
Ask HN: My country is getting worse. Where to go? - richsaunders
I am 20 y.o, I live in Indonesia. I don&#x27;t know what&#x27;s going on with my country, but it looks like everything is getting worse. I don&#x27;t see a bright future here, so I am looking for a better country. I am willing to move abroad.<p>The problems are, I don&#x27;t know where to go, and how much does it cost. Right now, I have around $1,000 in my bank account. It&#x27;s all the money that I save from my job.<p>Unfortunately, I don&#x27;t have any degree. I am a high school graduate. But I&#x27;m good at design and good enough at front-end dev. I am also into fitness, I workout alot, mostly calisthenics.<p>I&#x27;m thinking about to move to Canada or Japan. But I don&#x27;t think I have the money. Probably some of you can help me. I just want to get out. Where to go? Thank you!
======
peacemaker
As other posters have pointed out, getting to another country is likely to be
very difficult for you right now so my advice is to think about what you can
do where you are to improve your situation.

It seems to me that the answer to your problems is money. Yes, I know that can
seem obvious but if you have a goal to earn western wages while living on
Indonesian costs you should be able to save a fair bit.

This means you could try freelancing your front-end dev skills out to western
clients. There are lots of platforms out there where you can do this.

Alternatively look for a remote only job as these are becoming more and more
popular and front-end development is a highly desired skillset.

Thinking outside the box a bit, if you're willing to stay put a little while
longer you could potentially build software products, such as WordPress
plugins and use a platform like Codecanyon to sell them.

Or if you'd rather use your fitness interest/skills why not consider setting
up some kind of bootcamp class? You could create a course on
bookmartialarts.com (or similar) that is tailored to foreigners that want to
come work out in another country? With your development skills you'd likely
have an edge with marketing it and making it look very professional.

You've got a tough but not impossible road ahead of you. Good luck!

~~~
sgallant
I agree with most of this, but if you like programming and front-end
development, I would suggest you focus on getting REALLY good at that first.
Optimize for learning and master your craft. If you become among the top 5% -
10% of front-end devs in Indonesia by the time you're 30, you will have many
options.

I would get some formal computer science education while working for a startup
where you can get relevant experience with modern technologies and improve
your team-work skills. Don't optimize for money now, optimize for mastery.
Fortunately, software development is among the most lucrative professions on
the planet and you like it.

Fast-forward 5-10 years and your chances of landing a great job in US, Canada,
etc would be dramatically improved. Many experienced React Devs make
90,000/year+ in the US [1].

* EDIT: also, if you want to work in an English-speaking country, mastering the English language would help too (you may already have this ability).

Good luck! You got this!

1\.
[https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/salary/results?l=United+State...](https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/salary/results?l=United+States&ed=1&ex=5&ff=1&dr%5B0%5D=FrontendDeveloper&tl%5B0%5D=css&tl%5B1%5D=javascript&tl%5B2%5D=reactjs)

------
Yetanfou
What about the Netherlands? The country has, for reasons you will be well
aware of, a sizeable Indonesian population, albeit mostly consisting of people
who moved from Indonesia before or around the beginning of the republic. It
will be easy for you to get acclimatised there (apart from the weather that is
but given that you mention Canada as an option the Netherlands should not be a
problem here). It is one of the most 'advanced' countries in the world in many
ways, things generally work the way you'd want them to. Everybody speaks
English and using English in the workplace is quite common, especially in the
IT sector.

------
rkul
What is your thinking behind "the country is getting worse?" What is the
threshold between "it is bad but ill carry on" and " I need to move out?" What
are the factors?

Genuinly interested as these types of decisions are immensly interesting.

~~~
richsaunders
Reasons why I am thinking my country is getting worse:

1) Currency. Its value just keep sinking.

2) Safety. What I fear the most is terrorism. There are a bunch of people in
the name of religion doing scary things at night just because they think
you're wrong. But cops don't care. I honestly never saw cops fight those
people. It's scary.

