What they don't tell you when you move abroad

So you decide to move to another country, you fill in endless forms, lots of photos are taken and eventually if you are really lucky you move abroad.  If you are even luckier your work has people who do lots of that work for you.

Then you've been abroad for a while, worked out that you can't get credit as your financial history is not locally grown. You work through that, walk a lot until you can get " you're not from around here" expensive finance for a car.  You work through that.

Then the place you left wants to see your income in your new home,  so you share that as you believe it's always better to overpay than underpay...karma gets you refunds. Then the place you live in wants to see what money, if any, you have in the land you came from.  You have next to nothing there but karma rules apply so you fill in all of the forms.  Surprisingly large numbers of people offer the idea that you should hide details. You don't do that. That's not who you are.

Then the land that you came from says pay them money, so you do. Then the land that you live in says "oops, we mucked up, you owe us" so you pay that.  Then before you know it its tax season again so you repeat all of the above.  You believe in paying tax because when you think about it you think about funds for education and cancer care.  You think about people who need that money.  You also think about arseholes who avoid tax, in small and large amounts, but you can't change that so you move on.

Then you think "I like it here, I'd like to stay".  You're good people, you do community stuff because your life maths is to put in more than you take out of society.  Yes, let's stay here, maybe even buy a house.  That's when you remember that you are a temp here. Not a proper person ( apart from when it's about tax...then you're a fully fledged proper person).  So you speak to smart legal people about becoming a proper person here.  They shake your world by telling you that might or might not be possible; it will certainly cost money to find out and by the way, as a temp you'll have to leave in 18 months.  That's what Temp means.  Endless temping isn't allowed any more.

So you have the land that you came from saying "close your bank account, you don't live here"; you have the land you live in seeing you as transient. You are faced with the prospect of opening a bank account in a tax haven, which is ironic as you only have a few quid but you do need a way to pay each month for the kids you sponsor in Haiti and Africa. You must maintain that commitment. It's very important.

So you spend your wedding anniversary, on a rainy Sunday morning, applying for phase one of a seven phase process to stay in the country you live in. Your 8 year old son is at a laser tag party with his hard won friends and his strong Canadian accent.  He got a new shirt last week that says "proud to be Canadian" but he tells you he can't wear it yet as he's saving it for special, for Canada Day, July 1st.

That!