Hamilton photographer sets Guinness World Record with underwater photo shoot

Sirius Glass said:

Not all of us are like that. There is a political divide, but there are still people here that realize for the country to continue to grew and develop new ways and approaches, immigrants are needed.

Click to expand...

Oh, no! I was not talking about Americans as a whole, but my experience dealing with the USCIS, applying for visas/work permits/etc. It's an unyielding system and I say this as a pretty privileged immigrant. I lived in the US for about a quarter of my life and I will always feel a little American in my heart no matter whether I have the USCIS' stupid approval or not

Daniela said:

You know, as someone who has been an immigrant for over half of my life now, I remember finding the Canadian immigration authority website so refreshing when I looked at it. After dealing with the unyielding, cold and heartless US immigration system, it was so refreshing to read something like: hey, tell us about you and what you do and let's see how we can match what we can offer to each other The only reason I didn't end up going to Canada was because I got an opportunity in France; but that welcoming approach you guys have really made a good impression on me. I plan to at least visit at some point.

Click to expand...

The US system is horrible, one of my very good friends is from Indonesia, Chemical Engineer, he almost went to Canada.

Daniela said:

Oh, no! I was not talking about Americans as a whole, but my experience dealing with the USCIS, applying for visas/work permits/etc. It's an unyielding system and I say this as a pretty privileged immigrant. I lived in the US for about a quarter of my life and I will always feel a little American in my heart no matter whether I have the USCIS' stupid approval or not

Click to expand...

My wife and I got married in her home town in Australia, without her realizing that leaving the USA where she was working as a nurse with a H-1 Visa, invalidated that visa. She could not legally return to the US with it (1987). But the airport in Sydney was a crazy mess and the ticket people let her on when she showed her old visa to them. Going thru immigration in Hawaii, we got a "Welcome back to the US, Mr.Hutchins"...and a blinking red light turned on for my new wife a nd she has hauled away. The airline got fined $1000 for letting her on. But she was a good-looking wonderful sounding Aussie white girl with a hospital waiting for their best maternity nurse to hurry and get back to work -- and she was allowed in and we were given a "Delayed Inspection" in San Francisco.

Which was a whole different trip -- people leaving the counter crying as we waited to see an inspector, etc. But the inspector said right off we had two things going for us. 1) We were not trying to bring other family members into the country, and 2) we did not bring in an immigration lawyer. Smooth from there -- she got to stay in the US and work while the Feds processed my application for a Green Card for her (as her husband). In 6 months, we drove to Vancouver, Canada to finish the process for the green card.

Which at the very last moment almost crashed -- at the last minute the inspector in Canada pointed out that our marriage license was only the church's -- not from the Aussie Gov't as it should be. He looked at it a bit, then said, "Well, they accepted it in San Francisco." and stamped the SOB...what a cliff hanger!

Not the experience of most...we were lucky.

Vaughn said:

My wife and I got married in her home town in Australia, without her realizing that leaving the USA where she was working as a nurse with a H-1 Visa,

Click to expand...

A couple of weeks ago, Canada decided to open up a permanat resident stream for H-1 Visa holders. )figuring that if they the Yanks had given them a work visa, they would have also done all the needed background checks) 10,000 were opened, all snapped up in about 2 days.
I recall that when the Canada US border was shut down for COVID, one of the first exceltions to the shut down was for Nurses who live in Windsor, but work in Detroit. otherwise the Detoit Hospitals would have had a staffing crisis.

Vaughn said:

Not the experience of most...we were lucky.

Click to expand...

Oh, wow, what an experience! Very lucky, indeed

cmacd123 said:

A couple of weeks ago, Canada decided to open up a permanat resident stream for H-1 Visa holders. )figuring that if they the Yanks had given them a work visa, they would have also done all the needed background checks) 10,000 were opened, all snapped up in about 2 days.

Click to expand...

Once again, good for Canada!
I met many insanely qualified people (@mshchem I hear you), from every field, that simply had to leave either because there were no options left in the immigration system line of hell or due to ridiculous, obtuse, demagogic, inflammatory, fear-mongering decisions (I'll just bite my tongue, here). I was personally affected by this too and it still stings, in case you can't tell