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As someone from Belgium that now lives in Columbus OH because of marriage, you're spot on with everything. Safety? Limited. Sprawl? Terrible. Rent? Eh it's not that bad. I make a base salary of $82.5k and my wife makes $50k. Our 2br 1ba apartment's rent is about $1000. It's a nice place, but it has some flaws. Our next place will be around $1500. I've told my wife I don't like the sprawl and lack of public transport here and I want to move to a place where that is less of an issue: Chicago, NYC or Boston. However, the latter two have crazy high rent.\n\nI must add, the terribly unsupported public education system in Columbus is by far the worst reason. My wife is a teacher at a Columbus City School that's almost 100% black. White families put their kids through private schools. The rest of the kids have terrible home lives and are therefore incredibly ill-behaved and under-educated. So much so that the teachers just CANNOT keep up with Ohio's learning standards. By the time these kids graduate (and that's a big IF), they would have learned about 20% of what a regular 18-year old would have learned in most of the world. This is in part due to:\n1. Parents that do not involve themselves in what their children do, and therefore do not discipline appropriately.\n2. Terrible school admins that force teachers to lower their standards to have a high passing rate for the school (otherwise it gets shut down). Also, due to the No Child Left Behind Act, admins also force teachers to teach how to pass state tests (repetitive bullshit) instead of important learning materials and/or critical thinking skills.\n3. A lot of these students are pushed into the gang lifestyle and see no future in their education. They don't even try.\n4. Burned out teachers that grew tired of the negative ROI and start giving out poor and inadequate work packets. However, I don't like blaming teachers, especially because my wife is the hardest working person I know.\n\nIt's hard to see my wife come back every day, exhausted. It pains me both for her and her kids. America doesn't give a fuck about education. The big theory is that they're purposely not giving public schools attention so they can be phased out and private education becomes the norm. And if you can't afford it? That's great, we need factory workers.\n\n\nI might convince my wife to move to Europe eventually (luckily a European marriage visa isn't as stupidly hard to obtain as it was for me to get here). Having kids in America is not something I'd like to think about. For now, I'm taking advantage of this high salary to save as much as I can and focus on advancing in my career. Sadly, that's really the only thing America is good for...

I think you ladies are way out in left field and you really don't know what you're talkin about. Unfortunately for some people it doesn't work out for whatever reason usually because they do not want to assimilate very well. I grew up in Ontario to a french-canadian father and an Italian mother in my life in Canada was so perfect said if I had to dream up a better life I could not have done so. I grew up playing all the sports and enjoyed all the different sports and the changes of seasons. My parents had a summer home on the st-lawrence river and every summer we water-ski swam fished, play golf in the morning and barbecues every night right on the water. Even though my grandfather was in the hotel business I was all about sports and enjoying everything about it. I grew up in a town of about 50 thousand about 40 miles from Montreal. When I wanted some great nightlife just drove a short drive to Montreal and it had everything did anyone could want in Nightlife. I have lived in United States for forty years and I can tell you that it really isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Heaven forbid should you get some kind of catastrophic illness you are screwed. I knew a woman who work for travelers insurance for 30 years at the best insurance a money could buy had suffered a couple of strokes and was on the verge of going broke had she not died when she died. People think that insurance continues to pay his long as you're ill and nothing could be further from the truth. This lady was going to have to sell her house to continue paying for round-the-clock care had she not died when she did. United States middle class is getting wiped out. I've seen enough poverty and hardship in this country to last a lifetime. I find greed to be running rampant in this country. When I grew up in Canada there was always the grass is greener on the other side and when I did move over to the other side the US that is I can tell you unequivocally the dead grass is not greener on the other side. There are more millions and millions of people here that are one or two paychecks away from being homeless. And we're talkin 2023. Now let's talk about violence. There is a mass murder in the United States every single day of the year. And a mass murder is defined by four or more people being killed by one person at one time. Killing these so out of control in the United States that now even six-year-olds are shooting their teacher. I find a tremendous amount of built-up Anger from people. Food is very expensive and shelter is also out of control and non affordable to most people. Again I find United States being able to paint a much Rosier picture then does really exist. And there are more con artists and thieves , Crooks, con-artists, bamboozlers, cheats and scammers then anywhere that I've ever been. And I will say this is it it ain't getting any better and I don't see it ever getting better. I find it is everybody out for themselves no matter who they cheat. I live in Southern California and I can tell you that night life where I live is non-existent. Understand that LA and Hollywood they always have to glamorize everything to sell it to tourists. Just remember that things today are not what they were 40 years ago. Middle-class people in Canada would also be just middle-class people in the US. But if your life means anything to you as far as safety and raising a family then Canada wins hands down end of discussion. People that say Canada is boring is because they are boring. That's what I found to be pretty standard across the board. Life is what you make of it. But I will say that you gals definitely need to move away if you don't like Canada. Do not let the door hit your ass on the way out. And just for your information Canada ranks annually as one of the top countries in the world to immigrate to. Canada is the second largest country in the world by land area and next to Saudi Arabia has the third largest oil Reserves in the world. Canada has huge amount of freshwater which most of the rest of the world seems to be lacking and having spent my Summers on the Saint Lawrence River one of the Great Rivers in this world. I wouldn't change my twenty years in Canada for anyplace else in this world and I will be moving back shortly.

