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?
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.