3) Government. Something is wrong here. Even if next year we will have a
presidential election, I don't think it'll make things better.

~~~
thecolorblue
1\. You can use this to your advantage. You can set a lower bid online
freelance work. As long as you can get paid in US$ and convert it, you will be
making more money than if you moved.

2\. Can't help you there.

3\. This is a problem pretty much all over. Everyone has a different opinion
about it,but I believe globalization has caused a dramatic increase in
competition, which creates stress, leading people to act irrational and short
sighted. Cooler heads will prevail.

I'm not trying to convince you to stay, just to use what resources you do
have.

------
lost_at_sea
I have travelled in Indonesia and I'm Canadian. I've worked in tech for a long
time and I've lived in Japan. I've met an engineer from Indonesia who
immigrated to Canada about 10 years ago.

So, a few things. Indonesia has progressed very well over the past 20 years
and that is likely to continue. From a low base though.

Between Canada and Japan, Canada is a better choice unless you already speak
Japanese. Japan is not fond of foreigners while Canada is full of foreigners.

You can apply directly to immigrate to Canada. There's a "point system" that
determines if you qualify. Your English seems to be very good so that's a big
thing in your favour. No university degree is a big impediment.

It can be very difficult to get a first job in Canada when you don't have
experience.

It seems to me that Singapore might be a better option. At least in the short
term. Pay is higher than in Canada or Japan, Singapore is desperate for
immigrants and it's right next door.

~~~
verelo
All this is true, but as someone who moves to Canada, I’d encourage you to
have a plan for housing. Big cities are tough, and $1000 is barely enough for
a month of renting a room (if you can find one that is). You’re probably going
to be asked for first and last months rent upon lease signing, so you’ll need
a minimum of $1500 just to live for your first 30 days, assuming you can
quickly earn money to eat. I also think Canada requires proof of funds up to
something like $5000 CAD (although I’ve never been asked, or known anyone that
was asked).

------
thisismyusernam
You seem smart and honest and I hope it works out for you. I also feel that my
country is getting worse, and I also don't know where to go, but I live in a
"first-world" country (UK) and have relatively high wealth for my age thanks
to starting my own company 7 years ago (when I was in my early 20s) and having
decent luck with it. But I also want to get out, and some facts about my life
and minority status make it quite difficult to know where I will be physically
safe and generally happy. Just wanted to share a similar perspective from a
very different situation.

~~~
jvln
Egocentric :D

------
smt88
I'm not an expert on this, but I heard once that even foreigners can get free
college tuition in Germany. That might be wrong or inaccessible to you for
some reason, but I think leaving your country by attending college would be
ideal.

~~~
lowlevel
Second hand knowledge, but I seem to think it was free for Germans, and
they're expected to stay in the country something like 4 years after
finishing.

~~~
zefool
Can confirm that there is no residency requirement tied to this. Universities
are just public institutions here.

Not sure about tuition for foreign students.

------
deepGem
I think you can move to Canada to purse a course in a community college. Not a
degree but a 2 year course. Can you get a loan from your home contry ? If so
you can move to Canada spend 2 years studying/earning and you will be set. You
will have to take a loan to cover your airfare and first semester college
fees. Worth exploring I suppose.

~~~
richsaunders
> Purse a course in a community college.

