[Ruble Noon]

To Ireland.

http://www.ferfal.blogspot.com/

He tried to come to the U.S. but it seems that our Legal immigration policies are a PITA while we let anyone walk across our border illegally.

[wjv]

Quite a while ago. . .

[Dexters]

Originally Posted by Ruble Noon

To Ireland.

http://www.ferfal.blogspot.com/

He tried to come to the U.S. but it seems that our Legal immigration policies are a PITA while we let anyone walk across our border illegally.

He has been there so long, that he speaks with an Irish accent.


He has been there so long, that he named his new babies, Patrick and Patrica.

He has been there so long, people call him Paddy.

He has been there so long, ...

[Warp]

He's the man with a plan.

[medicguy94]

I wish him well. By writing his book he did us all a favor.

[9mm +p+]

Ireland? Yeah they're in great shape and an island to boot, lot's of wisdom there...

[lawman800]

Ireland changed their laws so that illegals who have their children in Ireland do not get Irish citizenship. Just sayin...

[kirgi08]

[TangoFoxtrot]

Originally Posted by Ruble Noon

To Ireland.

http://www.ferfal.blogspot.com/

He tried to come to the U.S. but it seems that our Legal immigration policies are a PITA while we let anyone walk across our border illegally.

Tell him to just walk across the Mexican border and fake an injury he'll be welcomed and get free medical insurance. That is a lot quicker than doing it the responsible way.

[DoctaGlockta]

I was very surprised that he ended up in Northern Ireland of all places but I guess he did his research.

All the best to him and his family.

Thanks for the reminder to check out his site I haven't been there for a while.

[pugman]

Originally Posted by 9mm +p+

Ireland? Yeah they're in great shape and an island to boot, lot's of wisdom there...

I work extensively with an office in Letterkenny and depending on your outlook Ireland isn't necessary a bad choice.

As you said, who wants to move to Ireland? From a S&P standpoint...its an island; if there was a pandemic or world war or the ever popular Zombie acpocolyspe its easier to control rather than say the thousands of miles of borders the U.S has. Imagine whatever starts a war...who wants to invade Ireland and if so for what other than Guinness or whiskey.

Second, given the world view he obviously looked at where is it better given his immigration issues with the U.S.? You can write off South America and Africa. Asia? Talk about a virus's dream. I may have looked at New Zealand (and maybe he did) which of course is still another island.

Third, Ireland's economic bomb has already exploded as early as 2007 while when you look at the U.S whether its our exploding debt, the increasing student loan crisis, baby boomers who will crush Medicare/aid and social security ours is yet to come. With Ireland, at least you know what you are getting yourself into. They are a textbook case of a boom to bust town except on a country wide scale.

Would I take Ireland over the U.S - no. But there are a lot of worse choices.

Full Disclosure: I married an Irish Lass

[kirgi08]

So did I.'08.

[Lowdown3]

Glad to hear he got his family out of there. I'm guessing he's already in the U.S. But Ireland at least isn't Argentina and I'm sure he's a lot safer there. He's got kids now IIRC so this was a smart move. When we are young and single it's one thing, when we have family, it changes our priorities.

Congrats on the move Ferfal.

[prism]

he talks about it in a couple of posts, found when searching for "Ireland".

http://ferfal.blogspot.com/search?q=ireland

[TangoFoxtrot]

There is a hell of a lot worse places to move to.

[FerFAL]

Originally Posted by 9mm +p+

Ireland? Yeah they're in great shape and an island to boot, lot's of wisdom there...

Your probably thinking Repulic of ireland, as the country with recent serious economic problems. i'm in Northern Ireland which is part of UK, we use pounds here, given that the Euro is about to go to hell, a country that uses pounds instead iof Euros is a pretty good position to be in Europe within its context.
FerFAL

[smokin762]

Originally Posted by FerFAL

Your probably thinking Repulic of ireland, as the country with recent serious economic problems. i'm in Northern Ireland which is part of UK, we use pounds here, given that the Euro is about to go to hell, a country that uses pounds instead iof Euros is a pretty good position to be in Europe within its context.
FerFAL

What are the Gun Laws like there in Ireland? I am guessing you can't have your FAL or other rifles.