You're not correct about the Quebec government banning the hijab - actually they ban all forms of religious expression in clothes worn at work by public servants - so don't criticize us unless you get the facts straight. All countries are facing public health crisis especially in the aftermath of a global pandemic, you mention how long it could take to get an MRI - weeks/months, but it's no worse than in the UK, or other western countries. I do agree with you about limited competition in banking and tech - but we're still a young and growing country, however, look at the global recession that took place in 2007 - Canada was least affected by mortgage default, the US was hit the worst and hundreds of thousands had their homes foreclosed by the Banks, yet in Canada because of our strict banking policies we were saved and the Banks worked with defaulters to try to keep their homes. Taxes, well most countries require you to file your own taxes at the end of the year - what's so strange about that? Yes sales tax is added onto the sales price depending on what province and what you are purchasing, same as US, just because it's not the same in Europe doesn't mean it's worse! Listen, when you're a newcomer to any country you need to fit in when looking for a job, put in the effort, take the time, do the work, any country is going to expect you to be able to speak the language and know the lingo, so I don't agree with your analysis that Canadians are risk adverse! You are 100% correct about the housing crisis, listen it's been going on everywhere for decades, and international investors in the past 10 years or so woke up and noticed that Canada was a great bet for investment, so the problem got really bad. The government just passed a 2 year moratorium on non Canadians buying real estate - as have many other countries, so fingers crossed no more new foreign landlords just regular Canadians buying their first homes, let's hope so!! I've lived many years in Europe - and I loved it! But the quality of life in Canada is better. If you don't live in the crowded city you can have a nice property with lots of space, good roads, not bad school system, very friendly and helpful people. Quebec has some of the best food on the North American continent, we have clean air and lots of water in Canada - I'm very happy here, so don't be so negative please!

You walking sack of hammers the Canadian people do not want more people! we do not need more people! You bring in third world refugees from garbage conditions and slam them into our workforce with little to no training and hand them our hard earned tax dollars every single time it's some sad case from a backwards country where we have to adapt to make them comfortable by putting our own lives in public out of place how about creating sustainable jobs for people who are born here rather then pull some refugee deal to hide contracts with countries to bring in foreign workers and line your dam pockets there is not enough jobs as it is and we are in a recession so you think by telling people oh we are bringing in more refugees to create jobs is the answer? get this piece of trash out of office and place someone whos in our best interest there rather then ones with ideas of external corporations where you going to put them to work ?! Tim Hortons get f bud and take a long walk off a short peer where you have them coming in on boats taking jobs from our younger generation that's a fact

The cost of living is so high that both parents need to work to live. It's hard to have kids when mom and dad are both working full time jobs, barely getting by and day care is also expensive. We need to incentivize kids to pursue trade jobs instead of dancing on tik tok. We also need to protect traditional Canadian identity. Immigration at that rate will rapidly change our demographics with people from cultures very different from Canada's. We will no longer have common holidays that all Canadians celebrate. Unity will be over. Will any mainstream politicians actually speak up about this?

