You don't just sign up to be a resident in another country. You have to be invited. I know its fun to say "Screw this! I'm moving to Canada", but it doesn't work like that.
Not to ruin my own chances, but New Zealand is apparently quite welcoming to a high-skilled professional.
I mean, yes, you then have to live in a boringly peaceful country on the other side of the world from anything exciting. But right now, that means you're on the other side of the world from anything "exciting".
> Except for things like volcanoes and earthquakes... Though grantedly that is a different kind of excitement.
Call me silly, but that really is different to me. There's always some chance a natural disaster will wreck things up for you, but as long as society works together to respond to natural disasters, I feel fairly comfortable coping with that. Likewise, actually, to the terrorism problem in Israel.
The kind of "excitement" I really don't want to live with is the breakdown of social trust: having to worry that my own neighbors or local institutions will turn on me.
> Except for things like volcanoes and earthquakes
As someone who lived and worked in Japan for 6 years, lived not too far away from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant (Koriyama city), and went through the M9 quake in 2011 I can confirm this 100%. Life got rather wobbly.
If you live in some location prone to natural disasters, inevitably you will become the news, or at least live in the news.
I looked very hard at moving to New Zealand. Auckland sounds AWESOME, but what really scared me is San Francisco-like property costs and a really, really high cost of living.
It died around the same time German women were molested by the dozens during New Year in Hamburg by newly arrived high-testosterone male refugees from war-torn Syria and parts of Africa (via Greece)
I mean, yes, you then have to live in a boringly peaceful country on the other side of the world from anything exciting. But right now, that means you're on the other side of the world from anything "exciting".