[FerFAL]

Thanks guys.
For those of you wondering, why Northern Ireland?
I ended up here after a lot of objective research. Having been here for several months now, we just couldn’t be happier with the decision made.
First, not all situations are equal. Heck, if you are a US resident you're most likely better off in USA than anywhere else, even if some states are better than others. That´s you. For me, not having US citizenship and given the insane immigration laws where self-employed people arent welcomed but illegal immigrants are, I had to put my plans of moving to US on hold.
At the same time the situation in Argentina was beyond tolerable. We were looking at a second term of presidential madness with her majesty Cristina K in power, inflation was rampant, crime was getting even worse than before if you can believe that. After winning the elections they started tightening the control over the US dollar exchange. That’s a BAD sign. When a country starts telling you what currency you can or cannot own it’s an awful sign, huge ballon going up there. Importations were getting heavily regulated or downright banned as well. Another red flag. To make matters worse , a friend from my shooting club had been murdered doing a home invasion. I’ve read just too many stories of people wanting to leave and getting hurt or killed just before pulling it off. I didn’t want to be next, just couldn’t risk my family any more, so if USA wasn’t an option at the time, we had to go for plan B.
I had my family in Spain which isn’t a bad place, but it was my last resort, plan C at the time. Spain is still going through VERY tough times, they are too liberal for my taste, especially Cataluña where my family is, and they have made Catalan mandatory for kids in school. To make it even worse, Christianity is pretty much shun upon and kids in school are forced to experience porno style sex ed, sex “toys” for 10 year olds included. No, thanks. All crap I didn’t want my kids to suffer.
After studying our possibilities we came to the following conclusions.
1) We didn’t want to live in a 3rd world country any more. I get it that today its kind of cool and fashionable to retreat to crappy cheap countries where a minimum wage income gets you a nice standard of living, lots of beer and señoritas. I’ve been in 3rd world countries for the last 30 years and know a thing or two about living in them. In spite of the advice given by some rich entrepreneur may say, living in a banana republic isn’t that glamorous, and it’s a pretty bad idea to take our family to one. For us, we wanted a 1st world country. Safe and civilized.
2) We wanted either a Spanish speaking country or English speaking country. Relocating is hard enough, doing so to a country where you cant speak the language fluently is even worse.
3) We wanted to move fast, so it had to be somewhere within the Mercosur (Latin America) or Europe, given that our passports and dual citizenship status gives us those option.

Why Northern Ireland of all places?
The above criteria already reduced our options some. Yes, we had looked into Canada , NZ and Australia, and all of them are easier to immigrate to legally than USA by the way, but Canada can be pretty expensive and the cold doesn’t help much. Vancouver was an option we studied but its one of the most expensive places in Canada and still the residency would have taken some time to get, same for Australia. Europe we could just buy a ticket and go (by the way, Dual Citizenship? Priceless.)
Spain was excluded for the above mentioned reasons, and that basically left the English speaking countries of Europe UK, and Republic of Ireland. ROI had gone through a serious economic crisis recently, so we kept that in mind. They also had gaelic English in school, something we didn’t like much given the Catalan language problem in Barcelona. What about Uk? Nope, I didn’t like the idea much, big nanny state and all, but then I looked more into it. My brother had lived in Scotland for some time so I knew it wasn’t that bad, so I looked there, as well as England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland has a few things going on that I liked.
Strategically speaking:
It is located in an island which of course sucks, but still the population is still relatively low, its mostly covered with farm land(plenty of Irish beef), has a LOT of water. (lake Neagh is the largest lake in all UK by a long shot) the population is extremely homogenous, like 99% white Christian, so there’s no racial tensions. The climate is pretty even all year round, cold but rarely bellow 0ºC in the dead of winter. Even if an island, you’re pretty close to the continent and could even drive to France taking a ferry, so its not as if you’re stuck in the middle of the Pacific waiting for a tropical storm to erase you from the face of the Earth.
Northern Ireland has a dark history regarding “The Troubles”. This was one of the cons given the Catholic-Protestant tension but we found it to be part of the past for the most. A lot of people don’t know that even during the worst of the troubles NI was still one of the safest places in all Europe, and it certainly is now compared to all other European countries. People leave they glass doors opened most of the time, forget often to close them at night, and I’ve hardly seen a burglar bar in a window. Bad things can happen like anywhere else, mostly drugs and some sectarian stuff, but for someone that comes from South America I just have to stop myself from laughing out loud when hearing some of the local “crime” news… like people stealing bikes left on the lawn.. or flowerpots… “Say, do you get home invasions often, maybe four or five attackers, well armed, communicating with radio, body armor…?... no?” I asked that question only once, the facial expression I got in return told me everything I had to know about crime here.
Because of the troubles a lot of people think NI is hell, which is fine by me. There’s obviously very little immigrants which is something I like, and surprisingly so because of that locals are pretty open minded about the few immigrants that they get, such as ourselves. Go to England or even Scotland and the immigrant communities in some of the poorest parts of town are obvious. You have some run down parts of, which you would be very hard pressed to find in NI.
Cost of living is cheaper than in Scotland, England and Wales.
Everything looks tidy, clean and well kept, the infrastructure works. In my small town the main street is full of flowers, not a piece of litter in sight, and you never have to wait in line for anything given that there’s not that much people around. The tidiness and clean streets surpass anything I’ve ever seen. Even in small town US its hard to find a place this clean and well kept.
For us its been a blessing. My wife and I keep looking at each other and smiling knowingly, we’ve never been happier.

