How to Keep Your Car If Entering Canada from the U.S.

Many immigrants from Asia applying for Canadian visas came to the United States first. If they had established livelihoods in the U.S. for years before being told they could no longer re-apply for a visa or gain citizenship, it presents a particular problem about where to go to next. Either they can go back to their home country or try another industrialized nation to move to. Immigrants in America who are told they cannot stay oftentimes look to relocating to the U.S.'s northern neighbor as an option to preserve their western way of life.

Canadian immigration bureaucracy aside, the transition can be difficult. Even assuming you clear the qualification hurdles and successfully cut through the red tape, the cultural shift from the U.S. to Canada is not like moving from New York to Pennsylvania. You undoubtedly already had the difficult task of understanding and adapting to the American way of life, and despite the similarities in language, geography, and culture, the two countries are very different. Prepare for higher taxes and a harder time finding a place to settle that has accessibility to employment and the necessities for a family you may or may not have in tow.

But there are perks. The higher tax means better social welfare programs especially for those getting started on a visa. It also means superior public transit, something you might not be familiar with if you originally lived in the US. Chances are you got yourself an automobile while living in America, so you might opt to put it in a metropolitan storage center, like a Toronto self storage facility, if you can't find a place to live right away that has room for a vehicle. If you move to a Canadian city then mass transit will easily take you wherever you need to go, and anywhere else can be accessed by getting the car out or taking the train.

They say America is the land of opportunity but if the U.S. government rejects your visa then perhaps your only hope of further opportunity lies in Canada. But remember the process is not easy, and even success through the rigmarole of becoming a temporary and hopefully permanent subject of the Commonwealth of Canada doesn't mean you won't have further logistical issues to worry about. But if there's a will there's a way, and if you had the will once to journey across the ocean to get to the U.S., then relocating once more across the northern border will be a cinch.