Hiya,
Depressed southern neighbor here looking for some advice. I’m sure you can guess where I’m going with this, so let’s not mince words: what’s some advice on getting to the Vancouver area, obtaining a visa, and a job, etc.? I’m not really looking for nitty gritty details on legal processes and what not, I can find that info documented in various places online (unless you just have a really good link chocked full of info for me). I’m more so looking for some insight from the denizens of the area that know it well.
I’m a millenial that’s been in tech my whole life. I know it’s a massive field, but because I’ve been on linux terminals since I was a wee lad I know how to do… well almost everything that has a job title for it and even at an older age I can pickup new languages and systems with relative ease. Besides that, I’m also an electrician, mechanic, and musician. I’ve been loosely looking for jobs, but so far what I’ve seen seems to be in the city and I need to refine my search. I generally prefer to be closer to the forest, or the mountains (glacier snowboarding is on my bucket list, before they all melt), but I wouldn’t turn down the city if it came down to that.
What are some not-so-populated areas of the west coast that still have at least a semblance of infrastructure? I don’t really care about nightlife, I just want to do tech things and mind my own business without everything that’s happening around me right now (I’m currently in the epicenter of the southern maga dipshits).
I’m curious, too… what’s the temperature like as far as Canadians accepting educated, healthy, non-fascist US citizens? In other words, do you think there might be some bias against me just because of where I currently reside? Take note how I don’t call myself American, because my ancestry is not indigenous to this land. I just happened to be born here.
Any advice on places to checkout/avoid, companies to checkout/avoid, etc. would be awesome and I appreciate it.
And just in case it’s a requirement, you should also know that I put a spoonful of Maple Syrup in my coffee every morning, nothing else. It’s a magical thing! Started doing that many moons ago and I’ll never take coffee any other way now.
ETA: After a couple of comments and staring at the map, I probably should have said British Columbia rather than specifying Vancouver, that’s my bad. Seems to me like the remote areas up there may be more my speed.
Preferably permanent eventually. I’ve been done with this country long before the fat cyst got political. Up until now, I’ve had the national parks and forests to keep me sane. That’s slowly fading, though.
If I could find a tech job in the US, then that’d be sweet to get transferred like that, but it’s been rough here in that regard. I’m also fairly stubborn in who I work for. I’ve been treated very badly in the past, and most of the companies I could work for that have Canadian offices are not on my list of “OK to work for”, at least that I’m aware of. Besides, I’d still be under the ultimate leadership of an American Capitalist. If I can, a Canadian company would be awesome, but we’ll see.
Thanks for the direct link and insight on the lawyer, I’ll definitely dig through it!
I’ll add that once you are on the island, there are a lot of medium sized communities, plus lots of more rural areas. Housing prices are still kind of high from a historical perspective but can be pretty cheap by Vancouver standards.
Likewise, the Okanagan, Kamloops and Shuswap regions have lots of more affordable communities up in the hills around fairly decently large population centres by BC standards.
Finally, if you start heading north it gets positively affordable. Prince George, Vanderhoof, Terrace, William’s Lake. Long drives are needed to get places though. Still, where else would you get something like the Sandblast?
Oh my, you’ve sold me on Prince George with that. Any group of skiiers that are that pissed it’s summer are OK in my book, lmao