It sounds interesting. How do I do that? Can you explain a bit more?

~~~
deepGem
I don't know much but a rudimentary Google led me to this college of Rockies.
There might be others like this. GOod luck !

[http://www.cotr.bc.ca/programs/](http://www.cotr.bc.ca/programs/)

------
alexhutcheson
Get a college degree, preferably in CS or engineering. It’s almost definitely
cheaper for you to do that in Indonesia than in any other country you might be
interested in, and having that credential helps you in visa and job
applications.

Once you have the degree, work for a while to build up more savings. How you
do this is up to you, but you’ll need a lot more than $1000 to get yourself
established in a developed country.

Once you have the money, you will be eligible for many more visa programs than
you are currently. One common “backdoor” route is to get a master’s degree
using a student visa that allows you to work in the country for a period of
time afterwards. The US OPT[1] program is the one I’m familiar with, but there
similar systems in other countries. It’s much easier to get employers to
sponsor you for visa programs if you’re already working in the country.

Also, you should apply for the US Diversity Visa[2] program every year. It’s
an extreme long shot, because there are so many more applicants than spots,
but you never know.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optional_Practical_Training](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optional_Practical_Training)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_Immigrant_Visa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_Immigrant_Visa)

------
sbfeibish
You should be able to work as a freelancer until you've saved enough to go
abroad. Or maybe go abroad to a low cost location (Chang Mai, ...) and
freelance from there. There are a few websites that would help you find
freelance (gig economy) work (15 freelance sites listed here
[https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245953](https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245953)).

If you're really, really smart you might be able to get a full college
scholarship somewhere.

There's Ecole 42 in Paris (also Silicon Valley) that's tuition free. "No
degrees or special skills are required to apply, and those who are accepted
attend for free for three to five years. Around 80% of students get jobs
before they finish the course; 100% are employed by the end."
[https://qz.com/1054412/a-french-billionaires-free-teacher-
le...](https://qz.com/1054412/a-french-billionaires-free-teacher-less-
university-is-designing-thousands-of-future-proof-employees/). But Ecole 42 is
hard to get into. And Ecole 42 might only accept French students. (The answer
is an email away.)

------
kofejnik
Like many things in life, it can be solved with money. So:

1\. become a really good front-end developer, do remote work. Be very
professional about it. You'll start making good $$$.

2\. Search HN for tips on remote/contract work, there's a whole lot of wisdom
about it.

3\. Once you start making >$3 k/month, a lot of possibilities open up,
including some EU countries. You can get a student visa, and running your own
business also might be a possibility.

4\. You might be able to study in EU right away. Make a list of universities
you're interested in, email each and every one of them, asking if you can
become a student and if there's a scholarship that might be available to you.
I know a few people who did this successfully with very little of their own
money.

------
throwAway01092
Throw away account.

There are a lot of great opportunities for great front-end and designer in
US/Canada. However, the biggest thing against you will most likely be your
accent and your english. People won't tell you straight in your face, but
unless you can communicate very fluidly you'll have a hard time finding a
full-time job.. even more if working remotely.

I don't know how good is your english/accent, but I'd recommend taking english
lesson with someone that could teach you how to improve your accent. IMHO that
will yield SO MUCH more opportunity than learning another web framework .

While learning that, I'd recommend picking a modern web framework and getting
really good at it. I.e. React/Redux/Graphql/html/css.

Once you have your english communication + base front-end knowledge, apply to
startup that offer visa. Startups are great because they often can't pay a
huge salary so they need to be more creative and give more chance to people
with different background. I wouldn't be too picky about the startup vision or
whatever, as long as they have cash in the bank, aren't toxic and can help you
move.

Once you've moved and landed a job, keep learning and improving in your spare
time, stack cash, and after 1-2 years, feel free to move to better company.

But again, the strong accent / bad english is what will most likely make it
very hard so I'd invest in that first.

~~~
hackeraccount
Are you kidding me? I barely speak english (native speaker) and I didn't have
that much trouble landing a gig. Most people are willing to ignore most of the
nonsense I speak as long as I produce a bit of work now and again.

------
lixtra
You probably read a lot about that 90% of the start-ups fail. So consider your
options and propabilities of success.

a) Try to legally migrate to a first world country. Given your background the
chances are very slim. Your best chance is probably to find a western partner
willing to marry you.

b) Illegally migrate to another country. This is very difficult for the
countries you mentioned because you have to cross an ocean. Illegal
immigration into Europe is possible but 1,000 USD is not enough. From what I
read you would need about 10,000 USD. It also comes with certain risks. About
0.1-3% of the migrants die during the journey depending on the route. Many get
abused on the way. Do you want to play this kind of Russian roulette? Assuming
that you have the money and you are willing to take the risk, your chances are
not that bad, probably above 30% to make it within a year. If you make it, a
lot of things will be better, but a lot of other things will be much worse
than you expect. Your chances to be better off than the median are very slim.
Most likely you will be sourended by 90% people being better off than you. If
you work hard, chances for your children are much better though.

c) Migrate within your country to a better comunity. This should be feasable,
even though you seem to have only about a few month of savings. Maybe you find
a better comunity in your own country? This has many advantages over above
options. You stay within your own language and culture, you can continue to
use your existing network and you can easily reverse your move if the new
community turns out worse than expected. I would assume, this option has the
highest success rage. If you succeed here another option may open at a later
point with higher success probabilities.

~~~
rhn_mk1
I don't mean to detract from the general value of this comment, but a
nitpick...

> Your chances to be better off than the median are very slim.

Chances to be better off than the median are exactly 50%.

~~~
bspammer
If you were selecting randomly from the population, yes.

OP would have significant disadvantages that would make them likely to be
below the median.

~~~
rhn_mk1
I pointed it out because the post doesn't make it clear what the sentence
means. "The median" is undefined, and to get the implied meaning, there's only
one reference: the group of people including the OP. Obviously, it doesn't
make sense in this context, but it's never clarified.

Actually, your post also doesn't specify that: median of what group?

------
abtinf
From what I have read about Japan, it is a deeply tribalist and racist country
with extensive government controls that has led to nearly 3 decades of
continuous stagnation. I would not move there. I could be completely wrong and
do not have first hand experience with that culture.

Have you considered Singapore or Hong Kong?

