective.
But, really, at its core, Brexit was about retirement a
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The US and the EU can sit in the drivers seat for a while and the British can be passengers. All good.
And how are the British "passengers"? From my view they complained loudly about having to follow the rules on the bus then got off between stops while vowing to start their own bus company. Well they started their own bus company with way less service and higher fares pretending that their bus service is superior.
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In order to be a top-dog country, it really does require a lot of time, effort, energy, compromise, and sacrifice from the people. And the British were simply tired of it.
Personally I'm a bit tired of it from the US side. Everybody bitches and moans about everything we do abroad, and even the shit we don't do as if it's somehow our responsibility alone. And then when there's shit that they want us to do, they don't even want to help, or worse, they help do the opposite. Case in point is our support of Ukraine, which I'm wholly in favor of, but the international community (Poland being the major exception) really doesn't make that easy. Cutting Russia off from SWIFT presented
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but I've lived in 7 countries, 3 of which in Europe and 1 formerly in Europe.
Guess what: if you're in the Eurozone, you only need one visa and you're free to live wherever you please. If you like to move around and you haven't experienced the freedom of movement here, you really owe it to yourself to relocate to a EU country: it's huge, it's full of wildly different places, people, languages, climates... and you're free to seek employment and housing anywhere in it as you please.
Keeping in mind one salient thing most people forget by ignorance or choice: The American Constitution doesn't apply to the World so make sure you understand the place you are moving to and all its politics and LAWS, or be an ignorant among the many.
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The American Constitution doesn't apply to the World
If you think the American Constitution is the pinnacle of desirability for a country, you deserve to stay in the US.
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The American Constitution doesn't apply to the World so make sure you understand the place you are moving to and all its politics and LAWS
It is questionable whether the American Constitution even applies in America in many respects.
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in the last 3 months I have been to:
Germany (Dusseldorf, Koln, Frankfurt, Morschen), Holland (Amsterdam), Turkey (Istanbul, Antalya), Poland (Warsaw, Krakow), Ukraine (Lviv, Mukachevo, Odessa, Nikolaev), Hungary (Fehérgyarmat, Budapest), Slovakia (Bratislava), Austria (Vienna), Czechia (Brno), Finland (Rovaniemi, Tankavaara), Moldova (Chisinau), Estonia (Tallinn).
I run my business remotely obviously, it doesn't matter where I am that much. It is an interesting way to live.
Re:I'm not a digital nomad (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes and no. It's possible to live in one EU country and work in another, but you might find you fall through the gaps with social security systems (can't register in one because you don't live there, nor in the other because you don't work there). Freedom of movement doesn't quite translate into joined-up administration.
Indonesia ? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Don’t elaborate or anything.
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I think the poster must work for Buzzfeed or something. They want us to go searching instead of just giving a 5 word summary of what the issue is which we could then find out more about if curious.
I was similarly annoyed.
Not so easy (Score:5, Interesting)
Tropical locations, where fruit is plentiful and help is cheap, it often not as safe as we expect in the US. Electricity and internet may not be as reliable. In my location it is never really hot or cold, but most places do not have air conditioning. There are several shared work space around where I would be, but while in the US I might be comfortable with a dedicated desk, in that location I would want a small office.
Given I know the trade offs, even though there is little additional cost to my tropical location, I think working from home in the US is still a better option.
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I telecommuted from a small island in Thailand in 2006. Had a little ocean-view bungalow with a covered deck that served as my office, worked early morning with phone and e-mail, afternoon for actually doing things, and late evening for a few extra calls and checking the blackberry in my sleep. In between I got to scuba dive a few hours every day.
The only downside was I ended up having to fly back to put out fires once a month or so. Made about 2x what I would have in the US, but it was hard work. Sure, com
Works for some, not all (Score:3)
It’s all fine and dandy to live and work remotely in an exotic location while sipping coconut juice from your balcony overlooking the sea. But that all falls flat on its face when you have to collaborate in real time with a team that is in a totally different time zone, or you have to work locally with specialized hardware.
