My question is purely hypothetical; I really do like my life up here! I have no intentions of moving south of the border even if I could, even though I HATE WINTER.
I have decided to retire and just live off my savings (there are advantages to having been a miser all my life and still not having expensive tastes), and I got to thinking - as a Canadian citizen with nothing helpful like dual citizenship, could I decide to retire in the states and live there indefinitely as long as I promised your nice ICE people that I would honest and for truly never try to work in the US? Broadly speaking what would be the rules about such a thing?
This site says there’s “no good solution” for someone who wants to do that.]
Part of one of the recent immigration reform bills was a 240 day retirement visa for Canadians, but that still wouldn’t allow a permanent stay, even if there was a chance of the whole bill passing.
IANAL, but technically, you can stay in the States for 180 days, go back to Canada, then quickly return to the States for another 180 days. According to this site:
Also, if you have a good nest-egg from your lifetime of frugality, you can actually get a green card with an investment of $500,000 in particular geographic areas. (Or $1,000,000 elsewhere. It’s called the “million dollar green card”.)
But not only IANAL, but IANAInvestment Advisor, so research carefully!
There’s still another investment visa that, I believe, requires an investment of $50,000 and creates 3 or so full-time jobs. Those are good for 5 years and can lead to a green card.
Thanks! Like I said, it was just curiosity (*&#^@& Winter got me thinking about warmer places). Not really planning to do anything so drastic (and in any case I don’t have 500K in either C or US$ that I am willing to risk!). I’ll just continue vehemently swearing at Mother Nature for several months out of every year.
Well, here is the other option for your hypothetical retirement. It doesn’t mention the $50,000 part here, but I believe when I talked to a US lawyer about the possibility, she threw out $50,000 as a benchmark of a “substantial” investment. I guess the “retirement” part isn’t really a retirement in this case, because you have to come to the US to direct the enterprise. But maybe there are broad values of “directing the enterprise”.
Anyway, there’s always Victoria if you want less snow than AB and less crime than Vancouver!
Funny, I was just disappointed by discovering that my husband and I can’t retire in Canada. We live in Minnesota and want to live somewhere cooler. Maybe the 2 governments would be interested in a trade :D.
Canadian living as a legal resident in the USA here. I just went through the whole immigration circus last year to get a Green Card. I’m not retired but here is what I learned through either first-hand experience with the system or via my lawyer’s advice.
Its a real grey area of law concerning Canadians going back and forth to the States. You do not technically need any sort of visa to visit and there is no United States legal limitation on the duration of your stay (as long as you do not attempt to work or use any local social assistance programs). In other words, if you do not take a job away from an American and you can pay your own way, you are so low priority for Immigration Services that they don’t really care that you are here all the time.
Your problems start when trying to establish routine services while residing in the States. Good luck getting a local bank account or health insurance. Or a driver’s license. Or any sort of ID that the local authorities, bouncers, or store clerks will recognize. Without that Green Card, you aren’t getting any of those things. Also, they won’t take your Canadian cheques, even if they are drawn from a US funds account. If it doesn’t have a US flag on it, or is not identifiable as coming from the USA, it is often rejected. This comes from a couple of years worth of pulling my hair out while waiting for my Green Card app to be approved. I imagine your mileage my vary depending on the state you are in, but that was my experience.
Immigration won’t come after you, as a retiree, as long as you do not spend any length of time in jail (as in some minor offense where they held you for 12 hours or something). Being pulled over or stopped by a cop won’t raise any red flags. But if they have to put you in a holding cell then they are obliged to call Immigration and deport you. Same as if you called attention to yourself in some way in front of an official. i.e. the authorities can comfortably ignore you, even if they know you are not legal, as long as you don’t force them to check you out.
The real sticking point is Canadian law. You must spend six months and one day in Canada per year to maintain your legal rights to cross the border, renew your driver’s license, use medicare and vote. You lose all of that if you spend more than that in the States in one consecutive year. If you overstay (as you would if you retired), then the very moment you cross back to the Canadian border, you are barred from reentry to the States for a period of ten years.
