Lol, good thing I'm not going in the water when I get over there. Looks like not knowing how to swim is gonna pay off ;)

I was only joking. Water sport in australia is amazing, especially the scuba and snorkelling on the great barrier reef.

You just need to be a bit smart about it.

Can I ask why you decided on Australia in the first place?

The first issue you have will be getting a visa to work there.
Seriously, do not turn up in Australia without one. They might ship you off to god-knows-where.
If you're under 30, you can apply for a working holiday visa which will let you live and work in Australia for a year, with a few caveats, mainly that you can only work for 3 months in a single job. Unfortunately this means it is very difficult to get any kind of IT related work on this visa.

You can apply for a 457 temporary visa, but that will tie you to the job you hold.

Yeah a working holiday visa is simple to get, but it's designed for casual/seasonal work, like waiting tables or picking fruit, not for skilled long-term work, like programming.

A 457 visa is what a long-term skilled worker would want to get, but AFAIK, you need to apply for these while outside of the country, and they're linked to your job. This means you have to find a job while in the US, and your employer will organize the visa for you. This also means that if you get fired / made redundant, then your visa becomes invalid. There's stories of evil employers abusing 457 workers, because they're much more vulnerable than local workers...

You can switch jobs while on one of these, but your new employer has to be already set up as a "457 sponsor", and has to be willing to become responsible for your visa. Some companies will instantly throw out your job application, simply because they're not pre-approved to hire 457 workers, or because it's too much hassle for them.

^ everything else ChaosEngine said is also pretty accurate, although I'm used to the local beers

Pretty much everything there is designed to kill you!

In the US, you've got bears, wolves, gators and rattlesnakes, and so on.

Just pay attention to warning signs at the water so you don't swim with crocodiles or jellyfish, and wear boots/jeans when hiking in the rare case that you piss off a snake.

But I'm assuming all of that stuff about Visas and work permits won't really matter once I get a permanent citizenship there right?

And I want to move there for a few reasons actually. Ever since I was younger, I always wanted to go there to visit. I actually plan on taking a trip there to see for myself first how life is like and if I would actually like being there. Second, I'm just not confident with the USA anymore. The government seems to be going no where, and although the unemployment is at an all time low in years its still tough to find jobs. Plus, where I live the general public and society in general just disappoints me. People have really changed for the worse over the years here, especially my generation. I don't know if that's the case in Australia as well but I got nothing to lose if I do end up moving over there. Worse case, it's exactly like it is over here, in which case i'll be ok but very disappointed. Even my professors at college tell us to get out of here while we can, because the direction this nation is heading in isn't all that great. I'm just hoping to get a fresh start over there and get a nice change of scenery in terms of culture and people.

But I'm assuming all of that stuff about Visas and work permits won't really matter once I get a permanent citizenship there right?

Yikes, I really think you need to look into this. Becoming a citizen of Australia is not that simple; you don't just hand over your passport and sing a few verses of "Advance Australia Fair". You need to get residence first and then you can apply for citizenship once you've lived there for a few years (5 in NZ, can't remember how long it is in Aussie). Bear in mind that while you are a resident, you will have no social safety net in terms of unemployment.

Also, your reasons seem to be more about leaving the US than going to Australia. If you just want to experience it for a few years, that's cool, but if you're serious about living there full time, I'd research it a bit more. People are people and the general public and society will disappoint you pretty much anywhere you go. It's about finding the few people who make your life better. Go read Hodgmans thread on the recent elections (linked above).

I'm not saying don't go, but go to a place for it's positives, don't just leave a place for the negatives.

@Hodgman, you can get a 457 while in Australia, or at least you could in 2002. Rules may have changed since.

what you really want is the magic "de facto" visa, where your significant other gets a 457 and you freeload off them while doing whatever the hell you want

But I'm assuming all of that stuff about Visas and work permits won't really matter once I get a permanent citizenship there right?

