I’m kind of in a strange boat right now where I’m really comfortable in Canada yet I can’t shake this feeling I need to get over to the US of A in order to take advantage of that strong USD. I, like many Canadians, work for an American firm and have a TN visa. Recently, my employer offered to sponsor me for a green card, if I ever choose to relocate to the USA. I can live pretty much anywhere I want as I’m a remote employee, but I do travel to the USA for client work.
It’s a tough decision to make. While I consider it, I thought I’d ask the community. So, say you good lemmings?
No. The risks outweigh any possible benefits. If it’s a red state then the risks are even higher in terms of quality of education, healthcare and employment.
I would recommend most people to live away from their hometown if they get an opportunity to. It’s worth seeing and experiencing how other people live - and it’s worth getting out of your comfort zone. Are you going to learn, grow and be better as a result? As well, is your career going to be fostered as a result?
It’s quite a general question because I don’t know what your values are. I don’t know what you’re leaving behind or how you’re quantifying that. But the US isn’t a monolith in climate, landscape, politics, culture, people, government, etc. You can live in on a Hawaiian island or in the vast concrete jungle of New York City - be in the same country, but live polar opposite lives. Canada isn’t a monolith either, but it’s not as extreme.
If money is your motivation, do a cost benefit analysis with the region you want to live in.
If all else fails to provide answers, leave it to fate. Flip a coin.
Totally agree here. There are many Canadians that would never in a million years consider moving the US and I think that’s a pretty narrow view of the country. It’s a big country with a lot of diversity and until you’ve at least visited I don’t think it’s fair to write it off. Hawaii is a great example. It’s an absolute paradise with a unique local culture, but is still technically the US.
The Mayan Riviera is absolutely gorgeous, but it’s not exactly a representative sample for what moving to Mexico would be like, and a vacation there is not the same as moving there either. I’ll very happily visit the US. I’ll do the touristy things, I’ll meet with my American friends, I’ll go to Vegas for a weekend and melt into a puddle. But if I were picking up and moving I would want to be good and damn sure that my life there would be an improvement and that’s not a great bet in a lot of cases in the US, especially when one half of the government is actively, intentionally and openly working to make everyone’s life worse and there’s a reasonable chance that they’ll be back in power with the next election. And even if they aren’t they’re still able to act through state government and the Supreme Court.
I’ve been doing some figuring to see if leaving the country is feasible for myself, but the US doesn’t make my short list of destinations. It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
I would recommend most people to live away from their hometown if they get an opportunity to.
Hot take here but that’s a waste of resources (and potentially money) and a very cultural thing. Anglo Canadians and Americans packing up and moving across the country for university and then taking the plane to visit their family a couple of times a year… We don’t see that as much from other cultures in both countries.
inb4 all the comments immediately telling you it’s a bad idea i just wanna say that this isn’t a bad opportunity. america isn’t nearly as bad in day-to-day life as it seems and depending on your field you’ll almost certainly receive a large pay raise versus employment in canada. considering you can relocate anywhere in the US, cost of living shouldn’t be an issue. you very well might be able to find significantly lower cost of living in multiple american localities than in canada. if your benefits are good from your employer and can offset the costs of losing access to socialized medicine, you very well might be able to increase your gross income by a fairly significant amount. it just really amounts to playing your cards right and i’m getting the vibe you have a whole lot of wiggle room with your choices here. if you can square a lot of these issues away, america is a pretty great place to live all things considered. do realize you are entering a very volatile social atmosphere, however, and recognize you might become significantly “closer,” both physically and otherwise, to the primary major hotspots of global political instability. this isn’t necessarily bad, depending on you personally. there’s a unique opportunity for change in america currently, and it would be baseless to claim the mere existence of things like political activism, terrorism, gun violence, etc. inherently discount being here in principle. the vast majority of americans have never experienced an act of terror. in fact, if you care about a lot of global issues currently ongoing, then generally speaking america is likely your best bet for your activism or ideas to have significant impact
that’s a fair point and i wouldn’t necessarily disagree. honestly i suppose my point is more that when it comes to global issues, typically the largest multi-national organizations focused on them are based in the united states. there’s a lot more opportunities for global work here than elsewhere. that isn’t to say a lot of those same things exist in countries around the globe. but there is certainly a lot of global wealth and soft power focused around the american metropolises, and there’s no real reason to discount that. foreigners work in these nonprofits all the time. for a lot of people, working in these organizations is a capstone
I considered it and did an 8mo internship in Calafornia in 2016. While I would make about 2x what I make here (literally, I made 25CAD/hr in canada and 50CAD/hr in the states doing the same job with the same manager.) I don’t think it’s worth it for me at least. For one, the medical insurance is kinda insanely expensive, it ate up a huge chunk of the difference in costs while also not being nearly as good and making every trip to the doctors a huge worry and also a cost benefit analysis (and this was with very good, subsidized by my company insurance). I dislocated my shoulder in a biking accident while in Cali, I didn’t go to the doctor because I thought it was just a sprain and the doctors would not be able to do anything (while costing me like 200 bucks). When I got back to Canada I got it checked out and they said it was too late to do anything but that it could have benefited from physio when it was fresh.
