Working In Europe Is Hard For Non-EU Residents

More and more Americans are becoming enchanted with Europe, to the point of harboring dreams of working in Europe. Who doesn't want to be able to stop by the Louvre on the way from work, or be able take a family day trip to visit a real castle? Everyone wants these things. Unfortunately, like many desirable things, they are difficult to come by--though not impossible.

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After World War II and well into the 1990's, Europe used to be viewed as a slightly dingy, dangerous, vaguely Bohemian place by most Americans. Conversely, Europeans viewed Americans as naive, hard workers who have had it easy too easy in life. After World War II, Europeans were only too glad to take advantage of Americans' hard-working Protestant natures. They were only too glad to invite Americans to employment in Europe, working for banks and other struggling institutions. Americans working in Europe was a relatively common phenomenon.

Since the 1990's, and especially after the formation of the European Union, it has been a different story. Suddenly, Americans were the ones who looked enviously to Europe, with its 35-hour work week and its luxurious socialism. Suddenly, Europe was the one who jealously guarded its thriving socialist economy from the incursions of immigrants--including Americans. The United States has a Statue of Liberty welcoming immigrants to its shores. Europe has no such statue; if it did, the statue would be saying, "You can take a vacation and spend money here, but you had better go back at the end of the day.

Still, there are wonderful and lucrative job opportunities in Europe, although they can be a hassle. The way for non-EU citizens to get employment in Europe is as follows. First, a company has to agree to hire the potential employee. Legally, this must happen while the employee is overseas. From a legal standpoint, you can't look for jobs in Europe while you're on vacation, although, of course, this law is hard to enforce.

Second, your employer has to apply for a work permit on your behalf. This is where the situation gets tricky for you. To get the permit for you, your potential employer will almost certainly have to prove that you have "unique skills" to that necessitate the employer to hire you over an EU citizen. The employer has to prove that he or she has made serious attempts to have hired an EU citizen for the position that you seek, before the employer turned to you. The upshot: if you apply for Europe IT jobs, which require specific, marketable skills, you're likely to get your permit. If you apply for unskilled jobs, or ones involving a skill that is not in very high demand (e.g. literature professor), you are likely to be turned down. It's easier for computer science graduates to start careers in Europe than it is for history graduates.

Once you manage to get your permit, you're going to start having to pay fee upon fee. There's a fee to get the permit processed by bureaucrats in your home country. When you get to the European country of your choice, you'll probably be required to check in with the police, and pay additional fees to bureaucrats in this country as well. Only then can you start working in Europe--which, for any serious Europhile, is worth all that hassle.