What is the best country for Aspies to live in?

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What is the best country for Aspies to live in? Must it be a welfare state where the government provides all resources for the Aspie to survive meaningfully?

My country (Singapore) is not so condusive for Aspies. It is too stressful, there are few schools catering to our special needs (even if they do they are always overcrowded), mainstream schools are too overbearing with the emphasis on 'all-round development' (activities inside and outside the curriculum like compulsory community service and school-based activities like Band, Choir and the sports), making me MAD!) and most important of all, it provides no social security funds to Aspies or any other people with disabilities directly. It is idiosyncratic to write this, as job security is the only way to get money in Singapore BUT Aspies are known for being underemployed or unemployed, if I am not mistaken. And as an Asian, I fear double discrimination overseas for being a member of the minorities as well as being 'disabled'.

I wonder what will be the country for Aspies to best live in, where we can live for who we truly and ably are, and not worry about surviving life day-to-day. I know that's hard, as countries around the world are only open to entreprenial talents around the world. I will try my best, I will see how much I can study so that I will be skilled enough to move to a country with a points-based immigration system (particularly for the fields in geography, urban studies, political science or sociology).

And by the way, I think I'd worried too much as a high school senior/Year 12/whatsoever equivalent level student.

I suspect that in places like Australia, New Zealand and Canada, you'd be no more discriminated against than you are in Asia. In fact, it seems you could easily get residency here - especially through getting a student visa first.

Really, there's no particular country which would be the best for Aspies. It's impossible to generalise, since we're all so different to each other! Likewise, no-one can say we're all better off in some large city, or out in the country - that varies from one individual to another. I have heard that Asian cultures are extremely hard on those with disabilities though, and an expectation of being an "all-rounder" does NO favours to Aspies, due to most of us having an uneven profile of abilities (you can generalise in this particular aspect!).

Last edited by BPalmer on 02 Mar 2009, 9:40 am, edited 1 time in total.

The closer environment (especially job/professional) is in my opinion more important.

Exactly. The industry you're in, your workplace or your home environment, for instance.

Especially somewhere like the US, where I don't stand a chance of gaining residency. (I'd sink like a stone anyway.) That's a real bugbear when you're planning on marrying someone overseas - even in a country with many cultural similarities to your own - and need to get both of you living within the same national border.

I wasn't aware of any country where a government actually "provided resources" specifically for adult Aspies?



Your description of school sounds identical to the UK. However, we do have disability allowances, but these are low and aimed more for physical disabilities. The attitude of most here seems to be that social anxieties are not serious enough to exclude you from the life of ceaseless toil that everybody else is sentenced to!



A country where people are assessed by what they can do and who they really are, not by their image, and how well they sell themselves socially? A genuine meritocracy. A place where people find difference intriguing, not disturbing? That country doesn't exist....yet. I think we're going to have to make it ourselves!

Israel was founded under a similar concept: after 2,000 years of persecution, with the most serious being the Holocaust, the world realized that Jews needed a homeland. Even with the constant wars, the country grew from wilderness with Jerusalem in the middle, to a modern, prosperous state, with all the services and conveniences.

If we ever establish our homeland, or even reestablish Aspergia, the legendary nation that was supposedly destroyed, it'll be our Israel, our country where we won't have to feel like strangers in a foreign land (or on a wrong planet). However, we have to be careful who our neighbors are, otherwise we'll end fighting with PaleNTine for decades.

I have often wondered this: Which is better, the US, Canada, Australia or the UK to live in?

See, in the US, it's different state by state. There are more resources in Oregon than in North Carolina, for instance. I think I have it pretty good here in Oregon.

I guess no one can answer this question unless they've been to or compared all the countries. I know I visited a UK social services website one time, and it looked alright, as far as disability allowances and what's available.

Based on healthcare, the US is not even an option for me... ever... I cannot justify having to spend money on seeing a doctor. I would rather have longer wait times and have the costs covered. My diagnosis was covered by OHIP, my province's health coverage for all its citizens, and every province has a very similar plan. The only things that cost money are doctor's notes, and medication, everything else is pretty much covered. And medication is something you can get a plan for from an insurance provider provided you qualify, or your company's group coverage.

Most of the problems with having to pay out of pocket for things in the states doesn't happen here. My parents are yet to pay a dime for my 13 year old brother's blood transfusions he gets every third week, as OHIP covers that completely, and isn't a blood transfusion pricey in the states?

Aspergia

whitetiger might be right; the missus is from Oregon, and she never stops talking about how OR is better than NC...

I'd think anywhere in Europe, particularly Scadanavia, would have the best care. But I don't know...I've had to wing it all my life...

The Ocean.

I hope you mean in international waters.

Aye.

We could go all "Sealand" and put down a platform and make it a country.

Basically, you have to choose a non-habited land (after all, the big problem of Israel is not with their "neigbours"; it is with the previous habitants)