SexyPatTO posted:

If you've clicked on this you are probably a lot like I was nearly a dozen years ago: American, whiteish, white-collar, liberal but not too dogmatic about it, upwardly mobile, interested in raising a family, and, most importantly, the proud recipient of a job offer from some place in CANADA. And you probably think to yourself, "Canada! It'll be just like the US but more progressive. They're so nice there. It will be a great place to make a new start." So the main purpose of this thread is to say the following directly to you:

DON'T DO IT.

"Too late!" you say. "The movers are packing up my stuff even as we speak!"

Or

"But I've already moved," you say, "And I think I know what you're talking about! Help!!!"

The other purpose of this thread is to provide advice and therapeutically hilarious/bitter anecdotes about my own experience in order to help you deal with the transition and focus on your exit plan.

Have an exit plan!! Ironically, being in Canada for over a decade has helped me to realize some life-long dreams. One is a childhood dream. It is to be a policeman. The other is a dream I didn't even know I had until I moved to Canada. That dream is to get the gently caress out of Canada. I am in the midst of a 2-year self-extraction plan that will allow me to achieve both of these dreams. Think of it! From a pretty well paid white collar worker in Canada to a medium-sized-town cop in the US! Canada causes some crazy poo poo to happen.

First disclaimer: while many of the things I say in this thread are probably applicable to Canada as a whole, and while I would never never never recommend that any American (or other non-Canadian) move to any part of Canada for any reason, I should say that I am really talking about Ontario, and, more specifically, about Toronto. If you are a wilderness guide and you have the opportunity to move to Yellowknife, then maybe Canada really is for you. Honestly, I don't know. But if you are the kind of person who gets offered a job in Toronto, then I can assure you Toronto is NOT FOR YOU.

So, please ask any questions you like. I am good at answering questions about general and specific differences between Americans and Canadians, the "culture" (such as it is) of Toronto, the immigration process and the possibilities of your partner getting a job if he/she immigrated with you but not with a job of his/her own, raising kids in Toronto, shopping and eating in Toronto, traveling to and from the US, dealing with Canadian postal service & customs problems, the advantages and disadvantages of "free" healthcare, and much more!

This is not really meant to be a Canada-trashing thread, though Canadians will undoubtedly see it that way. I promise to give credit where it is due and to answer questions by pointing out, where possible, the good things that have happened to me here. But the basic point is this: in over 10 years in this country, working in a job that puts me in contact with a lot of ex-pats, I have not met ONE SINGLE fellow immigrant (this includes from the US, UK, Australia/NZ, Europe, Asia) who really likes being here or who isn't watching for the first opportunity to leave. All of these people came here, like me, eagerly and with an open mind, and all very very quickly (like within 3 months) realized that coming was a mistake.

That's enough for the first post! I'll see if anyone actually has any questions before posting some anecdotes. You wait with bated breath, no doubt.

Bring it on!

MOVIE MAJICK posted:

I grew up in Ontario and now I'm moving to South Carolina in three weeks. Ask me how I feel about this.

SexyPatTO posted:

Next time I'll talk about the myth of Canadian politeness.

SexyPatTO posted:

obviously the US health care system is massively hosed up, but I still get lots of private health benefits (incl dental) through my job that the unemployed or part-timer Joe Canada would not. And, Jesus Christ, just because a country has, like pretty much every other country in the world does, a better health care system than the US doesn't make it an earthly paradise.

SexyPatTO posted:

Next time I'll talk about the myth of Canadian politeness.

MOVIE MAJICK posted:

I grew up in Ontario and now I'm moving to South Carolina in three weeks. Ask me how I feel about this.

Insanite posted:

As an American who works almost exclusively with Canadians, I can say that they're all mean as gently caress. They're just really nice about it.

OP, please convince me that Canada is worse than New England.

MOVIE MAJICK posted:

I grew up in Ontario and now I'm moving to South Carolina in three weeks. Ask me how I feel about this.

Y-Hat posted:

I thought the only place in North America I'd live in outside of NYC is Toronto. I guess I was wrong, because it sounds just as corrupting on one's soul as NYC.

