I just found out that the government of Canada has just cut the Right of Permanent Residence fee IN HALF. Whee!
Of course, this corresponds with an increase in the value of the Canadian dollar relative to the US dollar, but it’s still great news! Now that I have my other documents in order, I just have to order an international draft from my bank, and walk everything over to the Canadian Consulate on Avenue of the Americas.
This reminds me that I need to take out a personal ad advertising my Canadian citizenship. If the GOP wins again, it might pay off!
envy envy envy envy!
no really, good luck to you!
:-)
i’ll content myself to gloating while you’re enduring 40 below windchill factors & 2 metre high snow drifts. unless you’re going to vancouver, then it’s just pure envy. :-P
Given that a significant amount of my academic work has Canadian content, I think I ought to consider looking for work there. No reason not to widen one’s net with the job market as it is.
Oohh ZuZu how much does it cost now? I’m working on immigrating my boyfriend and we’re going to have to pay that fee eventually…
Yo, fuck Vancouver. Come to Victoria. Far less rainy than Vancouver, way more low-key. Excellent town on an excellent island.
Ha! Envy away! It is Vancouver!
But what’s the job market like in Victoria, KnifeGhost?
Arianna, it’s now CDN $490.
You’re shitting me! That’s hot.
Ok, I had to go check for myself… that’s awesome :) One less financial burden to worry about.
Also: Welcome to Canada, well, eventually. I’m sure you’ll love it here, and since you’re moving to Vancouver (voted our most livable city!) you won’t really have to worry about the downsides.
Second Also: You mentioned political motivations, but our troubles are just beginning here. I’m already looking at immigration to Europe since my boyfriend is British. I don’t want to live in Britain, but he can work anywhere in the EU pretty much. We were initially settling back here in my homeland because Britain was prohibitively expensive, violent and polluted, but things are starting to go whacked here thanks to the Harper government. Hopefully we’ll be able to get rid of them shortly though, they’re getting pretty unpopular.
Our big professional meeting in my field is in Vancouver this year, and I may be giving a paper there.
Plus I have to make a research trip to Victoria. Soon.
Arianna, don’t tell me people are leaving Canada now! You can dump Harper if you need to; we’re stuck with Bush.
Linnaeus, there’s no downside to immigrating. If you get Canadian citizenship (which only takes 3 years), you don’t have to give up your US citizenship.
Arianna,
My guess is that Harper is playing his cards extremely close to his chest right now. (hence the muzzling of cabinet and attempts to control the media)
I’m actually hoping for his government to make it beyond 18 months (about 24 is my guess) – that should be long enough for the wingnut theocons in the party to start getting impatient about the “lack of action” on their pet issues.
Until then, I suspect that HarperCrit is going to do “reasonably well” in polling numbers, as few people seem to ask the “what isn’t he saying?” question. {Admittedly, a few more sessions of him (or Mackay) fellating BushCo might just turn a few people off – BushCo being rather unpopular with Canadians in general)
Zuzu: Depends on the sector, and I couldn’t honestly tell you. It has a reputation for being dead jobwise, but that’s among the slacker 20-something looking for grill-jockey type jobs. My Dad and I are getting into community development stuff, and the work is there for us to create. If you’re innovative in how you look for work, you’ll never be bored. Besides, it’s cheaper (somewhat) than Vancouver, and if you don’t need the big city life, Victoria is the place.
If anyone’s going to be in Victoria and wants a local to show them the sights, I’d be more than happy. E-mail me (put something about Victoria in the subject line) and we can set something up.
zuzu:
After you get to Canada, or maybe after you’ve been there a bit, would you please do a post explaining curling? :)
zuzu:
People aren’t “leaving Canada” the way people are leaving the states, but I’ve been thinking about it. I want to see how the next election plays out, and how soon it is. However, what happens in the states affects us to a large degree, and we’ve all seen from the last 6 years how the wingnuts everywhere have been feeling “empowered” by the Bush administration to push their agenda.
Grog:
Well, Harper is getting fairly unpopular, between pretty much quitting Kyoto, killing the national childcare plan, breaking his reasonable campaign promises, the Emerson debacle, and now looking this they’re caving on softwood lumber. The Theocons aren’t exactly hiding, either. I live in Ottawa now but I was originally from Renfrew County, and, after decades of having a Liberal MP, they’re stuck with Cheryl “abortion equals beheading hostages” Gallant. I was also at the gay marriage rallies (pro side, obviously) when the homobigots had a huge stage set up, and Stephen Harper speaking. I wanted to vomit from having to listen to all his hateful rhetoric.
Mostly I’m just hoping the Liberals get their shit together so we can start thinking about elections.
Somehow “this” replaced “like” in the sentence about softwood lumber…
I blame it on being the morning.
Arianna,
I wasn’t sure what part of the country you were speaking from.
Sadly, I live in Alberta, where you could run a bale of hay as a Conservative and win. Consequently, a lot of the noise I’m hearing is about how “wonderful” this bunch is.
I’m accumulating quite the list of utter hypocrisy from HarperCrit, the problem is whether or not people are going to recognize it for what it is come the next election. (and yes, I’m hoping that the Liberals get their act together – _SOON_)
Grog:
I’ve never been able to understand Alberta. I can’t seem to figure out how it got… well… how it is. The Conservatives are pretty darn unpopular out here in Ontario though.
Btw, for random political rantings, usually re: Harper, you should check out canadiancynic.blogspot.com, I love that guy. I don’t agree with everything he says, but he’s very interesting and one of the few good, frequently updated, progressive Canadian political blogs I’ve seen.
I spent my high-school years in Alberta (1996-2000), and most of the rest of my life in BC. No two provinces could be more different in their approach to provincial politics. Alberta elects Emperors for 30 year terms, and if a Premier in BC hasn’t fixed every problem ever within 20 minutes of taking office, people are screaming for his head.
I love BC.
KnifeGhost:
I’ve always wanted to head out to BC, maybe some day :). Ontario is just a basket case when it comes to provincial politics. Hell, we’ve even had an NDP provincial government. Currently, however, Ontario is stuck with incompitent Liberal-in-name-only Dalton McGuinty. I haven’t actually managed to figure out if he’s really as terrible as he seems, or if Harris just screwed us up -that- bad.
Speaking of Harris, it really disturbs me how many former Harris ministers/staffers have ended up in the Harper Government…
From what I could see, Harris was a Ralph-alike, minus the oil revenues and “charisma” (although I never have figured out what’s attractive about hRalph…)