Restrictive immigration quotas and excessively long waitlists
Some countries have only a small quota for specific visas or specific sending countries. This is the case in the US for the H-1B visa and Green Card (permanent residence permit), especially for expats with a strong demographic presence in the country. Hence, these quotas affect Indian, Chinese, Mexican and Filipino expats more than others. Immigration law from 1990 allows only 7% of the yearly quota of 140,000 employment-based Green Cards to go to applicants from a single country.
The aforementioned sending countries have applicant backlogs in the hundreds of thousands or even millions. If only 9,800 are able to leave that list every year, the others remain waiting for well over a decade. The immigration platform Boundless reports that 1.1 million Indian expats are stuck in the backlog, which means that many have an absurd 134-year estimated waiting time to get their Green Card – a life sentence!
This is especially true for those in the EB-2 category (skilled expats with a postgraduate degree) and the EB-3 category (skilled expats with an undergraduate degree). Many Indian expats come to the US in the first place as skilled workers, especially in the STEM field, so it makes sense that most of them end up applying for permanent residency under these two categories.
One solution to this problem is to try to get a Green Card via less popular categories. Expats with enough financial means can opt for the EB-5 (Investor) pathway, provided they can invest at least US$800,000 in an American company and create 10 jobs. The EB-1 Green Card is for expats with extraordinary ability/achievements in fields like sports, academia, the arts and business. It also has a waiting list, but it is not as long as that for EB-2 and EB-2 Green Cards. Most applicants need to wait 8-16 months to get theirs, but Indians, who have also applied a lot for this permit, generally have to wait multiple years.
Expats with an American partner (or another foreign partner who can easily get a Green Card because their home country has fewer applicants) can also marry for the sake of securing their residency status. Be careful, though, do not enter a sham marriage just for immigration purposes – if you are not a real couple, it will be easily detected by immigration officials! If an expat has a child who is at least 21 years old and is an American citizen, they can also petition for a Green Card as their parent.
No recognition of unmarried or same-sex couples, or no work rights for dependent partners and children
In some countries, especially socially conservative ones or those trying to limit the immigration of large families, immigration law can make things difficult for the spouses and children of expats.
Conservative countries often recognize only the married opposite-sex partners of expats as dependents. LGBTQ+ expats and those in long-term civil partnerships/unregistered live-in relationships might struggle to bring their families to the new country they've started working in. In most of Europe, North America and South America, expats' same-sex spouses are considered equal to opposite-sex spouses. However, this is not the case in most of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, including in major destinations like India, China, Singapore, Kenya and the Gulf countries.
If it's not recognized, the most practical thing for the same-sex spouse to do is to apply for their own separate work visa – even if it can be a hassle to find a job in the first place. In 2023, the UAE decriminalized cohabitation, so same-sex couples should be able to live together on their separate visas, even if they have to be careful in public because same-sex relationships are still technically criminalized. South Africa and Taiwan are considered safe havens for LGBTQ+ expats on their respective continents because they are the only two countries in Africa and Asia that recognize same-sex marriages as equal to opposite-sex marriages.
How about long-term, unmarried opposite-sex couples? In most countries, they cannot be considered as legal dependents of expats. This includes France, Germany, and the United States. The simplest thing to do is to get legally married in your home country before the move. Even if you are not too keen on the institution of marriage, it will help you avoid a lot of hassle (having to maintain a long-distance relationship, your partner having to apply for a separate work visa, etc.).
Some countries have other restrictions concerning spouses/partners. Denmark, for instance, doesn't allow foreign couples under the age of 24 to apply for family reunification. The Danish state says that this rule is in place to prevent fake or forced marriage as well as to ensure the ease of cultural integration. The immigration authorities can suspend this rule if the couple already has a minor child, the dependent spouse/partner is a skilled worker in a high-demand field (listed on the “Positive List for People with a Higher Education), or if one of the two has a chronic illness which requires family care. In other situations, the couple will have no other choice than to maintain a long-distance relationship until they are both 24.
Even when expats' dependent spouses/partners are recognized and allowed to work, there might be limits on the type of work they can do. For instance, in Japan, they can work only part-time, and in both France and Ireland, they cannot be self-employed.
The age limit for expats' children to be eligible for a dependent visa is also quite strict in some countries. In most countries, the maximum cutoff age is 21 or 25 – which gives enough time for the child to graduate from university and become financially independent – but in the UK, it is only 18. Once the child of an expat in the UK turns 18, they are no longer able to remain in the country under their parent's visa. Unless they have been naturalized, they need to apply for their own visa. If they plan on attending university in the UK itself, it will be a student visa.
Complicated or quasi-impossible naturalization process
In some countries, it is easy to get a short-term or mid-term work visa but extremely difficult to become naturalized – even after working there for years. These are usually countries that need foreign labor but, for cultural or political reasons, don't want to change the demographic makeup of their citizens. That is the case with all of the Gulf countries, Switzerland, Austria, China, South Korea, Japan, India and Nigeria.
The Gulf states are strongly dependent on expat labor in the private sector, but their cultural identity and the protection of public sector jobs for local citizens have shaped their immigration law in a way that makes naturalization quasi-impossible. For instance, in Saudi Arabia, for a long time, the only real way to become a citizen was to marry a locally-born and ethnically Arab citizen, and even then, non-Muslim expats might still not get naturalized. They often need to convert to Islam before being granted citizenship. Since 2021, Saudi Arabia has allowed the naturalization of a select few non-Muslim expats who are not married to Saudis if they have exceptional achievements in fields such as medicine, sports, business, technology, academia and the arts.
It's the same situation in the UAE: it's generally only a few expats with exceptional ability who are able to become Emirati citizens. This includes inventors who have a patent to their name, which has been approved by the UAE Ministry of the Economy, scientists who've won at least one prestigious international award or grant, specialist doctors with over a decade of experience, and very wealthy investors. It's difficult for expats who make less than 30,000 AED (around US$8,000) per month to pass the financial requirement for naturalization. It's generally assumed that expats are in the UAE to make savings in its income-tax-free environment for a few years before returning to their home countries.
In East Asia, it is not religious conservatism but rather a historically ethnically homogenous population that makes the naturalization of expats difficult. In China, while it is technically legal for expats to become naturalized, in practice, very few expats' applications for citizenship are approved. Among 1.5 billion Chinese citizens, only around 17,000 are foreign-born, naturalized expats. The country does not offer birthright citizenship, so even the child of two expats who is born in China does not become a Chinese citizen. Expats' chances at naturalization are slightly higher if they have Chinese relatives (parent, grandparent, spouse, etc.) or exceptional achievements. Unfortunately, China doesn't recognize dual citizenship, so the few naturalized expats have to renounce their home country's citizenship.
Japan's protectionist citizenship law also doesn't recognize dual citizenship, and the application criteria are high. Not only do expats need to be at least 20 and have resided in Japan for at least 5 years, but they also need to provide details about their relatives, their financial status (including any savings accounts and real estate securities), their neighborhood (even provide maps of it), among other things. It also remains difficult for expats in Japan to take up jobs qualified as “unskilled” (in sectors like agriculture and tourism), even if only temporarily. The skilled job with the lowest entry threshold they can take up is usually teaching, especially the teaching of English and other foreign languages to Japanese children.
In Europe, Switzerland and Austria are difficult countries to get naturalized in. In both countries, expats must have been residents for at least 10 years to apply for citizenship – around the world, the norm is 5 years. Switzerland also requires a clean criminal record and fluency in at least one of its four languages (German, French, Italian or Romansch).