The healthcare as well as a hundred other factors has knock on effects where poorer folks are very noticeably worse off. Toronto has a lot of homeslessness, but I don’t think Ive ever seen a homeless guy using a ruler as a splint on a leg bent the wrong way in Toronto. I don’t want to live in a place that does that to people.
Lastly I found public transit to be even more of a joke than it is in Toronto, and as someone that never wants to drive daily that was kinda awful.
While I would probably be marginally more wealthy in the US, I would definitely be less happy, and have a dirtier conscious. I am pretty well off regardless and that was a while ago before the housing crisis in Canada really kicked off so maybe you’ll reach a difference conclusion.
The main thing driving me to look south of the border is the cost of housing. The cheaper housing might balance out the bad government services depending on the location.
Cheaper housing is outside main city centers in both cases, you don’t win anything if your housing is cheaper but you pay back the difference (and more) in healthcare coverage and scholarship (if you’ve got kids).
Toronto has a lot of homeslessness, but I don’t think Ive ever seen a homeless guy using a ruler as a splint on a leg bent the wrong way in Toronto. I don’t want to live in a place that does that to people.
This is a big part of why I don’t think I could ever live in the states. What a cruel place to live.
If you are single this sounds like it might be an interesting opportunity as long as you find a GOOD place to settle in the US. Much like every province is very different in Canada so are the states.
However keep a few things in mind:
you will be a foreigner ( make sure you know your rights / or lack there of)
your employment terms may change immediately from being fairly safe and having severance in Canada in law to changing to at will termination in the US depending on the state and situation.
find out ALL the details of your company medical coverage and its cost before going, everything will cost you money medically in the US but you might get faster service
If you are thinking about buying a home find out what the laws are for foreigners on a TN visa… Also find out what the property taxes are as in some states they are VERY high, while the price of the home is attractive.
Alternatively look into low cost of living places in Canada and consider moving within Canada. You may find that there is a lot of difference in the provinces and major cities.
Yeah, someone was telling me we’re rich for owning a condo and a cottage that were both the cheapest we found on the market and that were both for sale for months before we bought then… Two people owning 150k worth of property and “we’re rich”…
There’s like 4 states I would consider in the US in terms of having similar protections as Canada while having good employment opportunities: Washington, California, New York, and Massachusetts. Unfortunately, these states are all insanely expensive and quickly eat into whatever pay raise you would be getting unless you’re a software engineer or something.
I went to the US for y2k , and was there for 5 years.
I came home with the exact same amount of money as I had when I left. And I also got a deep understanding for the absolute depths of cruel poverty in the US and for safety nets they don’t have.
Do it. You’ll never be the same, and you’ll really appreciate Canada better.
I continued the work to build and maintain the “one true Unix” ;-) and a Linux side project until we sued IBM so they destroyed us.
So. Nerdy IT stuff that today we’d outsource and work remotely back here, but in 2k required working onsite in beautiful 2-person offices with closable doors, visual privacy, and a view of a happy groundhog most days.