I'm from Quebec and i love every Provinces, in 2017 i did a roadtrip to BC and when you see Canada for the first time by road it's just amazing to see how big Canada is: Canola field, Bison, endless horizon, mountains, blue lakes, awesome people from coast to coast, salty water smell when your near the sea of coastal province, beautiful roads apart from Quebec just kidding but not really....My friend and i stop at a A&W in Saskatchewan on Transcanadian Hwy and next to our seat was a group of farmer just relaxing and talking about their day and we would have love to just pay them a drink or something to just listen to their story what they have to say but we were a bit to shy because of the french accent and didn't want to bother them! For me every Provinces of Canada are the best no need for TOP10.

Oh this is how every Indian official gov workers behaves, at least 90% of them. While we don't know the full version here, I'll share mine.\nI've waited for hour outside the entrance door along with others where we don't have waiting chairs so had to sit on steps where people pass by even though we all came at the right time that was written on our papers. Then I had to wait about 3 more hours for my appointment chance and then they checked my docs and decided that I don't have two particular doc which isn't even that important these days, but he didn't say that at once, we got first doc and then he said I need another doc. so I had to wait for 3 more hours to get mine as (we had to go to school and get that doc) while all other people like those grandparents, job applicants and farmers got their passports and visas. *sighing*\nI still remember the attitude of that officer, It's like he was just there and I was just waiting his time, and he was just reminding me that his work time was about to be done and that he needs to go. \nI don't understand how the gov offices works, we have tons of population and of course tons of applications that needs to be done for work, yet the gov office working hours just 6-6.5 hours? And they work at sloth speed as well. Software workers have it way hard *taking deep breaths*\nNo use in ranting about how it works in our country

These are the lies people are telling all of South America. The South American politicians are guilty of this also, because they want that money pouring in from the U.S and Canada. It sustains their regimes.\nI will keep stating this on every site I go to.\nFor years the U.S allowed this to happen and they fueled it. They turned a blind eye to it (Both parties) and then the Democrats (during Obama's admin) saw their way to flood the U.S with more of these card carrying socialists.\nThey started to disperse these families to states that nobody really cares about. Idaho, North Dakota to name a couple. They can turn these purple districts into Blue districts. They can start affecting the outcomes of local elections which funnel up to State Governorship and eventually Senators and Congressmen. It's the long play to turn America Socialist and it's been 20+ years and we are starting to see it in local elections.\nWhen they were trying to get the numbers of how many illegal Immigrants are in the U.S. the Democrats keep spewing numbers like less than 1 million. Well the numbers are in it's over 10 MILLION!\nWhen cases started popping up a couple of years ago about children being struck by strange diseases the news kept a very low profile. But in actuality it's happening more and more.\nHere is what you need to do. Go to your local schools to see what the makeup of the classes are if you see a cluster of South Americans there is your vector.\nhttps://www.cnn.com/2014/09/07/health/respiratory-virus-midwest/index.html\nhttps://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/mysterious-polio-illness-paralyzing-u-s-children-n658766\nIt's not a racist to point this out, these Countries have little to no healthcare for their children. The same situation happened to Soldiers who served in Iraq. They would get what they called the Iraqi funk.\nhttps://www.nap.edu/read/11765/chapter/6\nJust as Christopher Columbus brought over diseases from Europe and killed of the native Indians of the Caribbean Islands and latter to the Americas the South Americans are doing the same but it's not at Alarming levels, well at least the numbers are not high enough to warrant a spot on the evening news. By the time they report on it, it's too late.\nSocialists are rising up in the U.S. By the time the next US Presidential election comes up you will see more of these vermin infect the narrative in the U.S