Why Our Original Plan to Move to Canada Sucked & What We Did About It

hi i'm jen and i do things and this is my husband john if you have not met him yet we wanted to talk today about why our original plan to live in canada would not have worked at all we really thought we had a plan when i started this version of this channel, we had a plan.I announced it on my main channel which is called Jen Loves the Cosmic Industry News Channel.I've had it forever and we thought that plan was going to work like die hard.So much that we came to Canada to to BC to Victoria to scout it out because we thought we had a solid plan and now that we're here we realize after all of the things we've been through that plan never would have worked.So we wanted to talk about that today because first of all I think it's super interesting and then second of all in case there's somebody watching this thinking about moving to Canada why most people can't move to Canada and live here permanently.So let's start off with what our original plan was.

What did we think we could do?

First we started talking about relocating right and then we started talking about where might we want to move and Jennifer had a connection to Canada through her grandmother.So immediately, and we've also traveled to Canada several times at that point.So it immediately became attractive as an option for us.So we looked on the immigration website and saw all the different pathways and there's a lot there, right?So you're like, oh, there's like so many different options.The easiest way is to come here as a visitor and you can be here for six months, right?

If you want to stay longer than six months, it's through the different immigration pathways, mostly through work.Canada wants you to come here and be valuable.as a citizen.And so most of the pathways are through work.And so that was really what we first looked at, right, was you can apply through Express Entry.And basically what they do is they just score you.

You get a score for your age.You get a score for what language you speak.what level of education you have how valuable you'll be to Canada if you come here right so you don't necessarily need like a job lined up to get through uh express entry but we're not young no right she has a master's degree yeah i have a high school diploma And so that didn't help us.But really the age was a big thing that limited us for the Express Entry.

We're both in our 40s.I'm in my late 40s.He's in his early 40s.And it's just, unless you're in your 20s, you lose a lot of points.

And so basically, you kind of go through this calculator and add up all your points.and then you compare them to the draws that they're doing.They call them draws, right?Your name goes on a list and they draw names off of the list based on how many points the threshold is at, right?The threshold moves how many points you need to be like competitive in the pool.But we just didn't even get there to the point where we would be competitive now with Canada's current immigration threshold.

So we hit a roadblock there.After we realized that we couldn't have enough points to get to move here, we started thinking, OK, what are the other pathways?

So the next pathway we looked at was John coming as a student.and then we would all come under him as a student.So John was already transitioning out of his career, out of hisprofession which was being a tattoo artist he owned a studio he sold the studio he was still tattooing but he was just kind of like i'm ready to move on to my next thing so it seemed like a natural like yeah he'll go back to school and he'll figure out what the next step is going to be he has business in his blood so So we were like, okay, it's going to be something business related.He also really loves fitness.He really loves the outdoors.

There's so many options of career paths he could have gone on.I make my living online.I have a main YouTube channel that pays the bills and that was how we were going to survive financially.So, you know, I would just come here and keep doing that.And that's it.And I would come on what we thought existed, but does not exist, which is a digital nomad visa.

And then the kids would go to school.Phoenix applied, our oldest applied to UVic.And my son would go to high school.And yeah.

So after we visited and we started to kind of picture ourselves in different neighborhoods here, and we're pretty certain that we were going to go down this pathway of relocating to Canada.We're like, okay, we have, we've kind of laid all this out.We think we have a really good pathway, but we need to get in touch with a professional who has boots on the ground in Victoria, the place that we want to move to that specializes in these matters.So we talked to the immigration consultant and we had this checklist of all the things that we wanted to verify, right?Is me going to school picking the program that I was going to do, is that enough?You know, can the family come?

Yes.Can Jen work when she's here doing what she's doing?Yes.All of that he confirmed and kind of added on to and, um, you know, really made it sound like, you know, all we had to do was pay him to help us do the paperwork and then we just had to wait.

Right.And he encouraged you to take a four -year program because

you did a four -year program then we would have longer to get everything sorted out for you to get a job because it all relied on john finishing school and then getting a job hello editing jen so after i filmed this i realized i did not explain this quite right really what i would have been doing is coming as a visitor because canada does allow some visitors to continue doing foreign remote work when they're here which which is what the whole digital nomad thing, that's where that comes in.But our immigration professional had told us that it would be quote unquote newsworthy if they made me leave while my husband and my kids were here legally.And at the time that made me feel like safe about our plan.But the thing is, is I wasn't planning on coming here for a few months.That was not my intention.I was not planning to go back to the States.

