Goshinki said:
If I go to Canada instead I can keep my car and belongings, travel for less, gain easier residency, I won't have to learn a new language (though I may for fun) plus I have a friend up there. Canada won't be safe either if the world calamity reaches a full-blown state, but if I go far enough north I can at very least buy some time.
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Goshinski -- you've been misinformed about how easy it is to get residency in Canada. It's actually even harder for a lot of the categories to get residency in Canada than it is in the USA.
Unlike the USA, marrying a Canadian does not give you rights to live in Canada. This is why my husband is in the process of application for permanent residency there. In fact the visa process is a huge headache, contains some rather invasive questions on the forms, and takes about 1 year to complete.
We both had to provide financial and criminal records. I had to provide an employment history and proof of funds to support the 2 of us for minimum of one year.
He had to submit a history of everything he's done in his life back to the age of 18, all of his diplomas and degrees, medical history, family history.
We had to answer a questionnaire about how we met, what our first meeting was like, who proposed to who, where, when, who was there, photo documentation etc. All very easy to do if you've had a genuine relationship, but if you're trying for a fake marriage or have been with your partner for less than 2 years it's very difficult to provide the detail they request. If you've known each other for less than 2 years you can pretty much guarantee that you'll be pulled in for separate interviews about the nature of your relationship.
For skilled worker visas it is based on a point system -- you get points awarded based on your language skills, high school diploma, university degrees, professional experience, number of years of professional work experience, age etc etc. If you don't have at least one university degree you can pretty much forget about it. The process takes about 18-24 months.
If you're a professional and a company is willing to hire you they can get you a temporary work visa, but again this is based on your qualifications, degrees, and work experience -- which you've said yours are limited.
For a student visa you first need to get accepted to a recognised college or university, and then once accepted you can apply for the visa. The visa usually grants you a 12 month stay post-graduation but does not become permanent. While fees are very low for Canadians, for foreigners you'd be looking at about 25k a year, which sounds like it's out of your budget.
As an American you're allowed to visit Canada as a tourist for 6 mos out of 12. You need to have funds that will support you for the 6 month period in your account, and 3k is not going to cut it.
The only other thing you could try is working holiday visas, except that I don't know that there's any WHV programme between US / Canada.
Although Canada is your Northern neighbour, it's not as easy to move there legally as you think. You can read more about visas at
www.cic.gc.ca -- get the official info instead of stuff from the blogs.
You'd probably be better off going to Alaska. Except don't be dumb and hike into the woods with a 20 lb bag of rice and end up dying in a bus a couple of miles from town.