My permanent residency has been approved.

[carpetbagger]

Moving to Red Deer in June.

[SheltieLover]

1. Congrats!

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Congratulations.

[2naSalit]

3. Congrats!

I wish I could do that too. My funds have me trapped here, at this point. My friends with dual citizen ship are all leaving to other countries.

Enjoy it for those of us who can't leave!

[Ilikepurple]

4. Congrats, as long as Alberta stays a Canadian province;)

I haven’t been there for a while, but I grew up close to the Idaho panhandle and I thought it was conservative.

Edited to say i might have come off a little to snarky. I do congratulate you and hope your move to Canada. I have many relatives just north of there.

[carpetbagger]

8. That's what I told my realtor.

I think it's safe for the next several years, and by then I'll be one of those people who gets to decide.

[Ilikepurple]

13. Have you decided where you stand on the real battle for Alberta? Oilers or Flames?

Red Deer’s kinda in the middle.

[carpetbagger]

18. Oilers.

I've got in-laws in Edmonton and my wife lived there in the 90s before moving to the U.S. So I've been a fan of them for a while.

[True Dough]

5. How long did the entire process take?

Enjoy the maple syrup and hockey (oh, and a sane government).

[carpetbagger]

9. 6 months.

I still have another month or two before my card is in hand, but I got approval (technically, I just sent off my P1 packet to IRCC yesterday for them to start my COPR).

The hockey thing will be funny. When I was a kid in New York, my neighbour was a man we called Mr. Trottier.

[True Dough]

10. As in Bryan Trottier?

He was a damn fine player. That whole Islanders era was incredible. Potvin, Gillies, Bourne, Potvin Tonelli, Billy Smith. Al Arbour behind the bench.

RIP Mike Bossy. That one hit hard.

[carpetbagger]

15. Yep.

It was weird, my dad made decent money but we weren't rich. But on Long Island, it seemed like everyone was famous. Lorne Henning also lived in our neighbourhood, and unfortunately we had moved to Florida before he brought the Stanley Cup home and used it as a tablepiece for a backyard barbecue, inviting all the kids to have pictures taken. Harry Chapin flipped burgers at my 1st grade class picnics, he had that weird job that kept him home when all the other dads went to Manhattan. But he didn't teach me music, my music teacher was Kissinger's niece (and strangely, Kissinger was the keynote speaker at a Big Thing years later at the Kennedy Center where I was in the chorus, and we briefly met afterwards at the Watergate where I told him about that). And that's like most of the famous people I've ever hung out with.

[Fiendish Thingy]

6. Congratulations and good luck!

In four years you can become a citizen and help end Danielle Smith’s political career, if she hasn’t been ejected by voters before then.

[sorcrow]

7. Great news

Good for you.

[PJMcK]

11. Alberta?

We’ve bought a place in Panama and secured our visas/licenses/IDs for full-time residence. As our banker said, we’re almost Panamanian! We have all the rights and privileges but we can’t vote.

Great good luck with your new adventure!

[carpetbagger]

16. Yes.

Small city about 90 minutes from Edmonton and Calgary. It's got a Costco and some decent restaurants though. And not much traffic.

Panama was for a while on my short list when I considered Latin America, but their pensionado visas are for over 62 or something.

[PJMcK]

19. Yeah, we're over 62

Panama does , however, have full-time residency visas for those under 62. The requirements vary but include financial investments, property purchase, etc.

Regardless, I hope you’ll enjoy your new home as much as we are!

[AZLD4Candidate]

12. Took me four years and Congressional intervention to get my wife her green card

If you look it up, you can see my long documented struggles (including my emotional and psychological breakdown that the process caused) to bring my wife here.

[carpetbagger]

17. I've read a lot about it from you on DU.

That was a hard, hard road and I feel for everything you've gone through. It was even hard for me to keep track of all of it.

[AZLD4Candidate]

20. And the end result is my wife doesn't go anywhere without my parents or me accompanying her

since these ICE troggs lurk everywhere and I don't want my wife black bagged by some xenophobic nativist who feels because she isn't white, she''s a target even though she is a legal permanent resident.

Because, as you know, kindergarten teachers are dangerous felons, especially if they are foreign.

[mgardener]

14. Lucky you!