I'm a US citizen. I lived in the UK from 2019-late 2022.

Here's the takeaway.

• Without reservation, the UK is by all means better than any state in the United States when it comes to educational opperunties for your kids, personal safety for you and your family, and weathering the climate crisis. If you move from the U.S. to the U.K., you will not regret it, per se. You may regret not going to another country, however, like, as you mentioned, France.

If your only choices are the U.S. and the U.K., it is a no-brainer.

However.

If you have any other choice, think seriously about taking it. Now, nothing on this list is worse than the same thing in America, but that's a low bar.

1) Medical Care.

In the three years I lived there, the NHS went from one of the best healthcare systems in the world to one of the worst.

The first reason: a combination of over a decade of deliberate Conservative Party underfunding, with the intent of eventually replacing the NHS with a private system like the U.S., purely to profit off of sickness and injury.

The second reason: Wages have stagnated among junior doctors. A Junior Doctor makes on average around 41k GBP (51k USD). That hasn't changed for years -- but prices of rent and groceries have tripled since that wage was last examined. People in the U.K. who would choose to be a doctor as a career to provide for their families often either go fully private-only, or they go into other, more lucrative fields.

The third reason: Covid. As much as it is difficult to get healthcare workers to enter the fields, so many medical professionals left the field - either because they were burned out by the pandemic, or, in many, many cases, died of Covid. Like the U.S. the U.K. had a great number of "anti-vaxxers" and "covid hoaxers" that spread the virus. And the government's response to Covid was by far the worst in Europe. In fact, at one point, there was a program called "eat out to help out" where instead of paying restaraunt workers a stipend or stimulus to get them through the pandemic, people were told to eat at restaraunts... to GO OUT IN PUBLIC AND INTERACT WITH PEOPLE... in the middle of the pandemic. This was another reason there were so many cases in the U.K.

The fourth reason: The talent pool of doctors has declined, directly because of Brexit. When the U.K. was part of the EU, doctors could get medical degrees in their home countries for relatively cheaply, move to the U.K. to practice medicine at a higher wage than they could in their home countries. But now, Brexit makes that much more complex, and many doctors would prefer to live within the E.U. After all, when half the country made it clear that they hate foreigners, you might not be willing to put up with treating their sniffles.

Now, the Economy:

Britain's economy is in freefall, mostly related to Brexit, and it is going to get far worse over time. Even with Labour in charge now, the economic damage done to the country by the hard brexit is, was anything, undersold by the "Remain" campaign.

You will probably have to accept a lower quality of life than if you lived in the U.S. That may be worth it, considering what's going to happen in the next few years in the U.S., but it's a tradeoff, for sure.

LGBT+ issues:

If your daughter turns out to be gay, she will find much more acceptance in the UK than she will in the U.S.

If your daughter turns out to be a trans man or non-binary, he will find much less acceptance in the UK than in the US. There's reasons for that but the UK probably has the most transphobic policies of any English-speaking nation, including the systematic de facto denial of medical care for trans people. (And that's including Trump's executive order this week).

That said, I am a trans woman, and I myself am trying desperately to move back to the U.K.

This is because I already have an established support network there. I also want to resume my budding career in stand-up comedy, and London is the only place to do so. And third, I'm a city girl, and there is no city in the world like London.

Right now I'm in Mexico, maybe temporarily, maybe permanently. I'm taking a "wait and see" approach to my options. I have not found the language barrier to be insurmountable. Certainly it's a pain in the ass, but in three weeks I can have basic conversations and typically explain what I need to explain, even if my grammar and pronounciation are all over the place.

Plus, it's easier for a kid to learn a foreign language in their teens than as adults.

I would recommend, in fact, that if you can make it to France, that you go to France specifically for this reason.

There's another option that you can consider, and that is Amsterdam. Amsterdam is part of the DAFT treaty, and Americans who have indpendent means (proof of income) can live there. It is a short flight from Amsterdam to London.

All of this is to say: The U.K. wouldn't be my first choice for emigration from the U.S., in your position, but I WOULD say that it would be a better choice than staying in the U.S.

p.s. If your husband is a solicitor with a J.D., consider looking into the "Straight to Residence" programme of New Zealand.

Yes. But im on my phone right now. Ill need a real keyboard to respond - this is to remind me to respond