The US is my country, I'm embarrassed to say ... but I'm working on changing that! I won't post any more about the injustices and dangers in the US, but I think what I have said so far is useful for Canadian immigration. It it useful information for people who are considering whether to immigrate to the US or Canada. The US used to be one of the top countries for immigrants, but with the anti-immigrant sentiments and some extremely long wait times these days, many are looking into Canada instead. I have chatted offline with some Indian ICT workers who are here on H1 visas and immigrating to Canada because it would take them about 20 years to get permanent residence here!
I'll add that I live in a small city with a university and multiple white supremacist and Nazi groups have posted flyers on and near the campus trying to recruit people. It's about every few months now that something with swastikas or phrases about preserving the white race shows up. I've been in this city for a while and in the region my whole life and this hasn't happened before the last year or so and it's scary.
One other point for those deciding between the US and Canada is health care. Honestly, that's my family's biggest reason for trying to move. Yeah, our cost of living is lower and there are perks to living here but it's a gamble. Any health problem can sink you even with insurance, and if the Affordable Care Act, even parts of it, are removed, we could go back to lifetime caps on coverage and becoming uninsurable due to bad health luck or whatever an insurance company can justify (you can even find cases from before the ACA of people denied coverage for surgeries because of things like irregular periods as teenagers!). As it is, insurance companies can and do deny procedures and medications regularly, causing patients to spend hours on the phone and costing them lots of money. All of that is also why the costs of applying for PR don't phase us. It's still about what we paid in health bills when I gave birth last year (the $4,000 per person out-of-pocket maximum for me, and I'm assuming it's thanks to the ACA that my daughter's costs were all covered, as I expected to spend at least $1-2,000 of her $4,000 OOP max) and the time spent applying is the same or less than I'd spend dealing with billing departments and insurance companies if one of us has a health crisis of any sort. My mother survived an aggressive cancer when I was young so I'm painfully aware of my own mortality and before a genetic test showed I hadn't inherited her genetic defect, I spent half my life thinking I was at risk of getting it too, which would result in having a lifetime of being uninsurable ahead of me. It's a really terrible feeling I don't wish on anyone.
When I took my IELTS, btw, I waited for my speaking test next to a man originally from India and he asked why I was there (awkwardddddd haha) and when I explained that I was trying to move to Canada he said he and his wife were doing the same (FSW and all) as a backup option to staying in the US. I would guess many are doing the same - it just makes more sense.