I wanted to be here with my husband and my kids.And at minimum, I wanted to stay for a while, like until my son finished high school, which was about three years away.So our whole plan basically depended on me repeatedly asking Canada, can I please stay a little longer?And just hoping that they would say yes, because if at some point they said, no, I couldn't just say, well, my family lives here, so I have to stay.I would have to leave.We are very close as a family, so that would have been absolutely devastating.

It would have been awful.So just to make sure I've cleared up this one thing, it wasn't necessarily that I was making YouTube videos in Canada and I couldn't do that.The problem was that I thought it was solid that they would say yes every time, but really and truly there was no guarantee.And what was at stake for our family was a huge risk and it was not worth taking for us.And I wish I had understood that from the beginning, and that's why I'm really glad we got rid of our immigration guide.way.

Hopefully explained it pretty well now.Let's get back to the video.

In some cases, there are ways that you can come and go to school.bring your spouse and your family, and your spouse can work.But it's limited to like PhD programs.master's degrees and other specialty programs, education, nursing, things that didn't fit me personally.Of course, I'm not qualified to go into a master's or a PhD program, but the specialty programs didn't seem like great options for me.And the whole idea was to come here to kind of reinvent.

We thought the plan made sense because she wasn't taking a Canadian job.And so I think that there was just some confusion there, you know, because things are always changing.And I think that no matter what you take from this video, if you're in the process of trying to do something like this, like it could change tomorrow for, you know, make things easier or harder.They can close down programs.The details can change.

yeah so that that would have been something we wouldn't have found out until way later maybe even after we put our house on the market like if if we hadn't ended up taking a different path and that's where this channel comes in because we actually switched gears thanks to people in the comments of my second video on this channel people telling me about bill c3 which extended the uh the citizenship by descent rules.And because my grandmother was Canadian, she was born in Northern Ontario in a town called Cappuskasing, because she was born here, that gave me a pathway.But I wouldn't have known about that without this channel.So what I did after you all told me that this Bill C -3 might pass and extend, I googled it and I found a website by a man named Don Chapman who has been fightingfor something like Bill C -3 for over a decade.He's gotten little pieces passed, but it wasn't fully what he felt was fair, so he just kept fighting and fighting and fighting.

I emailed Don, and I said, this is my situation.And we're working with an immigration consultant, and one of the things that I told him right off the bat was, you don't need an immigration consultant.You don't need him to file the paperwork.You don't need to pay him hundreds of dollars.Just do it yourself.

He wanted to charge us thousands of dollars.

It was thousands of dollars.

It was thousands of dollars that this man wanted to help us fill out this paperwork that wasn't going to actually get us what we needed in the end.

In the end, it wouldn't have.And when we asked him, In our last meeting with him, we asked him about Bill C -3, and he was like, yeah, I've helped a couple people with that, but it was clear he had no idea what we were talking about.At least it felt that way.It felt like he did not know what we were talking about, and he just didn't seem to be up to date on things that we needed him to be up to date on.You all even gave us that advice.There were comments saying, don't hire an immigration consultant.

A lot of it's a scam, and it would have been thousands of dollars.We did give him, what was it, about $1 ,000.before we ended up.

And that's money that we just didn't get back.

We didn't get it back.And, you know, you pay for something.Sometimes you make a mistake and we didn't get that back.So we are so thankful still to, you know, every day to Don Chapman for his fight to get Bill C -3 passed to give us a pathway that actually worked.Because so far, what are you thinking about living in Victoria?So far, we've been here about a month.

I've thought about that question a lot.And I mean, the obvious answer is like, it's amazing, you know, like we're loving it here.100%.I've thought about like how to answer that question because it very still much feels like I'm a tourist here.

Yeah, just like, yeah, because we haven't been here all that long.

We're still seeing it.in.We're still learning things.Everything is still new.I'm not working.I'm not going to school yet.

I actually had an orientation yesterday for Camosun.I'm really excited about that.But our overall experience here has been amazing.But I also still keep coming back to the fact that what we're doing and how we got here.extremely uh appreciative of that and uh I just feel really lucky to be here so like I don't know it feels kind of disingenuous to like say it in a way that like over generalizes like oh victoria is amazing everybody should come here you know because you know what i'm saying because you don't feel like you've experienced it fully yet not not saying that victoria isn't amazing i don't know i just don't want to be like a victoria's victoria tourism you know poster boy you know what i mean like i feel like that at that point like when i start like because i could gush about the neighborhood that we live in the access that we have the beaches the weather do you feel like you're at this point that you're feeling good about the choice that we made.

I mean, we're only a month in, but so far in the first month, you're like, no, I want to go back to the US.I want to go back to Maryland.Like, I hate it here.Like, I can't, I can't believe we did this.It was a huge mistake because we do get that comment a lot.