AFAIK, you'd basically have to start off either with a "working holiday" visa, or a sponsored skilled worker visa. From there, you could upgrade to a permanent skilled worker visa and become a permanent resident (but still subject to the conditions of your visa), and from there you could apply for full citizenship.

I dont think you can apply to be a citizen without first being a permanent resident, and I don't think it would be easy for a migrant to become a permanent resident immediately.

...People have really changed for the worse over the years here, especially my generation...

I know that when I visited NZ, I felt like the people there were more relaxed, like I remembered from decades earlier, like they'd missed out on a few decades of being run down by the rat race.
You might get the same feeling in Aus coming from the US, depending on where you go. You might also find this feeling just in other parts of the US itself though

@ChaosEngine Well for the past few days that I've been looking into moving there, it seems like I'll be happy there. But you're right I still have A LOT of research to do before I decide anything. And again, it's not like I'm going to be packing my bags next week or anything; I'll be making my decision in a few years time. Who knows? Maybe by then I'll decide I want to go live in some small village in South America? ( Although that's HIGHLY unlikely lol )

As for the citizenship thing, I wasn't aware of that. I guess it's a bit easier over here huh? I'll definitely have to look into some sort of job security for myself if that's the case.

And as for the whole thing about being disappointed by society, I understand that it's a little like that everywhere. However, based on what I've see everyday the US seems to be the worst. You can go online, look at the news on TV, or just step outside and go to the store and you'll see what I mean. "Why Australia in particular?", you ask? As I said earlier I've always had a fascination with going there. I also hear the economy there is great right now, and didn't suffer much during the recession. Also from different forums that I looked at, most people say the culture there is better than the American culture: People are more polite, less hostile, and act decent. I don't know how true all of this is since I've never personally been there but that seems to be the general consensus.

As I said earlier I've always had a fascination with going there.

Best reason I can think of to go somewhere.

I also hear the economy there is great right now, and didn't suffer much during the recession.

True, but that was largely due to the mining boom over the last few years, which is tailing off now (I think? Hodgman will know better)

Also from different forums that I looked at, most people say the culture there is better than the American culture: People are more polite, less hostile, and act decent.

YMMV, I found most people in the US to be courteous and helpful, but then I've never lived and worked there. Australians are generally pretty decent. Just don't mention:

• the whole convict thing.... they really don't have a sense of humour around that
• aboriginals
• dingos eating babies ... not considered funny either

Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your point of view) most of the dickheads in australia live in canberra and work in a certain building :)

YMMV, I found most people in the US to be courteous and helpful, but then I've never lived and worked there. Australians are generally pretty decent. Just don't mention:
the whole convict thing.... they really don't have a sense of humour around that
aboriginals
dingos eating babies ... not considered funny either

Good to know lol

And I'm looking around the Australian citizenship site. It's pretty hard to navigate on there

Edit: After doing a little research, it appears that they're not taking applications for the type of visa I would apply for?

I also hear the economy there is great right now, and didn't suffer much during the recession.

True, but that was largely due to the mining boom over the last few years, which is tailing off now (I think? Hodgman will know better)

Mining is still very big $$$. Even just doing laundry on an oil rig will earn you $200k a year

We've now a phenomenon known as the "cashed up bogan", where suddenly there's a lot of what Americans would call "white trash" who individually earn as much as upper class families

Supposedly, the "boom" has peaked, but it's not burst. The new government is also forging ahead to let the whole country be fracked (gas mining), with something like 60% of the country already under fracking proposals, so if that goes ahead there'll be a new gas mining boom.

As for avoiding the global recession, it had nothing to do with mining. The thing that Australia did different to the rest of the world, was we had an absolutely massive stimulus programme, bigger than any other country by GDP, and we also implemented it very, very quick. There were huge cash handouts, and huge investments. One example is that government subsidies to the home-insulation industry grew it from insulating 60k houses per year, to insulating over a million houses a year!

