The easiest for a professional to immigrate to are Canada, Australia and New Zealand. These countries have a fairly objective, points-based system that allow capable educated engineers to immigrate within a reasonably short period of time. The only minus of their immigration policy is that they do not allow you to immigrate if one of your family members is sick.
You can forward email and phone calls from services that provide a bit more privacy. For example, such services should allow to block the address/number from which the forwarded email/call come from; such services should be either free or collect payments via Bitcoin, and in general collect the minimum data required in order to provide such a service.
(I am new here and am not sure whether I can refer you to a service that we have built. When I tried to submit "Show HN" I was not permitted to post.)
A degree is like a signalling device. It is a brief way to signal to others some minimum level of sophistication. There are many more ways to signal your abilities nowadays. Having built an independent project makes up for a lack of a CS degree. Some of my friends got lucrative propositions because they were identified as productive contributors to open source projects.
Having a year of experience may help you to define your research interests with a more pragmatic goals in mind. A complaint that I frequently hear from friends who have got into academic research is that there are very few people in the world who can understand the area where they do research. Presumably, if one can focus one's research one the area that is of interest to the real world, one can find many more people to talk to, get motivated, etc.
Here is a direct link: https://forward-phone-number.com
Disclosure: I work for them