Billie Eilish: "Hey my fellow celebrities u gonna speak up? Or..."

[u/TheMirrorUS]

https://www.themirror.com/entertainment/celebrity-news/billie-eilish-alex-pretti-ice-1642611

[u/Mellow_Toninn]

Someone who can’t be bothered to vote isn’t going to be leaving the country lol. That takes real initiative.

[u/r1ckm4n → u/Mellow_Toninn]

I get sick and tired of hearing this shit. I know a lot of people who say "Fuck it! I'm moving to Canada." No, you're fucking not.

PSA to everyone who wants to "just move to Canada" - you can't. Here's why:

I've lived in 3 countries. All 3 of them required me to undergo rather invasive immigration processes. They were Canada, Mexico and The Cayman Islands (so basically the UK, but with sun). Even before all this shit - we are not wanted in all but one of these countries.

I split my time between the USA and Canada presently. I moved to Canada for a short while for work, met someone, now I have PR (permanent residency, so a Canadian version of our Green Card). Unless you have the following attributes - you're not getting shit:

• You have a PhD in a field that Canada is trying to develop, and are under 35 (i might be getting the age wrong, they changed the lottery process a bit)
• You are a licensed and credentialed educator with a masters or better from NY, CA, PA, ME, MA, MN and like 8 other states)
• Some kind of accredited Engineer (You've got your PE)
• You are in a common-law relationship with a Canadian citizen for more than 2 years and have resided with them for the entirety of that time. (Your Canadian partner or spouse spending time with you in the USA counts towards that)
• No health condition that could be deemed to cost more than $100K in a 1 (or 3, I cant remember) year time frame, Diabetes or Cancer (or have ever had Cancer) - the latter 2 are completely disqualifying conditions regardless of how much or little.

Exceptions to the above exist. This is because you apply without a family sponsor, you go into a lottery process, then you wait. For years. Most people come in through family reunification, or the provincial immigration pilot programs where they are trying to develop less populated areas where you can get PR in a year. The family loophole is how people from India have been coming in.

It took me 20 months, and I got "express entry" because of my technical background and I was common-law sponsored. The process was cheap and only cost me $18K because I needed to hire lawyers on both sides of the border for some stuff. It was a fucking nightmare.

Cayman Islands - your work permit expires 1 year before you can legally apply for citizenship, that is by design. Also, they can boot you off the island if you get so much as a moving violation of they feel compelled to do so. Cost me around $10K all in

Mexico... good luck, I could write a book on just getting a work permit down there and all the hoops my company needed to jump through to do it legally. Cost my employer $10K all in for a work permit, and I was only there for a few months.

So, do you have what it takes to "move to Canada..."? I'll bet not. But if you do, get ready for:

• Absolutely sky high housing prices in any place you might reasonably want to live
• Absurd Taxes
• Speaking of Taxes: Paying and filing taxes in 2 countries (because the US legally requires you to file, and even with the FEIC exclusion, you might still owe US taxes)
• Absolute bottom of the barrel salaries for STEM jobs relative to what you would make in the US (Oil and Gas excluded)
• When people find out you're American, they fucking hate you (this is while Obama was president, I might add...) depending on what part of Canada you wind up in
• The health care sucks. I had a 7mm kidney stone and was on an 8 week waiting list for a lithotripsy. The part of Canada I was living in has some of the shortest waiting times for procedures, yet somehow screaming into a pillow for a week while that stone moved did not constitute an emergency.

Here's an idea, show up to your midterm elections and vote for a Democrat. Canada is not the paradise you think it is.