Moving from US to Canada

Orgoth02

I have been thinking a lot about moving to Canada to work up there but I have never worked outside the US. I am curious if anyone here has made the transition and if you ran into any big problem, like taxes or visas or anything like that. Or if anybody lives in the US but works in Canada.

Rwolf

Have a few co-workers are from the states, from what I gather they had a pretty smooth transition, as admin's there pretty much know the in's and out of getting you work up here.

Eclipse

I lived in canada for 3 years, I never really had any big problems that I can think of. Enjoy your time up north :P.

megalmn2000

Welcome to Canada!

hobodactyl

I'm from Texas living in Montreal, everything has been great except the winters :P I'm on my 6 month paternity leave >:D

wasker

Should've moved to Sweden, we get 18 months But on topic, I've got got US friends working/living in Canada and they seemed to fit right in.

Orgoth02

thanks guys you all have been a big help. I have to figure out what to do with my house but Canada is looking pretty good atm

megalmn2000

3 good places to work in games in Canada : Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, which are also the 3 biggest cities of Canada. You have a big bunch of well-known companies in Montreal: Ubisoft, Visceral (EA), Eidos, Bioware, Warners Bros, THQ, Funcom, Gameloft, Behavior, EA Mobile, etc... also the community here is really good too (IGDA, Alliance Num

passerby

should be a pretty easy transition, were pretty easy going up here.

though if you are going to live in Montreal it can be helpful to learn a bit of French, you obviously wont need it at work but it can be helpful on the streets, since there are a lot of people in Quebec who only speak French or have very basic english.

DrewSmoot

On topic question: I was under the impression one can't move to Canada or any other country without first securing a job and being on a work visa. Is this true?

Avanthera

no worries, you can move anywhere in the world

But, trying to move to another country through a work visa, you would need a job first. There are other types of visas.

Orgoth02

shrew81 wrote: »

no worries, you can move anywhere in the world

But, trying to move to another country through a work visa, you would need a job first. There are other types of visas.

Very good to know

Two Listen

DrewSmoot wrote: »

On topic question: I was under the impression one can't move to Canada or any other country without first securing a job and being on a work visa. Is this true?

You should be able to move to Canada so long as you can support yourself on your art. I think you may need something like 3 years of either industry or self employed experience for this to be the case, but I think that's what I remember reading. They support various forms of "self employment", and art happens to be one of them. You need to have the money for the move, a place to live, and be able to support yourself - but a freelance artist I don't imagine should have any troubles just because of no work visa or something of that sort.

Don't take that as the absolute truth, but I did a lot of reading on it a couple years ago - my long term goal is to move to Canada, and possibly have my wife and myself become Canadian citizens if we can manage it. And I'm hoping to do it all through art.

Edit: Oh, and on the off chance that anyone here has actually up and moved to Canada from the US, working off of contract/freelance work rather than getting hired by a studio or something, or similar situation - I'd love to hear about it.