Elliott Waehner
- Elliott Waehner moved with his wife and son from the US to Canada in 2023 on a student Visa.
- He says talking to an immigration consultant and moving in with his parents helped ease the move.
- He wishes he had started selling household items sooner to offload them at a better price.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Elliott Waehner, a 37-year-old graphic designer based in Calgary. It's been edited for length and clarity.
My wife, son, and I arrived in Canada in October 2023, but we started playing around with the idea of moving from Texas at the beginning of that year.
My wife and I are transgender, and as things started occurring that made it clear life in the US could continue getting worse for trans people, we decided to expedite our moving process. Two years later, we're living in Calgary, and it's still the best decision I've ever made.
The people I've met here have been welcoming to my trans identity, and I don't send my son to school worried about the threat of a school shooting. Moving was a difficult process, but here's what we did right, and here's what I wish I knew about the moving process sooner.
We talked to an advisor to figure out our game plan for moving to Canada
The first correct step we took, which I would advise anyone to do, is to schedule a one-time consultation with a licensed immigration consultant in Canada.
We scheduled a one-off, but you can work with them longer term. I told the consultant our plan, which at the time was to come in through permanent residency, thinking there was a pathway for teachers like my wife and me. The consultant asked if either of us wanted to go back to school, as that would be the most expeditious and attainable avenue for us to move.
Luckily, I had already been planning on going back to school to pivot from education to graphic design, so we moved forward with that plan.
A short meeting with one of these experts costs about a hundred bucks, but it's one of the best $100 spent because it helped guide us in the right direction in what can be a very complicated process.
We narrowed down which locations in Canada are feasible to move to
The consultant's guidance affected what provinces we decided to look at, because at the time, only Alberta, Saskatchewan, or Nova Scotia would allow me to come in on a student visa and have my wife get an automatic open work permit.
We originally wanted to move to Ontario, and we didn't know that wasn't an option until our immigration consultant told us.
We decided on Alberta out of our three options because if we were going to be starting over somewhere, we wanted to be in the largest economy possible to have the most job opportunities. My wife worked as a private tutor while I attended Southern Alberta Institute of Technology for graphic design on a student visa.
I'm really glad it happened that way because I really love Calgary.
We used resources like a government website and even Reddit to guide us
I found the list of documents I'd need on the Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) website. It's a government website, so there are a lot of words, and it's a bit opaque, but that list was my north star for getting documentation together.
I also typed in a lot of very specific questions to Google and added "Reddit" at the end to see what other folks who were moving to Canada or studying abroad in Canada had to say about the process.
When in doubt, prepare more documentation. Even if you think there's a 1% chance you would ever need it, get it, because if you wind up needing it, you don't want to be waiting for a month and a half on a state or federal agency in the US to provide that information to you.
We sold our house and moved in with my parents to save up
To be approved to move, we had to prove that we had an income and enough money to support ourselves through the moving process.
We couldn't have done that without selling our house and moving in with my parents for two months. It was the longest two months, and at 34, it wasn't ideal, but we needed to be able to live rent-free while our house was on the market.
I don't think any of us really loved the arrangement, but my parents were very gracious in letting us move in with them.
My advice is, if you have someone you can move in with so that you're splitting living costs, do it. Be OK with being uncomfortable and inconvenienced if it means you'll have the financial ability to relocate.
I wish we had stopped buying things and started selling things sooner
Since we moved out of our home, we had to purge nearly our entire lives. We were trying to sell things, but since we were doing it in such a short timeframe, we were kind of desperate to offload them. We ended up losing a lot of money on stuff, whereas if we had a little more time, we could've sold it at a better price.
I also wish we had stopped buying new things sooner, knowing that we'd have to offload almost all of them. It would've been easier to buy most things once we made it to Canada.
Look for credit cards that don't have foreign transaction fees
For better or for worse, you start fresh with a new Canadian credit score. It's been a bit of a challenge for me to prove I can pay for things up here, given that my credit history is only two years old. I'm just crossing my fingers that our cars survive long enough that when we do need to buy a car, we can get a good rate. It takes time to build credit, so we're letting it grow.
My advice is to make sure that your American credit card doesn't have foreign transaction fees, because if you want to make a significant purchase, you're going to need your American credit card.
Do you have a story to share about moving from the US to Canada? If so, please reach out to the reporter at tmartinelli@businessinsider.com.