>>>>Dumb question: I only speak English. Don't they/you speak Dutch there?
>>>
>>>Business language is usually English. Since almost all Dutch people speak English this is the common factor here, because we also have lots of US citizens living in Aruba. I know plenty of people which don't understand any Dutch and they don't have any trouble with that. But you are right, official language in Aruba is Dutch, but that concerns mostly legal forms. A lot of the legal transactions are bi-lingual.
>>
>>It sounds like a dream job and a GREAT place to be :o)
>>
>>The only thing that concerned me is when I just looked at the income tax rate. Not sure all of the taxes for non-citizens, but it looks like income tax alone is around 35-45% (depending on the salary rate in comparison to the U.S. and I have no idea how the cost of living there is in comparison to the U.S. -- how far does the salary go and what is the typical monthly expense for an apartment, electricity and water, and food and transportation and is healthcare separate or included in the tax rate?):
>>http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Caribbean/Aruba/Taxes-and-Costs
>>
>>Also states: Any foreigner who wants to exercise a profession/occupation must have a work permit to do so. The work permit will normally be granted only if there are no qualified persons locally available.
>>
>>http://www.arubachamber.com/relocation.htm
>>
>>Looks like a pretty safe place to be though:
>>http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1153.html
>>
>>I am surprised that developers without family responsibilities here in the states or other countries (which would make a move inconvenient) are not jumping to go there...
>
>I think one of the main problems of relocation is how to compare quality of life and income of one place to another. I think in the US you have huge differences in cost of living depending on location. Aruba is certainly high cost of living compared with most places, because everything is imported and the transport costs are depending on ever rising energy costs.
>
>Government taxes are comparable to European standards, but you also have benefits like pension plan, health insurance, tax deductable expenses etc.
>
>Certainly you can save on vacation costs :), heating costs and gasoline. In the bottom line it really depends what someone is looking for and what kind of lifestyle someone prefers. I know I could earn much more money in Germany, but I still like to live in Aruba, money is not everything.

You've got the beaches, that's for sure.

In a former job I did a lot of hiring and we hired a lot of foreigners, mainly English. We had a good immigration lawyer and she whisked them right in. There were also some nubile young ladies who had caught the attention of the owner, an amorous old goat, on ski trips to Switzerland and the like, and the lawyer got them in, too. She was asked if they had job prospects in the U.S. and she said they sure do. Charlie paid them American salaries at the high end, close to double what they were making back home. Our CFO tried to tell him it wasn't necessary. "But she speaks three languages!" Charlie said. "They all speak three languages," she said.

It was an interesting place to work. We joked that the company motto should be "Where anything can happen to anyone at any time." Charlie felt that if you were on the payroll you had no outside life worth mentioning and were at his disposal 24/7. More than once I was summoned to some hot spot to deal with a crisis. One Saturday night he called to tell me I should be in London at 8:00 sharp Monday morning and expect to be there for three months. The clients were barely rolling out of bed at 8 a.m. but that was the only starting time he knew.

He had two residences in Chicago, both worth millions. One was the "apartment" on Lake Shore Drive, a place where Chicago's old money have lived for about a hundred years. The other was the "farm" in Lake Forest, which had been owned by a member of the Marshall Field family. While living there he took an interest in alpacas -- nasty beasts, major biters -- and before you knew he had 70 of them. Including the two allegedly gay ones, who we won't talk about. His chauffeur, Jose, wound up with responsibility for the alpacas as well as driving Charlie around. We joked that we were the only software company in the world with a shepherd on the payroll.