Moving North
Published at 17:30 on 8 October 2021
In the synchronicity department, the day it became obvious beyond any reasonable doubt that the Republic is dead (and that it is merely a matter of time before the stench of the corpse becomes more than can be ignored), is also the day that my provincial nomination went through.
Canadian provinces have more power than US States do. For openers, they can definitely secede if they want to. None have so far, but Quebec has floated the issue a couple times, and there is widespread consensus that if the Quebecers ever do cast a majority vote to leave, Quebec gets to leave.
Another, less dramatic, aspect is immigration policy. In the USA, it is strictly a Federal issue. In Canada, it is divided between the Federal and the provincial governments. A provincial nomination is an official statement from a province that said province really wants a person to immigrate there, and would the Federal government please give that person’s request special priority and consideration. (There is even a special allotment of immigration slots reserved for provincial nominees.) In other words, I’m basically in.
Not formally in, not quite yet, however. The ultimate permission is still given by the Canadian federal government. I will be applying for that once I get one final bit of paperwork from my new employer.
The job is in Vancouver, by the way. So it’s a little bit of an odd situation: I’m only moving about fifty miles. It really underscores the arbitrariness of borders: I could move thousands of miles east or south, and I would not have to contend with the slightest bit of immigration red tape.