In terms of national politics, is Canada in a better position to recover from its right-wing government than most other parts of the world? I get the feeling that it is because the NDP is an actual challenger to rightward movement, which the Liberals aren't. Conversely, from what I see from afar in Australia, they might give Tony Abbott the boot, but it looks like Labor is totally ready to continue a lot of their policies while paying lip service to doing things differently- which is exactly the case when it comes to treating immigrants coming there on boats. Meanwhile, the other parties there just don't have the numbers to challenge Labor and the Liberals.

Ice Phisherman posted:

Depends on where in South Carolina. I prefer the northern parts myself. Columbia is a renters' nightmare, Rock Hill/Fort Mill actually isn't that bad, Chester used to be one of the STD capitals of the US and my dentist was missing teeth.

However I got by comfortably as a single person on $400 a month. No car, but I didn't need one and when I needed one I bought one. Two roommates (three bedroom house_ which brought rent down to 250 a month, 60 on utilities (split three ways) and the rest on food and incidentals. It was pretty great. I lived in an amazing neighborhood too.

South Carolina is hands down the cheapest place you could ever live. The pay is poo poo, but that's okay because you can live on almost nothing here. If you commute to Charlotte from SC you can live comfortably. You just have to deal with the traffic which is astoundingly bad because of terrible highway planning.

Terrorist Fistbump posted:

OP where are you from?

SexyPatTO posted:

Washington DC, which is similar to Toronto in many ways: it is a medium sized city with a sprawling greater met area; it's kind of a sleepy town with not great food; its full of people who would rather be somewhere else. But DC is also different from Toronto in many ways: it is clean; it is beautiful; everyone (except some of the callow mover-shaker lawyer/Hill-staffer types) is very friendly. Want a perfect example of a historically super-hosed, racism-riven, rich-poor-gap American city? That is DC. There are some seriously poor, seriously miserable people there and some seriously rich assholes. DC's got a lot of problems. But just try walking past people on the street without getting a "hello" nod. Try standing in line at the supermarket without having a nice brief conversation with the person behind you and/or the cashier. In DC there is this weird sense of "we're all in this together, right?" and your day is routinely punctuated with pleasant human interactions. That is one reason (though not the only, the other is that DC knows it is a destination for patriotic tourists) that the city is clean - like really loving clean. Before I moved to Toronto I never saw people spit on the sidewalk, throw their cigarette wrappers out the window, leave their take-out wrappers on sidewalk benches. And the joke about this is that the first thing people in Toronto will tell you is that their city is clean and the people are friendly!

A few years ago I was heading home for a couple of weeks and had a doctor's appointment before leaving and I mentioned that I was going out of town and my doctor asked where and I said "Washington DC," to which his reply was "Lots of crime." That is Ontario in a nutshell. If I were at a doctor in the US, and told him I was going to Toronto he would say, "What's in Toronto?" He wouldn't say it in a particularly interested or uninterested way - it would just be small talk - but he would genuinely be leaving open the possibility that there was something in Toronto I would want to mention and that he could not guess. It would be a human interaction. The human interaction is a rare part of daily life in Toronto. If you mention the US, Torontonians, Ontarians, probably most Canadians in general, think they have it all figured out already and are happy to tell you so.

Skeesix posted:

I'm starting to think you started this thread to bring up all the things that are better about Toronto than other medium-sized cities in the US. Everytime you make it seem like you're going to say, "what sucks about Toronto is..." you pull back and bring up city A in the states, describe something that's worse about city A than Toronto. So much worse in fact that people bring it up in polite conversation. This counts as Canadians being mean so we shouldn't move to Canada.

Bip Roberts posted:

Everytime I meet a Quebecois I'm amazed that they are more of a caricature of themselves then I last remembered.

Sulla posted:

Sulla posted:

This is actually pretty interesting to me. The wife and I are looking at starting the Express Entry process next year after she finishes her undergraduate (architecture) and I get my graduate degree (applied computing).