Honestly, I’d just stick with the TN. With how easy a TN is to get, the only real advantage of a Green Card is if you plan on being unemployed in the US (which you don’t, because you’re in the US for the money like everyone else).
Though FWIW TN should allow you to work in the US anyway, so I’m not sure why they’re only offering GC for relocation.
Be very careful about the strong USD, because things are more expensive in the US and they’re often of lower quality for the same price. You won’t feel richer unless you save a bunch of USD and move back to Canada down the line.
Earning CAD and spending CAD ~= Earning USD and spending USD
We did it for four years. Washington state in the Seattle are is very nice. We met a lot of great people and we have fond memories.
Having said that it was clear early on this was not going to be permanent. Imagine taking your kids to the local park and seeing a sign that said no guns allowed in this park. Wait, guns are allowed in some parks? WTF. That was just a head scratcher. I found it genuinely hard to be in a place where I was decidedly middle class and so many people were so poor and with no benefits at all.
I remember once chatting with a cashier at the grocery store over the weeks as she was pregnant. One day I stopped seeing her and figured she had her baby. Two weeks later she was back. No maternity leave. She took her full two weeks of vacation and that was it. Shit.
Or the conversation I had with a cab driver who talked about still being in debt because his FIL was sick and avoided getting medical attention because none of the family had medical coverage until he had to be admitted.
The medical system is a confusing shambles of insanity. That’s if you have good coverage. Once our daughter was sick and the childrens hospital directed us to a closer clinic. We went. There was a discussion about possibly admitting her but in the end she went home. A few days later she was worse so we ended up going to the children’s hospital and she was admitted. Turns out the near by clinic was not in our medical coverage group and it cost us nearly $1000 out of pocket. Not fun but doable. The thing is, she was two nights in the hospital where we were covered. If we had admitted her the first day at the wrong hospital it would have cost us at least $10 000.
The whole system is a fucking nightmare of land mines and no one has any clue what any particular thing will cost you.
I just couldn’t be happy under those conditions. Side note I’m not happy with the slide in equality here in Canada either BTW.
My job is in high tech and they pay was no better, just even. We lost money on selling buying houses, but that’s just timing. I kept track of taxes paid. After medical expenses it was only a 5 percent savings and one medical emergency would too that the other way. Yes, I had great medical coverage.
Yeah, I was in Oregon and had really good health insurance, but was always a bit terrified of actually ever using any medical services. It’s so much less worrying to know that the emergency room won’t ever cost you anything in Canada. That said, I’m sure if I did ever need it, it would have been fine.
always a bit terrified of actually ever using any medical services.
That’s kinda the problem: in America, ‘preventative’ care is only talked about in past tense, like “wish he’d’ve gotten looked-at before it cost him his 401k AND house as well”.
No way. Stronger dollar is enticing, but the pros dont outweigh the cons in my opinion. The tribalism of american politics, the lack of free healthcare, and the increased risk of gun violence are some of those cons. These alone absolutely kill any interest I might otherwise have in moving to America.
The healthcare and gun violence are definitely big considerations for me too. If it wasn’t for the constant onslaught of mass shootings, I wouldn’t hesitate as much when considering between Canada and the US.
I moved to the US (California) for 3.5 years. It was actually a great experience. If you work in tech you should be able to make more money in the US and even in a HCOL city you should be able to save some. As other’s mentioned the US is a very diverse place and you should be able to find a state/city/neighbourhood that matches your lifestyle and values.
Sponsorship for a green card is a very long process, and I don’t think you can do it from a TN anyway, so you’d need to switch to an immigrant intent visa (H1-B, EB, etc.) The whole process can take years even for Canadian born people (if you are born in India or China you could wait decades)
Ultimately I decided to move back to Canada, being close to family was more important to me than making more money. I also didn’t want to raise kids in the US.
I don’t think you can do it from a TN anyway, so you’d need to switch to an immigrant intent visa (H1-B, EB, etc.)
You actually can, a lot of people do that. You just have to time it so that it completes before your TN renews, because after you start the GC process, you will not be able to renew TN again (since you violated non-immigrant intent).
