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This City Was Just Named the Best in the World for Remote Workers—and It Has Affordable Living, Fast Internet, and a New Digital Nomad Visa
That's thanks to the city's great work-life balance, fast and affordable internet, great healthcare, moderate rent, and low cost of utilities and transportation, according to a study by Holafly, a travel eSIM company. It's no wonder considering Taiwan was named the happiest country in East Asia this year.
American travelers can visit the country visa-free for up to 90 days, the State Department noted. And earlier this year, Taiwan launched a six month digital nomad visa, the latest in the country's efforts to boost tourism. At the time, Taiwan said it hopes about 10% of the people who come to work remotely will stay with the goal of welcoming about 10,000 digital nomads by 2028.
"Taipei has emerged as the most well-rounded city for remote workers," Holafly wrote in its study. "From affordable living to a world-class healthcare system, the capital of Taiwan strikes a powerful balance between productivity and lifestyle."
Beyond Taipei, Holafly lauded Bangkok as the second-best city in the world for U.S. remote workers thanks to its affordable cost of living and abundance of co-working spaces. "Known for its unique blend of traditional culture and modern amenities, Bangkok offers a dynamic and affordable environment for remote workers," the company wrote.
That was followed by Prague—which was singled out for "above-average mobile internet speeds, paired with cheap monthly internet costs"—with Amsterdam and Dubai rounding out the top five.
To determine the list, Holafly looked at visa requirements, internet speeds, internet costs, healthcare access, and other expenses like utilities and rent.
Remote work is on the rise. This year, Holafly said there were more than 40 million digital nomads across the world, including 18.1 million of them from the U.S. The company said that's a 147% increase compared to 2019. Countries have been getting on board as well with several major destinations launching digital nomads visas, like New Zealand, the Philippines, Spain, and more.
Closer to home, Los Angeles was named the best city in the U.S. for remote workers last year thanks to its fast Wi-Fi hotspots, its warm climate (and incredible beaches), diverse neighborhoods, and abundance of recreational activities, networking opportunities, and cultural amenities. That was followed by Dallas, Florida's Jacksonville, New York City, and San Antonio.
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Newsweek
2 hours ago
- Newsweek
Visa Interview Wait Times Are Skyrocketing
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Immigrants looking to head to the United States are facing increasingly lengthy wait times for an interview at a consulate in their home country ahead of stricter rules from the Trump administration. Appointment wait times for visitor and tourist visas jumped by 69 percent between January and August, per U.S. Department of State data, while student visas were up by more than 250 percent across the board. A spokesperson for the department told Newsweek on Wednesday that the Trump administration was protecting the nation and its citizens "by upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety." Cecilia Esterline, a senior immigration policy analyst at the Niskanen Center, told Newsweek that she believed the worst was yet to come. "In less than two weeks we have new rules being implemented that will now require interviews to be mandatory for many more people who are seeking to renew their visas that were previously able to access a waiver, including people who were first-time applicants, but who were eligible for an age-based waiver, like children or the elderly," Esterline said. The slowdown in wait times reflects the wider effort by the Trump administration to tighten immigration rules and increase the vetting of those seeking entry into the U.S. Immigration advocates, attorneys and employers have all raised concerns that delays to visa issuances will have negative effects on the U.S. economy. A façade of the U.S. Embassy with the American flag in the foreground in London on June 1, 2020. A façade of the U.S. Embassy with the American flag in the foreground in London on June 1, 2020. Getty Images Visa Interview Wait Times Rise Sharply The State Department issues regular updates for visa interview wait times across the following categories: B1/B2 visitor visas F, M, and J student and exchange visas H, L, O, P, Q petition-based visas C, D, C1/D visas for airplane crew and transit operators While wait times for different interview categories vary widely across U.S. consulates and embassies around the world, the latest State Department data showed a general uptick in processing times. In Accra, Ghana, student visa applicants were waiting two and a half months for an interview in January. In August, that reached 11 months. In Vancouver, Canada, wait times were a few days. Now, they are about two months after a 13-month peak in July. For those requiring a tourist or visitor visa in Paris, France, a five-month wait has now doubled to 10 months. By contrast, visitor visa applicants in New Delhi, India, now have a much shorter wait time, at 4.5 months compared to the 14.5 months reported in January. Esterline told Newsweek that the State Department's tougher stance on visa adjudications was not unexpected, but that it may lead to greater consequences for the U.S. in the coming months, particularly with next year's FIFA World Cup. "So where the World Cup should be a big economic boost for this country, if they can't get the visas in time to come and can't renew them in time or can't get them for first-time visitors in time, I think that we will actually be set to lose out on a lot of economic gain that could be ours," Esterline said. What Is Changing With Interview Waivers? In July, the State Department announced