Originally Posted by Lowdown3

Glad to hear he got his family out of there. I'm guessing he's already in the U.S. But Ireland at least isn't Argentina and I'm sure he's a lot safer there. He's got kids now IIRC so this was a smart move. When we are young and single it's one thing, when we have family, it changes our priorities.

Congrats on the move Ferfal.

Thanks. Kids are an important part of the equation for me. Northern Ireland has one of the best education sistems in UK, some of the best schools world wide. As a bonus, he goes to a public school where they teach Christianity and actively participate with the community, the school choir sings Christmas carols in the local mall. No one freaks out about Christmas and religion in school. Here you’re either Catholic or Protestant. Coming here and telling people their kids cant celebrate Christmas in school is unthinkable, I just don’t see them tolerating it given how important religion is around here.
FerFAL

[FerFAL]

Originally Posted by smokin762

What are the Gun Laws like there in Ireland? I am guessing you can't have your FAL or other rifles.

Forgot to mention that. No, no FALs for me here, but Northern Ireland is pretty gun friendly in UK terms.
One of the things few people, even locals dont know, is that Northern Ireland is the only place in UK where you can legally own handguns. Even concealed carry is legally permited in a few cases. You can own, say a Glock for practical pistol shooting, which isnt allowed in the rest of UK.
You can also own shotguns and rilfes, but no mag fed semi auto centerfires such as AK, ARs, and FAL.
The Repulic of Ireland is as ad as the rest of UK, maybe even worse in terms of gun ownership which is something that I didnt like about it.
I went to the local shooting club a couple weeks ago, and guess what? a couple guys there already knew me! We ended up renting a Glock 40 and 9mm, I gave them a few pointers on how to shoot. Some guys where doing some cowboy action shooting and on another range a couple folks were doing IDPA.

FerFAL

[smokin762]

Originally Posted by FerFAL

Forgot to mention that. No, no FALs for me here, but Northern Ireland is pretty gun friendly in UK terms.
One of the things few people, even locals dont know, is that Northern Ireland is the only place in UK where you can legally own handguns. Even concealed carry is legally permited in a few cases. You can own, say a Glock for practical pistol shooting, which isnt allowed in the rest of UK.
You can also own shotguns and rilfes, but no mag fed semi auto centerfires such as AK, ARs, and FAL.
The Repulic of Ireland is as ad as the rest of UK, maybe even worse in terms of gun ownership which is something that I didnt like about it.
I went to the local shooting club a couple weeks ago, and guess what? a couple guys there already knew me! We ended up renting a Glock 40 and 9mm, I gave them a few pointers on how to shoot. Some guys where doing some cowboy action shooting and on another range a couple folks were doing IDPA.

FerFAL

It sounds like you and your family are way better off. Glad to hear you can somewhat enjoy your hobbies too.

Last year, while I was at Camp Perry competing in a rifle match, I was doing Pit Duty and I talked to a few guys that were here competing from Ireland. Nice guys.

[smokin762]

Double Post.

[Warp]

Excellent.

[Stevekozak]

Ferfal,
Do they not tax the hell out of you there? Are you living inside an actual town? I would have thought you would have located in a bit more rural area. Is it necessary to your work?

[emt1581]

It's quite telling what hell Argentina must have been in Northern Ireland is looked upon as a refuge and, in some ways, a paradise! Now I'm thinking of the Northern Ireland I'd learned about back in the late 90's early 2000's. Do bombings still go on and are British soldiers still on the streets there?

Off topic here but maybe something you can clarify having FIRST HAND knowledge of it... My understanding of what happened in the last few decades to century over there is that the British were there....then left... then they were asked to come back...not sure what the status is now. Second...seems like there's a split between those who consider themselves British, British/Irish, and Irish. Any insight into this mentality or the IRA or "Black and Tans" roles?

I to was thinking about what it'd be like to live without guns...but I read what you wrote. I'm wondering, even with gun ownership, are you still outlawed from using them to defend your HOME?

Glad everyone is safe and living happily

Thanks

-Emt1581

[lawman800]

What about the price of gas and other consumables there?