I live in the SW of the US, but work for people on the east coast. Because of the collaborative nature of the work, I need to maintain east coast core hours. Which means regular 6:30am meetings for me. I might be able to go north or south, but I still need to remain contactable in real time during east coast business hours.
Yeah I know that isn’t a problem for the people these digital nomad visas are targeting, but it’s not always going to be possible to work like that.
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Due to today's globalized industry, this will happen anyway, whether you're a nomad or not. I'm US based, but need to have regular calls with teams in China, India or the UK; this means early morning/late night meetings a few times a week. As I have to do this anyway, sipping coconut juice from my balcony is starting to sound quite appealing...
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But that all falls flat on its face when you have to collaborate in real time with a team that is in a totally different time zone
Funny thing was, time zone was never a problem when companies ship IT jobs over to India.
Now, when a lot of people are already working in teams that spans 2, 3 or even 4 timezones around the global (e.g. US, EU, India, Auz), a few more moving from one timezone to another won't make any more difference.
Great for the employee (Score:3)
But do they make it as easy for the employer?
As numerous companies have found out in recent years, if you have an employee is another country, both employee and employer are subject to the laws of that country. The employer has to be set up as an employer there, pay taxes, etc., meet any insurance requirement (like worker's comp), and the terms of the employment are subject to local labor law, and running afoul of that can cost millions.
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The nomad visas I have seen allow for a proper company structure one way or another-- either your tax location is in your home country or local one. If it is the latter, a contracting arrangement is generally better from a legal perspective.
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When I did it, I set up as a foreign contractor. They paid my invoices, I paid someone to do my tax.
There are some drawbacks. No job security. You get paid in foreign currency, can make things like getting a mortgage difficult.
Not so easy as you think - legal limitations apply (Score:4, Interesting)
I have had extensive discussions on remote work with lawyers and HR departments of different companies.
Just a few issues.
- Tax, as mentioned above.
- Responsibility of employer over work conditions and environment. Some HR take this super seriously.
- Insurance of work equipment, especially rental equipment. Taking your laptop out of country can break the contract between your employer and the IT service company who owns the laptops.
- Data processing legal issues. Going outside of EU and working with clients' PII? Cannot do, sorry.
- Some client contracts can explicitly restrict working to certain countries.
- Crossing borders and being subject to border & customs control checks with company data on your PC? Not permitted. (Entering US is the most troublesome border in this regard.)
Big institutions may limit remote work to "remote but close to our HQ". Some of my friends are bound to work not farther than 100 km from a certain city. Makes no sense to me or them - but the IT departments are actually tracking this.
Recent sanctions policies make it even more different to be an "accommodating employer" (term from the article). The policies effectively require the employer to make a risk assessment before allowing remote work from any another country, having a look at the legal environment, crime, etc. What if our employee is kidnapped or blackmailed in country X? Is law enforcement co-operation guaranteed? If not, then no remote work from X.
The world gets more connected. People around me are staying in other countries for weeks and months. Next week I am about to work from another country myself. No visa, it's just EU.
But the law and regulations have noticed, and are trying to oppose this change on several fronts.
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I have had extensive discussions on remote work with lawyers and HR departments of different companies.
Just a few issues.
- Tax, as mentioned above.
- Responsibility of employer over work conditions and environment. Some HR take this super seriously.
- Insurance of work equipment, especially rental equipment. Taking your laptop out of country can break the contract between your employer and the IT service company who owns the laptops.
- Data processing legal issues. Going outside of EU and working with clients' PII? Cannot do, sorry.
- Some client contracts can explicitly restrict working to certain countries.
- Crossing borders and being subject to border & customs control checks with company data on your PC? Not permitted. (Entering US is the most troublesome border in this regard.)
Most of the HR, Equipment, office environment, et al. is solved by making the employee a contractor, so they provide their own equipment, pay their own taxes, have their own office, so on and so forth. That's really who's being targeted here.
Most jobs don't have strict PII or data security requirements and if they do, you DO NOT let that data onto any end user devices. It says on the servers in the jurisdictions where they are meant to be.
These aren't major issues and largely solved long before the pa
Working tourists? (Score:2)