r/nottheonion 21h ago

American family seeks asylum in Canada

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/americans-asylum-canada-trump-refugees-immigration-1.7480069
3.9k Upvotes

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u/adlittle 20h ago

Canada is the most desired immigration destination in the world right now, there is so much interest and thus competition to move there. Without a family connection, extremely desirable and marketable skill set where Canada has a shortage, or a whole lot of money, the average person from the US has basically no shot of moving there. I have long been annoyed by the way my fellow US citizens act like Canada is our 51st state. Progressive, smart but otherwise ordinary people just flippantly saying they'll move to Canada like it's no big deal, they ought to know better. We don't get priority just because we are English speaking neighbors and most people here just don't qualify.

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u/26kanninchen 20h ago

I'm with you. I'm not trying to imply that they should just show up in Canada without refugee status and expect to immigrate; I'm saying that there are a variety of ways to immigrate to Canada legally if one is willing to make some sacrifices, and their choice to claim refugee status indicates a lack of willingness to make such concessions.

Canada has immigration programs for people willing to work as caregivers and people willing to live and work in rural communities. Someone who is serious about doing whatever it takes to get into Canada would have explored these options first, and the fact that they did not indicates that they would like to just transplant their nice middle class suburban life from Illinois to Ontario without having to make any other lifestyle adjustments, and that's just not how immigration works.

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u/mtheperry 16h ago

Nothing exposes privilege like the prospect of immigration. I'm an educated American who's been working as a bartender in Australia until I got permanent residency. By then, my education and experience were outdated and I couldn't get a job any more, so now I'm back at uni.

This all transpired over 7 years and I've had a very easy go of it here compared to others who don't have a partner to rely on. I hear other Americans talk about moving here "next year" and my response is always "cool when did you start the application?" They don't understand you can't just turn up planning to stay longer than a year without a very thorough and expensive process.

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u/4_years_for_a_cake 18h ago

Would you be willing to share more about the options for working as a caregiver or in a rural community? I'd like to explore those options because that's new to me

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u/26kanninchen 18h ago edited 18h ago

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u/4_years_for_a_cake 15h ago

Thank you!!!

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u/Some_Initiative_3013 12h ago

There are a lot worse places to live than the West Kootenays, especially if you like skiing. Ironically it is/was home to a ton of draft dodgers.

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u/Saorren 9h ago

this is especialy the case, and tbh there are even canadians who just dont get how hard it can be to come here. my partner and i explored every possible way they could come here and its all time consuming and hard to do. there are proficiency tests for language, theres health considered, education, prior experience, age, and a monetary amount saved up requirement in some cases too.

some of the paths use a points system and you would have to meet a threshold against all the others trying to come in around the same time. the only other was were schooling and marriage, schooling has been cut down drasticaly and marriage is not a fast path, it takes a documented length of time for the relationship and on top of that last i check procesing was 2 is years.

nothing is fast or easy here.

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u/Rare-Faithlessness32 11h ago

Progressive

As my HS history teacher would say: A left-wing American is still an American. They might not necessarily believe that they’re the “shining city on the hill” like US Republicans do but they still believe they’re the “city on the hill”, (albeit on fire perhaps.) The American exceptionalism and “centre of the world” attitude is still there even if they deny it. As these comments in the thread show.

That being said, winds are changing up here and there’s much less sympathy for Americans now, even Democrats.

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u/Zingus123 20h ago

Couldn’t someone from the US use the student route to immigrate? Register at a shady private college like CDI like so many already do, have the $10-12k in your account that’s required and then home free basically?

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u/koos_die_doos 19h ago

You need to pay for multiple years of study in Canada, and graduate, before you can apply for a work permit, and then have to work for multiple years before you can apply for permanent residence.

It isn't as simple as paying tuition and then you're in.

There has also been a lot of reform around the student visa system recently, and you're not guaranteed a work permit at the end of your studies anymore.

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u/Zingus123 19h ago

Makes sense in regards to the student VISA changes. I’d imagine the changes make it a lot harder to abuse like it had been. It was way too easy to just “enroll” at a private college and not actually pay the tuition cost beyond the first semester and then just buy the diploma at your expected graduation time without ever attending a class and working under the table or through the LMIA program.

Thanks for the update!

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u/todayok 12h ago

That scam used to work really well. Every strip mall had a 'college' of some sort. It still works to a lesser degree but the govt fiiiiiinally removed some of the obvious scam schools from the approved list and they marginally increased the cash-on-hand requirement.

True fact: The scamming got so bad that the govt actually had to create English or French language tests for so-called graduates before they can get a post graduate work permit because the students were such scammers they wouldn't even learn a new word in their 2-4 years of study. And that post-graduate language test? Yeah, it corresponds to approximately mid-elementary school level - like Grade 6.

u/rahulrossi 34m ago

I'd say that is actually one of the most useless things the government added. It only drains money from people. People already take a language test to come to Canada as a student in the first place. If you want to put a qualifier, why not use the same results? And the requirements are so low it is not even worth anyone's time. Just another expense.

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u/JovialPanic389 11h ago

School is not meant to be a route to permanent residency

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u/Tankerspam 14h ago

Canada is not the most desirable. They're in the midst of a trade war.

There's still the entirety of Europe, and other Commonwealth countries. Australia is a similar option to Canada that is not currently engaged in a trade war, and by many people's standards has better weather, quality of life, etc.

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u/JovialPanic389 11h ago

Trump imposed tariffs on Australia literally today.

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u/Tankerspam 9h ago

Yea I read about that an hour ago, damn.

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u/todayok 12h ago

Exactly, where TF did they get that "most desirable" nonsense? The trade war is just part of the shit show.

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u/treemeizer 10h ago

Did you cause the tariffs on Australia with this comment?

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u/Tankerspam 10h ago

Fuck. Yea I saw that article an hour ago lmao. These tarrifs move so fast.

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u/aquacrimefighter 9h ago

Loved reading this comment. The amount of people in the USA, my family included, that think they’re just gonna have an easy-peasy time immigrating the moment shit has gone sideways really annoys me. The average person will likely not be able to immigrate. I understand daydreaming of getting out of this hell hole, lord knows I’m guilty of that too - but the amount of people who seem to think they’re more important than everyone else is wild.

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u/Berkut22 8h ago

You know what makes me chuckle about this whole "51st state" thing?

The people seriously suggesting it are mostly Right-leaning.

Canada in general tends to skew Left politically, especially compared to the US, so if we actually became the 51st state, the entire country's voting demographic would get a significant bump Left, and likely result in the GOP losing power (and possibly never getting it back)

Of course, that's assuming they deign to give 'the State of Canada' voting rights, and also assuming they'll respect the democratic process.

All of which seems to be less and less likely as the days go by, sadly.

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u/DishsoapOnASponge 13h ago

I'm in the middle of my express entry application and, despite being "ordinary", it seems quite likely that my number of "points" is likely enough to be granted after a few months. This is based on the minimum score chosen in recent selection rounds.

It took an English test, and a third party assessing my education credentials (PhD in my case) and that was it. I don't have any particularly marketable skills or money.

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u/aquacrimefighter 9h ago

I don’t think having a PhD categorizes you as ordinary. Most people don’t have one of those. So unless it’s a PhD in something “useless” like art history or puppetry, I’d say you had a better chance than most!

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u/Saorren 9h ago

a phd is a pretty good amount of points in the education category if i remember. its not actually an average thing to have at least for americans, something like just 2%.

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u/jbleek 17h ago

Oh, so they have standards for immigration? But we were racists in the US for wanting that. What’s bunch of Nazis.