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?
It’s easy to blame Trudy when it’s all levels of gov’t. Healthcare for example is provincial.
Do you love mass shootings or just hate having healthcare?
Nah. Don’t feel like being caught up in one of the 15 mass shootings per day where the government will try to brush it off and blame it on trans people.
I may be dirt poor in Canada, but at least my trans neighbour and I are both safe when we leave our places.
Hell no. We even talk leaving Canada for Europe because of the influence US has here. I will gladly have a month PTO and better worker benefits, thank you.
I lived in the US for a while. I knew people in the consular office in California who shared the stats on Canadian movement into and back out of the US. 75% of Canadian immigrants will repatriate within seven years. I was an over achiever, it took me 9.
There are advantages to being down there, but they are all centered in being childless and in good health. Everyone is one chronic illness away from bankruptcy. I was a post-doc at UCLA and my wife was a lawyer. The health insurance we could afford didn’t allow us to get treated at the hospital I worked at. As a matter of fact we basically had to choose between preventative care and acute care because our policy wouldn’t cover both.
The public school system has been so eroded it is basically useless, so you will have to use a charter school.
I enjoyed my time there, and California is a great place to be rich, but it gets much harder as you settle in and face actual adult life there.
Boy that would be a terrible idea, as an American who had traveled a lot and is enduring a stint here until I get back to first world and safer second-world countries.
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.
Droughts in the west are going to end up causing mass migrations once all the water is finally gone, and the extreme heat in the east makes me think if anything people are going to be leaving the USA, probably in our lifetimes.
Why don’t you just get paid in USD?
just
This is how we know you’re summarizing, and we worry you’re skipping over parts you may not know about. ;-) #IT-PTSD
I moved to California a couple years back. I think it is absolutely worth the move. Especially as a software developer, you can make 4x what you do in Canada.
The biggest complaint I have is TN is annoying to renew, but overall it’s not a big deal at all. If your work is sponsoring a green card, then that is the cherry on top.
My quality of life is greatly increased. I make way more, and also pay way less for groceries, cars, electronics, internet/cell phone. Los Angeles is literally more affordable for me than most of Ontario lol
I think moving would only be worth it if you’re in a professional career that makes more in the US, otherwise your QOL will obviously be worse here.
than most of OntarioMost of Ontario is small places that cost basically nothing to live in or empty space. Meanwhile you’ve got engineers living in campers at their employer’s office because life is so expensive in California.
Most of Ontario is small places that cost basically nothing to live in or empty space.
And yet most people live in the GTA, because jobs are sort of required to live.
A car is still the same price no matter where you are in Ontario, same with food, same with electricity. You also get paid 4x less. The camper stories are extreme edge cases.
Cost of electricity is more than x3 in California than Ontario, certainly LA (24-28 cents USD per kWh) vs Toronto (8-11 cents CAD per kWh).
The only reason it’s that low in Ontario is because it’s hidden behind fees. Delivery alone would literally double my bill sometimes.Not to mention I don’t need to use heating in the winter at all. I still pay less in California.
‘literally’ (ugh) double your bill is still less than three times the cost. I worry you skipped math
I worry about your reading comprehension because I said I need to use less energy in the first place (ugh)
I’m not sure what you’re on about at the moment. Try harder?
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).
I live in a small town in Eastern Ontario and work for a company in California. I would never, ever move to the US. Ever. We have it so much better here in Canada.
What’s better about here, in your opinion? What would compel you to consider moving in the United States?
Workers rights. I insist that my contracts all say that they are governed by Ontario and Canadian Labour law. I have withdrawn my name from consideration more than once because they insisted on my contract being governed by one state or another’s labour laws.
Democracy. The fact that every citizen has the right to vote and equal access to the ballot box in non-gerrymandered electoral districts.
Personal freedom. Canadians have much more personal freedom than Americans. Yes, they have hate speech and guns but we have so much more actual freedom than they do.
Healthcare. You pay WAY more for health insurance in the US and even so they will deny everything and make you fight for it. I have a good friend who quit a job because their insurance company was denying all claims. My sister has osteoarthritis in her spine and needs surgery. Her surgeon is one of the best in the business. Her insurance company overruled her doctor and said that she should take physical therapy…for an irreversible, degenerative bone disease. Physical therapy for six weeks will cause her agony and worsen her condition.
Guns. So many people who shouldn’t have guns down there have guns. Gun bravery. Fear. Who needs an AR-15 to do groceries of buy coffee? They’re terrified all the time and they’re armed. That means they’re dangerous.
I could go on…
I would like you to elaborate on personal freedom. That’s very vague.
Thought about it very seriously for a long time. I did grad school for planetary science and there’s almost no market for that degree in Canada. But in order to work in the US in the space program, you need permanent residency in order to even have a crack at getting security clearance.
Had $10k US set aside for the immigration lawyer. Started interviewing at new space startups in 2015.
Then I was in Seattle for an interview and it was too expensive to get a hotel near the company. Since I had a car rental, I took a hotel an hour south – a roadaide hotel for $200/night. Can’t be that bad for $200, right? Got there and it was kind of shitty. Being if an adventurous sort, I went outside and sat in front of my room in the evening and chatted with the locals – the hotel was full of people on the dole for various reasons. Every single one of them was a republican. They all thought Obama was coming for their guns. They railed against anything socialist while, ironically, being the absolute dregs of society and we’re wholly supported by said system. I couldn’t understand it. This isn’t the hip Seattle I was expecting…
Then 2016 happened and I said “hmm, maybe I’ll wait.” Then the child detention thing happened and I said “I kind of feel like I am trying to immigrate to Germany in 1936…” and I took a look at myself. I decided to use that money as a downpayment on a house in Winnipeg and start a scientific equipment business. I’m not making instruments for spacecraft, but close enough. At least I’m no von Braun.
The real cheat code is to work for a US company (and get paid in USD), yet live in Canada (and have expenses in CAD).
That’s what I do.
Any issues tax wise? I will be doing that starting in August.
It really depends on how you’re paid. I’m paid through a Canadian payroll entity so all taxes are sorted properly with the CRA.
The only thing I’ve got to be aware of tax wise is maintaining my Canadian tax residency… which means being physically on Canada at least 6 months of the year.
Current plan is for them to make me a contractor to simplify things on their end. I would prefer not to do that, but if that is what it takes to make the move possible then I will deal with the fallout.
That’s pretty common for companies that don’t have a payroll entity in a particular country. A lot of startups do this and slowly add payroll in countries that have a larger or growing number of employees.
There isn’t much for fallout. You will have to set aside $$ for CRA - either prepay into your CRA account on a quarterly basis or put money aside each month in an account you NEVER touch until tax time. It’s not too hard to guestimate your taxes owed.
You will have to keep all receipts - you can claim quite a lot as a contractor. I’d recommend also hiring an accountant. It won’t cost you that much - maybe around $500 if you are organized and make things easy by tracking things in a spreadsheet or personal accounting program.
You typically won’t get benefits… but most companies will top up a fixed amount per month to allow for what you’d usually get as an employee.
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.
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.