So thinking about it that way, you're right.There was a big part of me up until the day we got here that was laying in bed at night for months you know some some nights were better than others but there was definitely a lot of nights laying in bed at home being like shit like are we are we making the right decision are we going to be happy in the neighborhood that we chose to live in are we going to be happy to live in the city that we lived in i think that when it comes down to itI do feel like that we made a good decision.I feel like we're a good fit here.I feel like we can contribute here once we kind of get established and, you know, figure out where we fit into.I feel like, yeah, with the information that we have now.

We made a pretty good choice.

I think so, too.I think so, too.I think the hardest part for me is being away from my family.That's definitely the hardest part, is being away from my friends and my family, but as far as the actual living, like the day -to -day living, it's a big change, but I am very much enjoying.the things that are different just very thankful to be here and thankful to continue to learn and grow and adapt and you know change my language somebody had a neighbor ask us today about uh are we trying to change our accents are we working on our accents and i said no like i don't think that i should hide like Being, you know, growing up in the U .S.

, I don't feel like that's something I can hide or should hide.It's part of who I am, but at the same time, I'm adapting my language in that, you know, I say washroom instead of bathroom.I say, you know, bring me the bill instead of bring me the check.I say, you know, give me the machine.I like, what else?What are some other things?

Yeah.I mean, that's just kind of like fitting into local customs and, you know, starting to like mirror the things around you.

And the vocabulary and the language.

And it makes it more comfortable.

I know that our original plan would not have worked, but I'm really thankful that our plan B did work.Right.And that we're here now.So far so good, but there's gonna be bumps in the road, and we want to share more about our experience moving here.We were talking about sharing how much it cost, like overall, like what were the costs.We also want to share like what the steps were, like once we realized...

the actual path was gonna be, like, what actually was that path?Like, what were the steps for there?Because I think that would be super helpful and interesting to share.uh so hopefully y 'all dig on that and also i'm going to be sharing coming up videos of just what i've been doing here and what i've been learning like now not just retrospect and past but like what's happening right now and i think we can kind of like flip back and forth a little bit between like providing like updates on like the details of all of the things and then kind of giving updates on like what's actually happening.

I have, we have documents, both of us are researchers, we're planners, we are meticulous in the way that we like to organize data.And so I have documents and documents like I use a software that allows you to kind of create pages and organize and rearrange things.And I have a 30 point 30 headlines with points underneath them of different tasks that we had to do between the time that we decided to make the move and the time that we landed and even the couple weeks afterwards to be like okay when you get there these are the things because man over the past four weeks we have had a time just getting all of the things set up you know switching over but that's that's for another video but i wanted to start with this beginning which was our plan a why it failed, why it was gonna fail, it was terrible, it was a terrible plan, and why it didn't work.It wasn't a terrible plan.We were misinformed.

We were misinformed.

Yeah.We were misinformed.

We were misinformed.So we wanted to provide that information.And we got lucky.And we got lucky about Bill C3 passing right at the perfect time.

did get lucky.Absolutely.I feel like we have to acknowledge the timing, the momentum that we already had, and then when it went through, like, what?

Yeah, there was definitely some luck involved.

The immigration pathways are, are you a skilled worker?Are you highly employable?If you're a healthcare worker, the stream to get here is accelerated so fast.So healthcare workers, and then of course, you know, higher education, university programs, things like that, if you have a family.If you're single, it's a lot easier.You know, a lot of it, if you're single, you're young, you know, you got some, you know, some skills.

that make you highly employable yeah um but there's a whole website with tons of information and we'll link that down below yeah we'll link we'll link as many resources that are relevant to this video down below for you so you don't have to find the things and dig through the things that we add to and so i i hate for the i hate for the take home for this video to be like there's all the info there and we read through it and we still messed up so good luck like that just feels mean right but also like i think i think it's you know we have to acknowledge that it's a it's a very complicated system yeah uh and it and it and for good reason it's like it's complicated because it's complicated you know um running a country is probably pretty complicated managing the people that come and go is probably pretty complicated and it's beyond me right so It's just, you know, finding the rules and trying to see what applies.

And I think every individual person's situation is different.So you can't say, like, our path isn't the same as other people's paths.But if you happen to be in a similar situation, hopefully this story helped you.to get an idea of like what we decided and how we figured it out and there's going to be more information so make sure that you're subscribed if you're interested in this topic because there's going to be a lot more of us sharing all of this and i hope you continue to be happy and healthy and safe and i look forward to reading your comments and we will see you in a video very very soon bye