that it was updating the categories eligible for interview waivers, which allows applicants to obtain or renew a visa without interviewing at a consulate. The waiver program was expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic as officials struggled to keep up with demand as travel resumed. The new directive, applying to "all nonimmigrant visa applicants," including those under age 14 and over 79, is set to go into effect on September 2. There will be some exceptions to the new rules: Applicants classifiable under the visa symbols A-1, A-2, C-3 (except attendants, servants, or personal employees of accredited officials), G-1, G-2, G-3, G-4, NATO-1 through NATO-6, or TECRO E-1 Applicants for diplomatic- or official-type visas Applicants renewing a full validity B-1, B-2, B1/B2 visa or a Border Crossing Card/Foil (for Mexican nationals) within 12 months of the prior visa's expiration, and who were at least 18 years old at the time of the prior visa's issuance Esterline said this last point would likely lead to different processes for parents—who can renew visas without an interview—and their children. 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Fast Company
3 hours ago
- Fast Company
Employees perform better when life outside work is fulfilling. Here's why
Many employers are demanding more from workers these days, pushing them to log as many hours as possible. Google, for example, told all its employees that they should expect to spend 60 or more hours in the office every week. Some tech companies are demanding 12-hour days, six days a week, from their new hires. More job applicants in healthcare, engineering, and consulting have been told to expect longer hours than previously demanded due to a weak job market. On the other hand, companies such as Cisco, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Intuit have earned a reputation for supporting a strong work-life balance, according to Glassdoor employee ratings. To promote work-life balance, they offer flexible work options, give workers tips on setting boundaries, and provide benefits to promote mental and physical well-being, including mindfulness and meditation training, and personal coaching outside of work. As a psychologist who studies workplace performance and well-being, I've seen abundant evidence that overworking employees can actually make them less productive. Instead, research shows that when employees have the time and space to lead a fulfilling life outside work—such as being free to spend time with their families or pursue creative hobbies—it improves their performance on the job. Falling prey to the 'focusing illusion' For example, a team of researchers reviewed 70 studies looking at how managers support workers' family lives. They found that when supervisors show consideration for workers' personal roles as a family member, including providing help to workers and modeling work-family balance, those employees are more loyal and helpful on the job and are also less likely to think about quitting. Another study found that workers who could take on creative projects outside of work became more creative at work, regardless of their own personalities. This was true even for workers who didn't consider themselves to be very creative to start with, which suggests it was the workplace culture that really made a difference. When employers become obsessed with their workers' productivity, they can get hung up on tracking immediate goals such as the number of emails sent or sales calls made. But they tend to neglect other vital aspects of employees' lives that, perhaps somewhat ironically, sustain long-term productivity. Daniel Kahneman, the late psychologist whose research team won a Nobel Prize in economics, called this common misconception the 'focusing illusion.' In this case, many employers underestimate the hidden costs of making people work more hours than they can muster while maintaining some semblance of work-life balance. Among them are mental health problems, burnout, and high turnover rates. In other words, overly demanding policies can ultimately hinder the performance employers want to see. Taking it from Simone Biles Many top performers recognize the value of work while also valuing the time spent away from it. 'At the end of the day, we're human too,' said Simone Biles, who is widely considered the best gymnast on record. 'We have to protect our mind and body, rather than just go out there and do what the world wants us to do.' Elite athletes like Biles require time away from the spotlight to recuperate and hone their skills. Others who are at the top of their professions turn to hobbies to recharge their batteries. Albert Einstein's passion for playing the violin and piano was not merely a diversion from physics—it was instrumental to the famous and widely beloved scientist's groundbreaking scientific insights. Einstein's second wife, Elsa Einstein, observed that he took short breaks to play music when he was thinking about his scientific theories. Taking a break I've reviewed hundreds of studies that show leisure time isn't a luxury—it fulfills key psychological needs. Taking longer and more frequent breaks from your job than your workaholic boss might like can help you get more rest, recover from work-related stress, and increase your sense of mastery and autonomy. That's because when employees find fulfillment outside of work, they tend to become better at their jobs, making their employers more likely to thrive. That's what a team of researchers found when they studied the workforce at a large city hospital in the U.S. Employees who thought their bosses supported their family life were happier with their jobs, more loyal, and less likely to quit. Unsurprisingly, the happier, more supported workers also gave their supervisors higher ratings. 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Boston Globe
4 hours ago
- Boston Globe
He asked Tiffany Trump to marry him. Then the deals started coming.