It only really works for Canadian born people, because it’ll take 1-1.5 years for GC, Mexicans will take longer so they can’t really do that on TN. And as you said, India/China wait list is around 60 years now I believe.
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Hell no. Alberta is already too conservative/religious for me, I’m not going to go down to some theocratic hellscape to make more money.
Do it! Experience as much of the world as you can - especially if your employer will help with cost/visa!
No. The risks outweigh any possible benefits. If it’s a red state then the risks are even higher in terms of quality of education, healthcare and employment.
I would recommend most people to live away from their hometown if they get an opportunity to. It’s worth seeing and experiencing how other people live - and it’s worth getting out of your comfort zone. Are you going to learn, grow and be better as a result? As well, is your career going to be fostered as a result?
It’s quite a general question because I don’t know what your values are. I don’t know what you’re leaving behind or how you’re quantifying that. But the US isn’t a monolith in climate, landscape, politics, culture, people, government, etc. You can live in on a Hawaiian island or in the vast concrete jungle of New York City - be in the same country, but live polar opposite lives. Canada isn’t a monolith either, but it’s not as extreme.
If money is your motivation, do a cost benefit analysis with the region you want to live in.
If all else fails to provide answers, leave it to fate. Flip a coin.
Totally agree here. There are many Canadians that would never in a million years consider moving the US and I think that’s a pretty narrow view of the country. It’s a big country with a lot of diversity and until you’ve at least visited I don’t think it’s fair to write it off. Hawaii is a great example. It’s an absolute paradise with a unique local culture, but is still technically the US.
The Mayan Riviera is absolutely gorgeous, but it’s not exactly a representative sample for what moving to Mexico would be like, and a vacation there is not the same as moving there either. I’ll very happily visit the US. I’ll do the touristy things, I’ll meet with my American friends, I’ll go to Vegas for a weekend and melt into a puddle. But if I were picking up and moving I would want to be good and damn sure that my life there would be an improvement and that’s not a great bet in a lot of cases in the US, especially when one half of the government is actively, intentionally and openly working to make everyone’s life worse and there’s a reasonable chance that they’ll be back in power with the next election. And even if they aren’t they’re still able to act through state government and the Supreme Court.
I’ve been doing some figuring to see if leaving the country is feasible for myself, but the US doesn’t make my short list of destinations. It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
I would recommend most people to live away from their hometown if they get an opportunity to.Hot take here but that’s a waste of resources (and potentially money) and a very cultural thing. Anglo Canadians and Americans packing up and moving across the country for university and then taking the plane to visit their family a couple of times a year… We don’t see that as much from other cultures in both countries.
inb4 all the comments immediately telling you it’s a bad idea i just wanna say that this isn’t a bad opportunity. america isn’t nearly as bad in day-to-day life as it seems and depending on your field you’ll almost certainly receive a large pay raise versus employment in canada. considering you can relocate anywhere in the US, cost of living shouldn’t be an issue. you very well might be able to find significantly lower cost of living in multiple american localities than in canada. if your benefits are good from your employer and can offset the costs of losing access to socialized medicine, you very well might be able to increase your gross income by a fairly significant amount. it just really amounts to playing your cards right and i’m getting the vibe you have a whole lot of wiggle room with your choices here. if you can square a lot of these issues away, america is a pretty great place to live all things considered. do realize you are entering a very volatile social atmosphere, however, and recognize you might become significantly “closer,” both physically and otherwise, to the primary major hotspots of global political instability. this isn’t necessarily bad, depending on you personally. there’s a unique opportunity for change in america currently, and it would be baseless to claim the mere existence of things like political activism, terrorism, gun violence, etc. inherently discount being here in principle. the vast majority of americans have never experienced an act of terror. in fact, if you care about a lot of global issues currently ongoing, then generally speaking america is likely your best bet for your activism or ideas to have significant impact
Activism only really works if you’re a citizen/PR of the country, otherwise you risk being deported.