Sadly, the owner of FOX news also owns most of our newspapers, and he's convinced the nation that this spending was a burden to the taxpayer, and that we should now enact austerity measures in order to get the money back, even though there's no recession now... He also convinced the nation that the above insulation scheme was a disaster, because 4 insulation workers died due to employer negligence that year, even though that's a better safety outcome than previous years of that industry, in a time of over 10x growth (so we should've expected about 60 fatal accidents if you extrapolated historical data)...

And so, we elected a dinosaur who's promising austerity measures to "save" our "ruined" economy </rant>

[edit] As for the economy being good, yeah, our dollar is very valuable right now, which means buying products from overseas is cheaper than ever. Unemployment is ok, and the past few years saw the smallest cost-of-living increase in a long time.

However, if you're in the export business, this is all bad news. During the global financial crisis, America and Europe both crashed, but Australia stayed level. This meant that the relative worth of our Dollar went upwards by a lot.

In the past, American companies could outsource work to Australians for cheap, because they'd only have to pay us half as much (their money would be doubled when exchanged from USD to AUD)... but this is no longer the case.

During the GFC, I worked at two different games/gaming companies, which both sold products/services to American buyers. Due to the strong Aussie dollar, suddenly we weren't cheap any more. The price of our goods/services doubled! Sales plummeted and work-for-hire contracts all dried up. It used to be that we had the same skills, expertise and language as Americans, but with the advantage of being much cheaper, but very suddenly that advantage was taken away!

Ironically, having a strong economy was bad for the games industry here, because we're an export industry.

Also from different forums that I looked at, most people say the culture there is better than the American culture: People are more polite, less hostile, and act decent.

YMMV, I found most people in the US to be courteous and helpful, but then I've never lived and worked there. Australians are generally pretty decent. Just don't mention:

• the whole convict thing.... they really don't have a sense of humour around that
• aboriginals
• dingos eating babies ... not considered funny either

Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your point of view) most of the dickheads in australia live in canberra and work in a certain building

Dingo-ate-my-baby jokes are ok in situations where any true-story-death / dead-baby joke would be ok... Think of it like a Casey Anthony joke.

Making jokes about convicts will just make people look at you like you said something stupid. It doesn't offend people, it just makes you look like an ignorant foreigner

e.g. we got about 150,000 British convicts, while America got about 120,000 of them. Not much difference. The convicts were also extremely outnumbered by regular migrants.

So when someone jokes that we're all criminals, they get the same look as the guy that asks if we ride kangaroos

Not sure what you mean about aboriginals? There's a lot of racism directed towards them unfortunately, and a lot of them are from poor / uneducated backgrounds, so many people associate crime/theft with them. I guess it's much the same as many areas in America where a shopkeeper would keep an eye on a black customer in instinctual racism...

They do get a lot of sympathy from some people though, such as us choosing to refer to "Australia Day" as "Invasion Day", because it marks the beginning of British colonisation. They weren't regarded as actually being human, so colonisation involved a lot of... bad... stuff against them, basically genocide in some areas. As late as the 70's, their children were being forcibly adopted to try and breed them out, which we now call the Stolen Generations. A lot of right-wing people will flatly deny that any of this bad stuff even happened, kind of like holocaust deniers.

If you meet one of these deniers, or just a general racist, then yes, conversations about aboriginals will likely turn into arguments.

Speaking of which, depending on the region, there is a lot of general racism in Australia. Some people will simply hate you because you don't have a European name, or European skin. They'll blame you for their problems, lump you in with illegal immigrants, criminals and terrorists, and will fear you and slander you

However, the other half of the population is the complete opposite of that!

Do you have Aussie careers fairs in the US?

I'm in London and there are several massive Australia and Canada careers fairs every year. Basically a bunch of big IT companies (and Aussie recruitment consultants) have a trade fair where they try to convince people to go and work in Australia. There is usually a few seminars about settling in in Australia where they go over how to budget in Australia, how to prepare your kids for changing to Australian schools.