Advertisement The second arrangement involved something less tangible: access to the Trumps. Boulos' cousin promised to get a Saudi businessperson invited to the Boulos-Trump wedding so the businessperson could pose for photographs with the Trumps and project a closeness with the family. 'We want you to be at the top of the guest list,' the cousin, Jimmy Frangi, wrote. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Everyone involved denies wrongdoing, and both deals went bad. Kushner's yacht sits unfinished in Greece. And the Saudi businessperson never got the access (or the wedding invitation) that he had been offered. But Boulos received about $300,000 from the yacht sale, his cousin says, and $100,000 from the Saudi businessperson. A spokesperson for Boulos and Tiffany Trump said Boulos had received only a prenegotiated finder's fee in the yacht deal and had since ended his business relationship with Frangi, the yacht broker. 'Mr. Boulos is proud of and honored by his close, familial relationship with Mr. Kushner,' the spokesperson said in an email. Advertisement As for the money from the Saudi businessperson, the spokesperson said it had nothing to do with access to the Trumps but was instead to settle an unrelated debt. He said Boulos had no involvement in the plan that his cousin had described in text messages. The Trump administration has blurred the lines between family, business and government, with the president conducting diplomacy with the same foreign governments that are negotiating cryptocurrency and real estate deals with his family. The Bouloses are a variation on that theme. The previously unreported deals — which The New York Times pieced together through contracts, court records, contemporaneous text messages and interviews — show that Boulos, his family and his associates were in a position to benefit financially as soon as he became engaged to Trump, the only child of Donald Trump and his former wife Marla Maples. The wedding, held at the president's Mar-a-Lago golf club in Florida, raised the family's profile and turned the patriarch, Massad Boulos, into an important Trump campaign surrogate. News coverage portrayed him as a billionaire business magnate, even though there is no evidence that he has significant wealth resulting from his own commercial activities. Massad Boulos' stake in his in-laws' Nigerian truck company was worth less than $2, the Times found last year. Trump's election in 2024 propelled Massad Boulos into government. He became a presidential adviser on the Middle East and then a senior State Department adviser on Africa. And Michael Boulos is seeking business there, according to the former prime minister of Guinea. Advertisement 'He is pursuing work,' the former prime minister, Lansana Kouyaté, said in an interview. He would not discuss details but said Boulos told him a few months ago that he was working to 'put together some investors from the United States and some governments in Africa.' Kouyaté said that, as far as he was concerned, the business of Michael Boulos and the political role of his father were inseparable. The former prime minister recounted his conversation with Boulos in two separate interviews. But after Boulos was asked to comment, Kouyaté sent an unsolicited email suddenly denying knowing or speaking with him. Asked to explain the discrepancy, he blamed spotty cell service and said to rely on Boulos' account of the events. He said that someone, whom he would not identify, had told him to email the Times. A spokesperson for Boulos said he did not know Kouyaté and had never spoken to him. Today, Boulos and Tiffany Trump are raising a family. They welcomed their first child, Alexander, in May. Trump has kept a low profile but this week shared photos on Instagram of the family boating and of scenes from the French Riviera. With the Boulos family close to power, associates are also seeking their own opportunities. Around the time of the presidential inauguration, Habib Saidi, a businessperson and close friend of the Bouloses, was sitting with Boulos at Mar-a-Lago when he spotted Kacy Grine, a financier with deep ties in Saudi Arabia, dining on the terrace. Saidi stepped away from Boulos and, in front of others, introduced himself to Grine. Saidi said he and his friends wanted to use the opportunity, while they were close to the center of American power, to do business in the Middle East, according to a person who witnessed the conversation. Saidi mentioned construction projects in Saudi Arabia. Advertisement Saidi said he had no recollection of the conversation. Grine said he would not discuss his business interests. The Superyacht 'Solstice' As a young yacht broker, Boulos had a knack for business development, Frangi recalled. Boulos identified his soon-to-be brother-in-law Jared Kushner as a potential client, and brought Frangi to meet him. The cousins made an investment pitch: Get a good deal on a yacht, refurbish it and sell or lease it as a moneymaker. By June 2021, documents show, Boulos was sending Kushner sales presentations about an unfinished yacht, later named the Solstice. The firm told Kushner that the price to acquire the yacht was about $15 million at the time. That included costs and a flat brokerage commission of 1 million euros for Boulos, Frangi and their colleagues. 