The other thing is that a lot of American activism is targeted at problems that are mostly, well, American.
that’s a fair point and i wouldn’t necessarily disagree. honestly i suppose my point is more that when it comes to global issues, typically the largest multi-national organizations focused on them are based in the united states. there’s a lot more opportunities for global work here than elsewhere. that isn’t to say a lot of those same things exist in countries around the globe. but there is certainly a lot of global wealth and soft power focused around the american metropolises, and there’s no real reason to discount that. foreigners work in these nonprofits all the time. for a lot of people, working in these organizations is a capstone
I considered it and did an 8mo internship in Calafornia in 2016. While I would make about 2x what I make here (literally, I made 25CAD/hr in canada and 50CAD/hr in the states doing the same job with the same manager.) I don’t think it’s worth it for me at least. For one, the medical insurance is kinda insanely expensive, it ate up a huge chunk of the difference in costs while also not being nearly as good and making every trip to the doctors a huge worry and also a cost benefit analysis (and this was with very good, subsidized by my company insurance). I dislocated my shoulder in a biking accident while in Cali, I didn’t go to the doctor because I thought it was just a sprain and the doctors would not be able to do anything (while costing me like 200 bucks). When I got back to Canada I got it checked out and they said it was too late to do anything but that it could have benefited from physio when it was fresh.
The healthcare as well as a hundred other factors has knock on effects where poorer folks are very noticeably worse off. Toronto has a lot of homeslessness, but I don’t think Ive ever seen a homeless guy using a ruler as a splint on a leg bent the wrong way in Toronto. I don’t want to live in a place that does that to people.
Lastly I found public transit to be even more of a joke than it is in Toronto, and as someone that never wants to drive daily that was kinda awful.
While I would probably be marginally more wealthy in the US, I would definitely be less happy, and have a dirtier conscious. I am pretty well off regardless and that was a while ago before the housing crisis in Canada really kicked off so maybe you’ll reach a difference conclusion.
The main thing driving me to look south of the border is the cost of housing. The cheaper housing might balance out the bad government services depending on the location.
Cheaper housing is outside main city centers in both cases, you don’t win anything if your housing is cheaper but you pay back the difference (and more) in healthcare coverage and scholarship (if you’ve got kids).
This is a big part of why I don’t think I could ever live in the states. What a cruel place to live.
I’m planning on going to the states next year. Double the salary and better opportunities.
If you are single this sounds like it might be an interesting opportunity as long as you find a GOOD place to settle in the US. Much like every province is very different in Canada so are the states.
However keep a few things in mind:
Alternatively look into low cost of living places in Canada and consider moving within Canada. You may find that there is a lot of difference in the provinces and major cities.
“Alternatively look into low cost of living places in Canada and consider moving within Canada.”
I have a 50k three bedroom house in rural Nova Scotia to sell you lol
Yeah, someone was telling me we’re rich for owning a condo and a cottage that were both the cheapest we found on the market and that were both for sale for months before we bought then… Two people owning 150k worth of property and “we’re rich”…
There’s like 4 states I would consider in the US in terms of having similar protections as Canada while having good employment opportunities: Washington, California, New York, and Massachusetts. Unfortunately, these states are all insanely expensive and quickly eat into whatever pay raise you would be getting unless you’re a software engineer or something.
What ABOUT our thinking? #l2s
I went to the US for y2k , and was there for 5 years.
I came home with the exact same amount of money as I had when I left. And I also got a deep understanding for the absolute depths of cruel poverty in the US and for safety nets they don’t have.
Do it. You’ll never be the same, and you’ll really appreciate Canada better.
Nicely phrased.
What did you do there, if you don’t mind me asking?
I continued the work to build and maintain the “one true Unix” ;-) and a Linux side project until we sued IBM so they destroyed us.
So. Nerdy IT stuff that today we’d outsource and work remotely back here, but in 2k required working onsite in beautiful 2-person offices with closable doors, visual privacy, and a view of a happy groundhog most days.
If you have a lot of money , why not? But think to the cost of travel to see your family.
Honestly, I’d just stick with the TN. With how easy a TN is to get, the only real advantage of a Green Card is if you plan on being unemployed in the US (which you don’t, because you’re in the US for the money like everyone else).
