SultanOfSwing

Thing is, it was a very open-ended question as it was. It's hard to say for sure in each individual case whether moving here is 'worth it' or not.

I think it was, Pulaski does and a great many others, but then for every one of us there's someone for whom it didn't work out here. Obviously with such an esoteric subject for a question, we're going to veer off track occasionally.

kimilseung

I think if you have to ask the question, then it probably is not worth it for you.

Pulaski

I suspect that most British people who come to the US measure their experience against their expectations. Those who expect to like it do so, and those that expect not to, don't.

My mother is a notable exception in my experience, who somehow had developed a dislike of America despite having never visited and Americans despite having met very few, and yet she enjoyed her visits enormously, and was surprised to find the people friendly. ..... She also noted, after meeting the then-future Mrs P for the first time, that "she was really nice, it's almost like she's not American at all!"

kevntrace

The H1B visa application might have been a bit tricky if it was the latter.

Pulaski

Thanks for excluding one of the three possible alternatives.

scrubbedexpat091

To be fair only central Vancouver is easily walkable along with certain areas near the sky train. The bulk of the region is not walkable and transit takes forever to get anywhere when compared to driving.

Plus Vancouver is a wealthy persons city, avg rent is 2,500 avg purchase for a home 1 million.

Go to downtown east side and you may not feel safe.

username.exe

I lived very close to DTE for several years and in my time there I stumbled over two bodies of drug addicts who had overdosed (in the car park behind my work place), regularly witnessed fights and screaming matches between pimps and the like and saw so many people shooting up or smoking a crack pipe on the street that it almost became a total non event.

Vancouver openly contains much of its illegal activity in a pseudo red light district; so much so that most of the violent crime committed there just doesn't get reported. It's kind of expected (and sucks for the locals).

Funnily enough, even removing the DTE from the equation, many many of my Canadian friends were dissatisfied with their lives in Vancouver and longed to live south of the border where everything seemed to be bigger, better, greater opportunities etc.

Seems like everywhere you go it's same meat different gravy.

scrubbedexpat091

I think one part of the dissatisfaction people may have in Vancouver is income to cost of living. Vancouver incomes tend to be lower on average then other major city's but they have a higher cost of living, and this makes living in Vancouver fairly difficult to be stable and not living on the edge financially and with high rents, there really is no affordable housing anymore.

It will be interesting where the DTES residents end up, condos are starting to go up now in that area in a few spots and they are priced well above what a resident of that area could afford, and it's a matter of time before the scummy SRO hotels sell to the developers, that area is on the radar for gentrification.

The developers are calling the area in their ads, an up and coming neighborhood.
No doubt in my mind there is more opportunity overall in the US, I always did better down there, too many education hurdles to get anything decent job wise up this way, in my experience without some sort of college be it a degree, certificate or diploma, employers just ignore you.

iceflow

For me personally, I don't feel unsafe. I'm an adult and usually tucked up in bed by 10.30 or so. I definitely do not have the same sense of peace of mind for my kids compared to if we were living in the UK or Canada. My kids are in far closer contact with the general society than I, schools / colleges, out with mates etc. Chances of anything bad happening?....small......one of my kids friends from years past was shot to death about two months ago when an apartment he was visiting was robbed. Another kid, who we don't know was murdered about two streets away whilst sitting in his car. Now....we live in a professional area. Not sure I recall that happening when I lived in the UK or the 4 years I lived in Canada. Could it happen there?....yes....is it as likely? definitely not.
I don't know if the original poster is still following this thread or has given up and emigrated to China...but my initial response wasn't to come or not come to the USA. I hope I suggested to the person to try and make an assessment of the countries key values and match that to your own value set and see if you would have a comfort level living here. Eg: Do you like the tv and radio here? That is often a reflection of a countries culture. What do you think of the political voices? are you ok with Glenn Beck, Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi and Barrack Obama. Are they aligned or miles apart? If the latter, does that political gap matter to you? What do you think of the types of responses from the general public on daily blog topics? Are they generally reasonable and ok as far as you are concerned. You have to live here, if possible invest a bit of time in peeking under the covers and best of luck to you.

SultanOfSwing

Fair enough. I think I picked up on something in the discussion regarding Canada that wasn't there, but no matter. The whole question is still virtually impossible to answer anyway, since you could ask 100 people and get 100 different responses. For research purposes though, the list is non-exhaustive so from that perspective, I suppose, at least someone could be armed with ridiculous amounts of information.

I'm going to hazard a guess that the 'you' in the second half referred to the OP and not to me, since I've been here long enough for those questions to be pretty much irrelevant to me

iceflow

yep, the 'you' was meant for the OP. Bad grammar on my part. Canada was woven into my initial response to him / her as an alternative to the USA to consider based upon his / her assessment, whatever that assessment may or may not be.

SultanOfSwing

No, your grammar was fine, I just wanted to make sure I read your intention correctly and didn't leave an unanswered question

DesertDubliner Reloaded

See the attached

scrubbedexpat099

I hope that is not a folding stock!

doconthemove

Already I can tell coming here was a good move. The uk attitude that it's somehow wrong and unethical for a doc to earn 300k etc was the kind of xenophobic reason I left. You would never hear an American saying such a thing. No daily mail headlines saying a doc earns 100k what bad people they are etc

The nhs is completely defunct. 3k docs have already left this year more will follow. One of my colleagues back in England has arranged me to and give a talk next year to tell others how to get out of the socialist juggernaut that is the NHS. The British public have no idea how much healthcare costs but they are going to find out very soon when the system caves in. If you don't pay money for something from your pocket then there is no value given to it or incentive to use it responsibly and that will be what breaks the back of the NHS forever