~~~
richsaunders
I am actually considering Singapore. Not sure with what I am going to do.
Probably just make more money as fast as I can.

------
John_KZ
$1,000 won't get you far. That's less than a month's rent for a studio in
Toronto for example. Also I'm pretty sure both Canada and Japan have pretty
strict immigration laws. If you want to migrate you should figure out
realistically what your opinions are. That includes legal and budget
restrictions.

If you're a good front-end dev, try remote work as others suggested. It's
probably your best bet to gather some money and grow from there on. If higher
education is free or affordable in Indonesia, I'd suggest going there to study
first and get yourself a degree. This will make everything, including
migration, much easier in the future.

------
sethammons
You could try to get sponsored by an employer. We've had two or three folks
start out in different countries come to the US through our company. Each
started as a contractor and became an employee. I'm not sure the success rate
of this technique.

~~~
ratsimihah
Are you referring to H1Bs or a different Visa? I couldn't even get an H1B from
inside with a sponsor due to the lottery. Damn the "RNG."

~~~
sethammons
It was probably that, yeah. We actually had a guy who came over from
singapore. He was here. Then something came up with it and they deported him.
It took like a year or two for him to win the lottery to get back into the
states. Crazy.

------
degurechaff
Before thinking to move abroad. Are willing to move to another city? Try
balikpapan or makassar. Indonesia is vast, there are many opportunities in
another cities if willing to search for jobs.

------
irq-1
For cost of living, check out [https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living)

From Indonesia to the Netherlands:

[https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/country_result.jsp?cou...](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/country_result.jsp?country=Netherlands&displayCurrency=IDR)

If you're getting a job there, the numbers won't be as important.

------
poiuy1
Why not get involved in your country's politics and try to make it better?
Running away from problems whatever they are just helps the bad guys, but be
warned, you will pop up on your security services radar, so everything like
your school reports, your health records, anything documented by the state or
in the public domain like facebook will be used to build up a psychological
profile and this could then be used against you, if your remit is different to
their remit like protecting a country's GDP or current political leaders. The
good thing about this, is foreign intelligence will also like to you use like
a pawn to help further their own foreign policy interests and global criminals
may also like to use you for their own ends as well. So be careful if you do
decide to get vocal, I know I've had it done to me as well.

------
ed_balls
You could try getting a degree in one of the central European universities.
Total cost for 3 years should be a fraction of what you need to pay in
northern America. Getting a work permit is also ten times easer.

~~~
GordonS
I imagine getting a degree in Indonesia itself would be much cheaper, and
having that degree would then make moving to another country much more viable.

------
ckluczynski
Try to connect with recruiters from Europe via LinkedIn. If you are good
enough frontend developer or designer, some large companies will be willing to
help you get work permit and assist you with relocation. Just ask. The fact
that you don't have a degree, especially as a frontend developer, is not a
problem in most of job offers for frontend developers. Western Europe and
Eastern Europe offer similar pays for developers, so it's not like you have to
go to England or Germany. Try Estonia, Poland, Czech Republic, or Romania.

------
sagebird
Consider including an email or other contact info here or in profile, some may
want to help you but not publicly.

------
fgheorghe
Try and find or do remote work.

------
gaspoweredcat
i cant say i can recommend the UK! also you may find Japan a little difficult
for now, it can be particularly difficult to get a visa there although it is
supposedly being relaxed soon

------
anoncoward111
Would highly suggest that you marry a foreigner somehow, work as a dishwasher
or cookor busboy in an expensive restaurant. save a ton of money.

Good luck!

------
herdianf
Why not try to move to another city? Bali maybe?

------
its_all_right
I m going to sounds more philosophical but, please hear me out. Recently I
heard the quote somewhere " the only zen you get at the top of a mountain is
the one you bring along". Similarly if you are not happy with your OWN country
then you will never be happy anywhere in the world. Everything is getting
worst. You are better off where you are and work hard to make a content life
there. I have spent 10 years in a first world country and came by to my third
world country 10 years back and I am happy.

~~~
IshKebab
"If you can't be happy in Somalia you won't be happy in France."

Right.