This is the reality we face right now (this is Brazil btw). Which of these points would be worse in Canada?

- Economy: Inflation at 10% per year. Unemployment approaching 10% also. Forecasts predict shrinking of GDP by 1-2% by 2016. Currency has devalued by 12% in the last year (I guess Ukraine's is doing worse, small comfort). 13% yearly interest rate.

- Healthcare: Single-payer, but wait times for simple procedures (say, doctor visits) are terrible, and approaching infinity for complex procedures (say, about a year for a PET scan and the like). Overall shortages of medications and supplies, horrible infrastructure, regular doctor strikes.

- Education: Strikes, nonexistent infrastructure. Over 25% of the population is functionally illiterate. Public funding that supports research and development was slashed by 75% this year.

- Crime: Homicide rate is 25 per 100k (last count was 50k murdered yearly). Weekly muggings and carjackings in our neighborhood. Monthly reports of rapes. Last year one of our neighbors was murdered and set on fire by the sidewalk. Every person was personally or knows of a friend or family member that was a victim of a robbery, or worse. We live downtown in the nation's capital. Overall sense is "when" not "if" something happens. As in "*when* something eventually happens to me or mine, hopefully it's something minor like a car jacking, and not something like a shooting or rape."

- Politics: Rampant corruption (ranked 69th in the 2014 Corruptions Perceptions Index). The largest public oil company lost 60% of its value in the last year due to a massive scandal involving politicians from virtually every political party. The president is looking at impeachment (not very likely, but one can hope).

Now, this isn't me being passive-agressive. I know it isn't all really perfect over there (I've been following the Canadian Debt Bubble and Politics threads, so that's one thing).

But really, I spent some time in the States as a kid (in the south, no less), so dirty looks don't bother me. I don't mind getting even a menial job with a Master's, washing dishes, cutting lawns, whatever. My mother had to do all that when we lived in the States, and it didn't kill her. Even having to sell (and probably lose) everything I've worked for in the immigration process doesn't bother me, as long as my future children (if we both get to live long enough to have any) have a better shot than they'd have here.

What do you think?

SexyPatTO posted:

But if you move to Toronto, or most other places in Ontario (except for rural places, where you probably won't find a job), you'll find it to be a very ugly city, insanely expensive (from groceries to gas to public transportation to rent to real estate), cultureless, and filled with angry immigrants who self-ghettoize and dream of home. I don't think the psychological dimension of immigrant-hood can be underestimated in its importance, especially if you end up doing work that is well below your training/qualifications. I am lucky enough to be making decent money doing the thing I was trained to do and I'm poo poo-canning it all for a serious career change at lower pay! Maybe I'm the idiot.

To return to where I started, why not the US? Whatever you may hear in the news, the US is a *much* more immigrant-friendly place than Canada, and people who immigrate to the US are, in my experience, much happier, much more excited to stay and make a life there, than people who immigrate to Canada. This goes for people in my own white-collar field and also various friends and relatives I know who immigrated to the US from Paraguay and Mexico. It is also, despite what Canadians (most of whom have never lived anywhere else) will tell you, much easier to live, even to live poor, in the US than in Canada.

SexyPatTO posted:

decent education (though hilariously jingoistic in its insistence on teaching the superiority of all things Canadian).

Nessa posted:

Please, go on about our education system that I'm sure you are intimately familiar with.

In one breath you complain about our "lack of culture" and in the next you criticize our education system for celebrating Canadian achievements.

I grew up in small town Alberta, so maybe our curriculum differs from Ontario, but we were taught all about Canadian explorers and our involvement in the World Wars, among other things. I don't really recall anything about Canadian things being inherently superior, just that some Canadians have done some pretty cool things that we should recognize.

PT6A posted:

The rest of Canada agrees with you with regards to Toronto, just so you know. Also Vancouver for the most part, although they seem to have a better brainwashing program on arrival.

I was born and raised in Calgary, and I'm not actively looking to get the hell out at the moment, but I certainly wouldn't turn down a decent offer that would take me elsewhere.