The Canadian American Dream Show

Immigrants do more than help us win our wars, or set up cleaning shops or ethnic restaurants.

- Stephen Ambrose

During all the years of travel to the United States, we only found out in 2020 that we had the legal ability to request an extension on our lawful status.

Before the pandemic, we took for granted Canadians’ privilege to travel to the U.S., conduct business for six months, and then exit the country for the next six months. We repeatedly did this for four years before 2020 and three years before that when we were vacationing as “snowbirds” here in the wintertime.

Everywhere immigrants have enriched and strengthened the fabric of American life.

- John F. Kennedy.

When I semi-retired from my family construction business in my mid-twenties, after one of the local labor unions effectively stole our employees, I embarked on a personal development journey that included searching for what it was I wanted to do next

I knew I had tremendous potential, and I was adaptable and in tune with where the entrepreneurship world was headed. Moreover, I could see that around that time, the takeover was happening to my family business; more and more people were beginning to build businesses and earn a living using the Internet.

You need some reason why Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn in the 18th century all flocked to Vienna???

They must have known on some level that that is where they would flourish.

It's what biologists call "selective migration."

- Eric Weiner.

Day 7 To Day 30

However prepared you think you are to leave Canada behind temporarily for an extended time, preparing to live in the United States in any of your chosen town or city, will take a lot of adjustment and trial-and-error on your part.

Suppose you are fortunate enough to move within the metropolitan area of a city rather than the countryside. In that case, you will have an easier time adjusting your lifestyle in a more populated region.

Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were the American history

- Oscar Handlin

As a business owner, entrepreneur, or investor, whether you accept it or not, time can become your master. In business, timing is everything, even from a philosophical perspective. But when the tires meet the road, whatever industry or venture you own or are a part of in Canada owns most of your time.

Remember, remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists

- Franklin D. Roosevelt 32nd U.S. President

Your U.S Business Visitor Essential Documents Check List.

I created the CanadianAmericanDream.Com as part of my mission to provide substantial value and add a spice of entertainment factor to what could potentially be a very testy and anxiety-filled process for many Canadians like myself who are where I once was in terms of the business visa process.

We are all immigrants. Some people have forgotten that.

- Moises Rodrigues

Put The Cart Before the Horse!

If you have arrived at this point in the book, there is a probability that you may be thinking something along the lines of, “Okay, I want to start a new U.S. business, but I am also open to purchasing an existing business down there. So I want to travel to the U.S. on this B-1 business visitor visa and feel out the business landscape while I’m there before I decide to commit to the incorporation costs.” This is where you would be making a mistake.

Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.

- Jack Paar

“Are you visiting for business or pleasure?”

If you have traveled to the United States as a Canadian cit- izen, you will know the dominant question U.S. customs and immigration officers will ask you is a variation of the above question. For example, they will ask you whether your trip is for business or vacation or ask you what your trip’s purpose is. Either way, most Canadians who travel down south for the winter, like Melissa and I used to, will usually be granted a B-2 visitor visa for tourism purposes.

However, if you have had the opportunity to travel to the U.S. temporarily for 30 or 180 days for business, you were most likely granted entry into the U.S. under a B-1 busi- ness visitor visa. Even a 7-day business trip would have granted you a B-1 visa. The only way you could tell is if you checked the stamp on your passport. (Or check the Customs & Border Protection website).

Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules.

That these rules shall be as equal as prudential considerations will admit, will certainly be the aim of our legislatures, general and particular.

- Thomas Jefferson

What’s Better Than A Green Card???

The number one misconception Canadian citizens have around the process of migrating to the United States is most of them believe the only way to attain lawful status to live and work in the United States is by qualifying and either be sponsored for or investing a large sum of money into a Green Card venture.

We used to think the same way, and it was a mistake for us to have remained woefully uninformed on this matter for about five years while traveling back and forth from Canada to the United States.

It wasn’t until Boxing Day 2015 when we crossed by land at the Lewiston Port of Entry near Niagra Falls with our two bearded dragons and our travel trailer in tow, that we discovered we had other options for attaining lawful status in operating a business and living inside the U.S.

All Americans are either immigrants or descendants of ancestors who came from somewhere else, including Native Americans. We should all respect and admire immigrants.

- Jan C. Ting

Courage Is The Way!

When we initially got deported on Christmas day 2020, we honestly thought we would spend at least one year in Canada before returning to the United States. Of course, we did not want or look forward to it, given the pandemic and restrictions in Canada, but we prepared ourselves mentally for it.

But when we saw the stacking of travel restrictions within provinces and between provinces combined with some of.......

The paralysis that we have right now when we think about migration is partly because we can’t imagine what the world would look like in the future. So I think it’s important for writers and artists to try to imagine that.

- Mohsin Hamid

Christmas Day Deportation

Between January 2020 and September of 2021, we spent most of that time here in the United States. But during that time, my girlfriend and I were faced with an immi- gration dilemma after returning to the Canadian land border on Christmas Day 2020 to follow an immigration legal procedure called “flag poling.”