Got the travel bug? Consider contracting outside the United States

by Meredith Little | Sep 10, 2001 7:00:00 AM

Tags: Meredith Little

Takeaway: Your job as a consultant gives you more flexibility than the average employee. You've considered working outside the United States, but you've yet to take the plunge. We'll show you what you'll need to do before you pack your bags.

Did you miss out on the study abroad program when you were in college? Have you thought that it would be great to experience a foreign culture by actually living there?

For a consultant, packing your bags and leaving the States for a time is a less radical idea than for many other people—after all, you’re accustomed to change, and you don’t have to change the type of work you do. Chances are, you could leave as soon as you wrap up your current contract.

You can approach working abroad in two ways: Find the project first and let your employer initiate the work permit and visa process or apply for the permit first and then try to find the job.

The right approach depends on the country you want to work in and your tolerance for bureaucracy and uncertainty. But there’s no better way to experience another country than to work there, which enables you to develop associates and friends in a context you’d never access as a tourist.

In this article, I’ll discuss which countries are friendliest to foreign IT workers and where to look for information about work permits and visas for the country that piques your interest.

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First in a series
Next week’s installment will discuss which IT skills are most in demand overseas, how to find contracts from foreign clients, and—if the obstacles to working abroad seem like too much—alternative arrangements that enable you to work in a foreign country.

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Finding visa information for specific countries
The main obstacle you’ll encounter in trying to find work overseas will be in securing permission to work there. Basically, you’ll need one or more of the following:

• A work visa
• A work permit
• A short- or long-term residency visa

Because requirements differ from country to country, you’ll need to do a lot of research. In some countries, you can’t apply for a work visa until a company in that country offers you a position and obtains a work permit for you. This often becomes a Catch-22: Companies can’t afford to wait until you get the visa, so they won’t hire you if you don’t have it.

In other countries, you can apply for a work visa without sponsorship or a work permit, but the application process may take three to six months or longer. Fortunately, as a contractor, you may have the option of continuing to work stateside on short contracts while waiting for your visa application to be processed.

As you may know, many countries allow you to visit for a period of time either without a visa or with a tourist visa. Be aware that employment under a tourist visa is always illegal. Test this rule, and you could incur unpleasantries ranging from immediate deportation to an extended tour of a foreign prison.

Internet resources
Here are the best Internet resources I’ve found for locating visa information:

• Your first stop should be the brief summaries of work-visa requirements for many countries—including several non-European countries—at Relocation Journal.
• At Workpermit.com, you can find information about working in European countries, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Japan. It also has a special immigration guide for IT professionals and contractors. Although this site assumes you plan to immigrate, not merely work short-term, much of its information is still relevant. Workpermit.com can also pass on your interest to recruiting agencies; follow its IT Jobs link to submit your resume.
• Expat Access has information on the UK, The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Italy. The quality and depth of the information varies, but the site generally provides a FAQ on each country and goes beyond work permits to address residency requirements, taxes, and the more mundane aspects of moving. You can also find contacts for a country’s embassies abroad.

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Where to go
Language should be your first concern. Unless you’re fluent in a foreign language, destinations such as Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the United Kingdom will best suit most American contractors. However, you may be able to get by in The Netherlands and Belgium, where English is the tongue of most technical work.
For work in other countries, you’ll usually need to be familiar enough with the language to think in it.

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Contact the embassy
If you don’t find what you’re looking for at these sites, your next best bet is to check the country’s embassy Web site. It’s best to start with the one for the embassy located in the United States because it’s most likely to be in English. You can usually find it by typing "Country" embassy into your favorite search engine.

You should always contact the embassy to inquire whether obtaining a short-term business visa is a possibility. If you’re doing contract work, you may need only a 60- or 90-day visa, which, if offered, is much easier to get than a long-term work permit.

Look for special loopholes
Also be on the lookout for special exceptions that may get you into the country faster or more easily. For example, Ireland’s technology growth has spurred the Irish government to institute a fast-track system for applications from non-EU IT professionals and technicians.

You may find other such special conditions. U.S. citizens can take advantage of the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty. If the nature of your business is trade—such as in computer hardware or software—it’s fairly straightforward to set up a branch of your office in The Netherlands and obtain a residence permit.

Australia has a “Working Holiday” visa, allowing 18- to 30-year-olds to work for less than three months to support themselves while touring that country. While it isn’t available to Americans, Canadians and a handful of other nationalities can take advantage of it.

As you can see, investigating your opportunities for working abroad isn’t for the lazy. But don’t be discouraged by what you’ve read so far—if you have the right skills, many foreign companies will assist you in any way they can.

Meredith Little runs WriteWork, a documentation consulting business she started in 1998. Based in Colorado, the company provides procedural documentation, knowledge management expertise, and solutions such as user manuals and online help to IT companies nationwide.

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What would you add to Meredith’s advice?
If you’ve been employed outside your home country, what steps—bureaucratic and personal—did you have to take to make things work? Send us an e-mail or post a comment in the discussion below.

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