'Just so we understand the business deal,' Kushner said on a call, according to portions of a transcript, 'you are going to make 1mm on the closing.' But according to Frangi's text messages at the time, his firm was making much more than that. The brokers were spending millions less to acquire the yacht than they claimed to Kushner, according to Frangi's messages. 'THIS MAKES US 3.5,' Frangi told an associate. The text messages show that his brokerage worked to conceal the details from Kushner. 'It's going to be difficult to hide,' an executive at the firm wrote. He said it was important that Kushner not hire an independent appraiser. Boulos was not copied on those messages, and it is not clear whether he was aware of this aspect of the plan. But text messages make clear that he was personally engaged in the process. When Kushner's lawyer seemed to be slowing the deal down, for example, Boulos made his displeasure known inside the firm. 'Me and Tiffany,' he wrote to associates, are 'pissed off.' Advertisement The family spokesperson said Tiffany Trump had 'no knowledge of or interest in any part of these transactions.' The sale closed in early 2022. Frangi said he had made about $400,000 from the commission, and that Boulos had made $300,000. Frangi also acknowledged taking extra money that had been earmarked for transaction fees. But he said it was a few hundred thousand dollars, not millions. He said that it was wrong to think of the price as inflated. He said the deal called for Kushner's investment group to pay a single sum to buy, transport and insure the yacht. If Frangi could do it all for less, then of course he'd make more profit, he said. If that was the deal, that is not what the contracts say. As for his text messages, Frangi said they were unreliable. 'I write usually very erratic and I just throw things and I always live in the future and everybody knows that about me,' he wrote in a text message to the Times. Kushner eventually realized that he had been overcharged, according to a lawyer who recounted the deal during a client's financial dispute with Frangi. The lawyer, Taylor Howard, wrote that Kushner had been overcharged by $2.5 million and confronted Frangi, who concealed the reason for the higher price. 'In reality, Mr. Frangi was using that to bolster his returns on the transaction,' Howard wrote. Advertisement A spokesperson for Kushner declined to comment on details of the deal. He said Boulos had recently been doing a 'great job' working to find a new buyer for the yacht, and that a deal was pending. The Saudi Deal On June 22, 2022, a few months after the yacht deal closed, Boulos and Frangi gathered at the Virginia home of a wealthy Saudi businessperson. Frangi knew the businessperson, Abdulelah Allam, through the yacht business and was millions of dollars in debt to him. Allam was in Virginia in self-imposed exile. He had potentially billions of dollars in real estate seized by the Saudi government during a 2017 corruption crackdown by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and was desperate to get his property back. Frangi came up with a plan, text messages show: He could use his relationship with Boulos and the Trump family to help Allam persuade the crown prince to return his property. In exchange, Frangi said, he wanted Allam to forgive his debt and cut him in on a future business deal. Boulos had needs of his own, Frangi said. 'He needs 25,000$,' he told Allam in a text message before the meeting. 'Is loan. I told him.' He included Boulos' name and bank account information. The day of the Virginia meeting, Allam texted that he had deposited $100,000 into Boulos' account. Everyone involved said the money was not intended to buy access. But they offered contradictory explanations for it. According to Boulos' spokesperson, Frangi's 'financially struggling company' owed Boulos money. So, at Frangi's request, the Saudi businessperson settled the debt by paying Boulos himself, the spokesperson said. But an aide to Allam said the money was a loan to Boulos that Boulos still intended to repay. Frangi has explained the money in different ways, at times calling it a loan to Boulos and at other times calling it the settling of a debt. Whatever the purpose, in the weeks and months that followed the $100,000 bank deposit, Frangi detailed plans to 'soften up' Saudi officials. Part of that involved presenting Allam as being close to the Trumps. 'We have a month and a half to get everything started before the wedding,' Frangi wrote in text messages. They strategized about photographs and access. 'Would be good you fly with Michael and Tiffany pls,' he wrote to Allam. Later, in Arabic, he added, 'Please delete all texts.' Boulos was not copied on those text messages. Allam's aide, Rashad el-Hassanieh, said: 'Mikey never promised anything. He said, 'I'll listen, but I can't promise anything.'' Boulos was not involved, his spokesperson said. 'Mr. Boulos has never dealt with, been involved with, nor discussed Mr. Allam's Saudi Arabia concerns with anyone, including Mr. Allam himself,' he said. As months went on, people around Allam warned him that the plan had little chance of working, messages show. They were right. Allam never got his wedding invite, his access or his property back. This article originally appeared in
