>Most of eastern North America gets over 40 inches /100 cm rain per year, more than most of Britain. But it isn't so relentlessly drizzly. Upstate New York can be dreary in that way, but with more bracing winters. If you are curious about the weather common to a place, you can put its name in www.weather.com and click the link that says "averages and records".

From what I saw, East coast in general is muggy - when you drive in your sandals and the AC cools down your toes, they immediately get moist when you step out. Or, if you have the trouble, like I do, to have it always cool your windshield, your windows may fog on the outside, even when you drive 100 kmh.

OTOH, having been one week in the early spring and one in July in Taos, NM, I can say that I like the weather there - dry, with crystal clean (though somewhat thin) air.

>Our immigration service is worse than ever after 9/11/2001. Getting through that without some bureaucratic nightmare is largely luck, I think. It helps that you don't have a muslim name or come from a muslim country, but you are not immune. I sold a car to a guy who was giving it to his English wife, a teacher. She told me of her four year battle to straighten out her work visa. I don't know the details. If Dragan weighs in, he can tell you some stories.

It's enough to have a weird name to be automatically earmarked for search on airports. The security guys pretty much like to single out anyone who stands out in any manner.

Just don't go for a H-1B visa. It's sort of easy to get (or was, when I was getting it), but it's limited in several ways, and the employers tend to expect you'd work for half the regular salary. And overtime is paid, unless you're a programmer :). So you may meet some company that will require you to do extra time on the house (the house being you).

As for the green card, I figure our cases simply can't compare, and my trouble isn't the INS itself, it's the overall situation :).

>More jobs in an area means higher wages, and higher rents and home prices. But if you are in a popular resort or retirement area, you may have high rents and low wages. Western Massachusetts has that problem.

There may be exceptions. I was pleasantly surprised with Virginia Beach - the rent wasn't that much more than I was already paying in Charlottesville, and then the house was a real bargain.

>When I am ready to buy a house, however, I will probably stay outside the city limits. I don't worry about my person, but I do worry about my home and my parked car. I am also concerned with the quality of local government.

For an European, the car safety recipe is simple: don't buy anything fancy, just a car that's about one category above what you had back home. Wherever you park, there will be dozens of cars (or, rather, car-like tanks) priced at least half more than what you have, many of them with 400W stereos, so you won't be a likely target for car thieves.