Though FWIW TN should allow you to work in the US anyway, so I’m not sure why they’re only offering GC for relocation.
Be very careful about the strong USD, because things are more expensive in the US and they’re often of lower quality for the same price. You won’t feel richer unless you save a bunch of USD and move back to Canada down the line.
Earning CAD and spending CAD ~= Earning USD and spending USD
Earning USD and spending CAD is ideal
We did it for four years. Washington state in the Seattle are is very nice. We met a lot of great people and we have fond memories.
Having said that it was clear early on this was not going to be permanent. Imagine taking your kids to the local park and seeing a sign that said no guns allowed in this park. Wait, guns are allowed in some parks? WTF. That was just a head scratcher. I found it genuinely hard to be in a place where I was decidedly middle class and so many people were so poor and with no benefits at all.
I remember once chatting with a cashier at the grocery store over the weeks as she was pregnant. One day I stopped seeing her and figured she had her baby. Two weeks later she was back. No maternity leave. She took her full two weeks of vacation and that was it. Shit.
Or the conversation I had with a cab driver who talked about still being in debt because his FIL was sick and avoided getting medical attention because none of the family had medical coverage until he had to be admitted.
The medical system is a confusing shambles of insanity. That’s if you have good coverage. Once our daughter was sick and the childrens hospital directed us to a closer clinic. We went. There was a discussion about possibly admitting her but in the end she went home. A few days later she was worse so we ended up going to the children’s hospital and she was admitted. Turns out the near by clinic was not in our medical coverage group and it cost us nearly $1000 out of pocket. Not fun but doable. The thing is, she was two nights in the hospital where we were covered. If we had admitted her the first day at the wrong hospital it would have cost us at least $10 000.
The whole system is a fucking nightmare of land mines and no one has any clue what any particular thing will cost you.
I just couldn’t be happy under those conditions. Side note I’m not happy with the slide in equality here in Canada either BTW.
My job is in high tech and they pay was no better, just even. We lost money on selling buying houses, but that’s just timing. I kept track of taxes paid. After medical expenses it was only a 5 percent savings and one medical emergency would too that the other way. Yes, I had great medical coverage.
Yeah, I was in Oregon and had really good health insurance, but was always a bit terrified of actually ever using any medical services. It’s so much less worrying to know that the emergency room won’t ever cost you anything in Canada. That said, I’m sure if I did ever need it, it would have been fine.
That’s kinda the problem: in America, ‘preventative’ care is only talked about in past tense, like “wish he’d’ve gotten looked-at before it cost him his 401k AND house as well”.
No one goes for testing, no early warning.
No way. Stronger dollar is enticing, but the pros dont outweigh the cons in my opinion. The tribalism of american politics, the lack of free healthcare, and the increased risk of gun violence are some of those cons. These alone absolutely kill any interest I might otherwise have in moving to America.
The healthcare and gun violence are definitely big considerations for me too. If it wasn’t for the constant onslaught of mass shootings, I wouldn’t hesitate as much when considering between Canada and the US.
I moved to the US (California) for 3.5 years. It was actually a great experience. If you work in tech you should be able to make more money in the US and even in a HCOL city you should be able to save some. As other’s mentioned the US is a very diverse place and you should be able to find a state/city/neighbourhood that matches your lifestyle and values.
Sponsorship for a green card is a very long process, and I don’t think you can do it from a TN anyway, so you’d need to switch to an immigrant intent visa (H1-B, EB, etc.) The whole process can take years even for Canadian born people (if you are born in India or China you could wait decades)
Ultimately I decided to move back to Canada, being close to family was more important to me than making more money. I also didn’t want to raise kids in the US.
You actually can, a lot of people do that. You just have to time it so that it completes before your TN renews, because after you start the GC process, you will not be able to renew TN again (since you violated non-immigrant intent).
It only really works for Canadian born people, because it’ll take 1-1.5 years for GC, Mexicans will take longer so they can’t really do that on TN. And as you said, India/China wait list is around 60 years now I believe.