Migratory Meanderings

After much talking...

… and deliberation given Carla’s little bombshell we’ve decided, yet again, that emigrating (returning for Carla) to Canada is still a goer…

We’ve discussed this absolutely to death in the last couple of months and come to the conclusion that Canada will be a better place to bring up a child than the UK.

We also came to the conclusion that if we don’t try this now we’ll never do it as we’d want to do the move before Junior goes to school.

So, with that in mind I sent off for another copy of my Prosecution and Conviction History from Cheshire Police as the one I had from the metropolitan police was no longer valid (they only have a validity period of 6 months).

• Download the Cheshire Subject Access Application Form here

Our forms are pretty much filled in so all I should have to do is get a medical.

I know we’ve been through this all before, including getting the forms filled in and applying for prosecution and conviction histories but… this time I think we’re actually going to do it!

The decision we made is based on the fact that, once I land (and get my PR), we can spend a couple of years over here anyway and if things look like they’re turning sour or it looks like the right time to jump ship we can go any time in those two years…

This is not an easy decision, believe me. I wish it was. It is especially hard now we have a little ‘un on the way.

We’re going to make the best job we can of it though; I can absolutely 100% guarantee that.

We're still out here!

We’re still here! There’s just nothing to report on the emigration front at the moment — and if you read our other blogs at all you’ll know all has been quiet there too…

I’m sure we’ll have some news soon as we kick-start this whole process again! :)

Is Moving To Rural Canada An Option?

Is moving to a rural area of Canada an option? I know there’s a lot of attraction for immigrants to move to a city I’m originally from a beautiful part of Canada, the Kootenay region of BC which is located in the Southeastern corner of the province (not too far from the US border, but about 8 hours from both Calgary and Vancouver). We would love to move back there, but the major thing about rural places in Canada is that they’re based around one particular industry such as forestry or mining and it takes some ingenuity to find work. Of course the scenery and lifestyle is gorgeous (and of course I and others my age never appreciated it—we just thought we were in the sticks and couldn’t wait to get out) but since I’ve been away I appreciate it more. BUT the employment situation is the kicker. When I was growing up there was very little development but strangely enough, since the early 1990s more ammenities like fast food restaurants and a small multiplex cinema has been built which is better to combat the winter boredom but some see the development as spoiling the area.

Of course a lot of people know that after the US election Americans have said they’d want to move to Canada. It’s interesting that the area surrouding the town of Nelson” originally attracted a lot of Vietnam Draft Dodgers to the area in the 70s (“they’ll NEVER find us here….”)—hence the roots of a lot of the town’s alternate lifestyles were established. Now a lot of areas in Canada, especially rural ones, have capitalised on Americans’ discontent and want to attract them to come up to live. In fact, a website has been set up to attract people to the Kootenay region but I think there’s a lot of good information about people who want to move to any rural region in Canada and some general immigration advice as well. You can check it out here.

Also, for another perspective on what rural life is like, an article was published this week in the New York Times about how the original American draft dodgers have settled in to Nelson nicely and become a part of the fabric of the town—because they wanted to contribute. It’s a long article so I’m printing it as an extended entry but it’s worth reading.

The Great British Migration

Remember that newspaper reporter who was doing a newspaper report on Brits leaving (and I blogged about my response to him a few posts ago)? Well his article was printed in the Sunday Times; it paints a pretty accurate picture of the reasons why so many Brits are upping sticks, mostly to countries close by (like Spain and France), but also further afield. And it turns out our reasons for leaving, as bitter as they might seem to some, aren’t that uncommon.

October 24, 2004
Slamming the door on Britain

Crime. High taxes. The threat of terrorism. Endless rain. Is it any wonder that people are leaving the UK in droves? Report by Oliver Bennett

At 6.50am Ryanair flight 072 from Stansted airport to Carcassonne, southwest France, is full of exceptionally cheerful people. Most are in their fifties, although there are a few younger families with infants. The men wear Rohan trousers and trekking shoes; the women are in fleeces and sandals. To my left, a literary agent reads a manuscript. They look well heeled, informal and happy: some off to gite holidays, some to second homes, others to first homes. For the UK is seeing a massive exodus from its shores, and Ryanair’s passengers are among those fleeing their native country.

There is no doubt that the British are leaving en masse: they are heading not just to France but to points further afield. To listen to their stories and read the figures, the conclusion could well be that the country — or at least the south of England — is at full stretch. Undeniably, there’s a squeeze.

• The UK population is expected to increase to around 65m by 2025: up from the 59.6m recorded in 2003.

The number of incomers is fairly well documented. Less well known is
the number of people leaving the country. What began as a cosmopolitan
trickle in the 1980s to British expatriate zones such as Tuscany and the Dordogne has become a flood of Britons, often middle class, over 50, and peevish about the old country. “The fact is that people are being crowded out of southeast England,” says Professor Tim Hatton, an immigration specialist at the University of Essex, who published a paper for the Royal Economic Society about the phenomenon. “Our best estimate is that for every 100 in, there’s 30 to 50 out.”

Think-tanks, estate agents, sociologists and a growing emigration industry are starting to chronicle this departure. The polls show wishful thinking as well as actual movement. ICM and YouGov have both found that over half of a large sample would, in principle, move out of the country. Surveys by the Centre for Future Studies and the Alliance & Leicester International bank show that a third of British people are actively considering a move abroad, with the bank
projecting that 6m of us — over a million families — will be gone by 2020. Myriad “reality TV” programmes chronicle the tribulations of foreign relocation, as do innumerable books about restoring olive farms. They all send the same message: a better way of life lies abroad.

The full article is way too long to replicate here but you can read it at the Times Online anyway. Or, if you’d like me to send it to you by email, just drop me a line and I’d be glad to post it to you.

Did we just make a decision?

U2 - Where the streets have no name

I want to run
I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls
That hold me inside
I want to reach out
And touch the flame
Where the streets have no name

I want to feel, sunlight on my face
See that dust cloud disappear without a trace
I want to take shelter from the poison rain
Where the streets have no name

I think we made a decision! I think we finally decided to stop worrying ourselves to death about this move and take a chance for once in our lives.

We’ve decided to do what quite a few people appear to be doing…

We’ve decided to apply (jeez, just how long can a decision take) and, if we don’t feel ready to make the move when the visa comes through, we can go over for a holiday and I can land as an immigrant then. This carries the advantage that I have fulfilled the visa requirement of landing within 12 months of the medical and, because you can be out of the country for up to 2 years from 5, gives us up to another 18 months to get travelling round Europe etc. out of our systems if we need to.

So, not quite full steam ahead because I now have an external dependency on getting my passport renewed which I will be doing soon. In the meantime we can fill in the new versions of the forms (sigh) and get ourselves geared up emotionally for submitting.