Can someone please share their experience of moving from Canada to US?
For me, fortunately, it turned out to just be a nightmare. One of my worst nightmares, sure, the kind that marauds one's thoughts through the day and haunts one's apprehensions when it is time to close the eyes and sleep again, climbing into bed wracked with fear the dreaded dream will return.
That was a long while ago, before I obtained PR status in Canada. Technically I had not been overstaying here, but had been more or less living in Canada doing a flag-poling dance for many years (leaving Canada within six months of arrival, or by end date of the various visas and visitor records I was given, and then coming back within days or a week or three, so that I never technically overstayed), and the visits to Secondary when returning were increasingly less welcoming, the questioning getting longer, the admonitions more direct even severe, and I seriously albeit most reluctantly initiated an effort to obtain residence just across the border, in that *%#* country to our south. That was a half-baked, harebrained plan to stay close to the reason I came here to begin with (only to discover this is really home). Fortunately the opportunity arose to obtain permanent status, and here I am to stay. While that nightmare occasionally stalks my nights, and there is persistent trepidation because that *%#* country is so near by, my concern these days is mostly for friends and family who live there, some of whom have little or no choice.
I did live there, in that *%#* country, for a good while before, a very long while ago now. One of the major reasons I went into therapy. A time I sometimes refer to as a nightmare but it was real. A
real nightmare one might say.