Why Moving Back May Be Hard After Living Abroad
I’m basically an immigrant in my home country of the US.
This is the result of living overseas for about 13 years. Here, I’ll highlight some general challenges that I’ve either faced or realized may be an issue that can affect those moving back to the US from wherever they may be.
If you are living abroad and planning to move back to the US or are planning to move abroad, you may find my realizations useful.
1. You may lack relevant professional experience
The work you do overseas may not have much relevance to a job you’re looking to do back home. Even for someone like me who works in marketing, some of the things I do is for the Japanese market, which would be quite different if an employer was looking to market to people in the US.
Even if you do have relevant experience, it may be likely that an employer will favor someone who is equally as qualified as you if their experience is in the US. Why? People want to protect themselves and make sure they’re doing their job correctly.
Not being able to judge your foreign work, skills, company, clients, etc., means more risk to the person in charge of hiring.
You may also have fewer professional connections since you’ve been away.
Knowing people and maintaining those relationships matters. The longer you’re away, the higher the chance that your professional relationships have weakened over time.
Your relevance will decrease with time and distance. This is why I believe you should build some your personal brand (reputation) online at some level so that you can be found from anywhere and people can’t connect with you based on interest.
2. The US government may doubt you
There’s a chance you’ll run into issues with moving back to the US if you’ve been overseas for a while. This is especially true if you end up marrying a foreigner and are sponsoring them for a spousal visa.
While applying for a spousal visa for my Japanese wife, I was asked to provide more proof that I actually intended to move back to the US. This is difficult because while the US has “permanent addresses” that could be a sign of intention to relocate back if it’s a U.S. address, there’s no official legal documentation for it.
I ended up having to gather various pieces of evidence that I still kept an American base, signaling an intention to one day move back. I talked about it in my video, but basically if you’ve been gone for a while, it might not exactly be free sailing back home.
3. Your credit might be good but too weak
Just because your credit score is good doesn’t mean you won’t run into problems, I realized.
I had no problems getting a mobile phone contract nor a new credit card, but I wasn’t able to get a good rate for a car lease. I wasn’t denied, but the amount was roughly double what was being advertised even with a decent downpayment.
The reason given to me was that while my credit was good, I didn’t have enough credit history.
I had never taken out a personal loan or car loan, never bought a house and didn’t have any tuition loans. I did have credit cards, but due to living overseas, they were rarely used.
Even though my credit score was said to be 114 points above the average for my age, that didn’t mean that I was being offered what others with that score were when it comes to bigger purchases.
4. You may notice “gaps” in your existing relationships due to time and distance
When you first move back and see friends, family and acquaintances, things are great because they’re happy you’re back and you can have a good time reminiscing about your past experiences together.
You’ll realize, however, that everyone has different lives, routines and rhythms that aren’t like how they were before. And the same goes for you since you’ve likely changed quite a bit while living abroad.
Activities and interests that tied you together before may have changed, and rebuilding your relationships requires some adjusting. There may be a bit of feeling like an outsider, because in a sense, you are. But if you’re both willing to work at it, you should be able to bring your relationship up to speed and build on them.
I hope this provides some insight into what challenges are common for American expats when moving back to the US. I’m sure this doesn’t cover them all and returning may be difficult, but having an international life isn’t meant to be simple.
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I share my experiences and tips for dealing with money if you're traveling or moving to Japan. My preferred banks in the U.S and Japan, how to use Apple Pay, and the credit cards that I use.