Lets assume you entered the USA legally and just never left. You aren’t working, you have enough funds for everyday living and you are quiet and law-abiding. Your health care is a huge problem. Medicare won’t pay for US doctor or hospital visits, except for limited emergency services. You must return to Canada for any regular care. Even insurance supplements via your old job or other means only gives you what amounts to traveler’s insurance. Even then, unless its great insurance, you must pay cash up front to the local hospital and then send your receipts back to Canada for reimbursement, assuming they approve the expense. So plan on having mountains of money on hand for your required health care as an aging retiree.
Be sure your Canadian bank accounts are rock solid and exactly what you need before you leave. Canadian banking regulations require you to show up in person at a local branch to make any major changes (opening new accounts, closing, etc). Once you overstay in the States or must stay put while legally being approved for a Green Card, you cannot cross the border back to Canada for banking purposes. If you do, you are considered as abandoning your immigration claims or will be barred from reentry to the States.
IANAL or any sort of law enforcement official so I could be mistaken on the above points of law. I am just repeating what I was told by US Immigration officials and my immigration lawyer. I’m just glad its all over and I have a nice shiny Green Card. The whole process is an unbelievable marathon of bureaucracy.
Thus creating the phenomenon known as the Canadian Snowbird[sup]1[/sup]. A migratory animal of advanced age, the Snowbird flies down from the Great White North every fall and overwinters in Florida or Arizona. Then in spring, migrates back to its breeding[sup]2[/sup] ground in the north.
[sup]1[/sup] Not to be confused with the aerobatics team from the Canadian Forces.
[sup]2[/sup] Ok, they’re actually too old to breed, but there seem to be more and more of them every year.
How does this work? When I was living full time in Dubai, we had Canadian friends who lived there as well. They’d spend 330 days in Dubai and then go back to Canada for a visit. They were certainly allowed to leave Canada and visit the US while they were there.
Its a different situation. Since the US doesn’t care what a Canadian does in Dubai, then there is no sanction to crossing their border. They have not violated US immigration laws, nor have they forced Canadian authorities to impose sanctions due to overstaying in the US.
My understanding is that your friends would certainly lose their medicare and voting privileges but there would be no sanction on freedom of travel as long as Dubai didn’t prevent them from returning across their borders.
Health care coverage is a right of residency, not citizenship. It is irrelevant if you go to the US, Dubai, or anywhere else and there is no Canadian penalty for a US overstay.
Since health care coverage is granted at the provincial level, it depends on where you are a resident. Ontario requires you to be in Ontario (not just Canada) for 183 days in a twelve month period, and up to 212 days in some circumstances. Cite: OHIP coverage while outside Canada | ontario.ca
I understand from friends who were duty stationed in Alaska that many parts of coastal ‘southern’ Alaska are actually rather pleasant to live in, they ended up retiring to Valdez.
We’ve considered that too but I think cost of living there might put it out of reach.
Alaska would also be a long way from family. We were hoping we could move up into the area directly north of MN (where all the lakes would make it feel like home), and then we could drive back to MN for visits and health care.
I don’t quite understand the difficulty of a Canadian retiring in the US. When I retired in 2002, I briefly considered retiring in Mexico which many Americans have done. Even my retirement check and SSA would have been sent there without a problem, and I believe, Medicare would have paid for hospitalization, etc.
Is it because of the difference between laws in the US vs. Mexican laws?
I guess you missed the point of my post. There are many Canadians who retire in the US. Or rather, they half-retire in the US and half back in Canada.
Because of the restrictions listed by Prongo, they have to spend half the year in Canada to qualify for free Canadian medical care, which as you might expect, is very important to retirees. So they migrate to their retirement home in Florida or Arizona or even Mexico or other warm countries in the fall. Then in spring, they migrate back to Canada. They call them Snowbirds and they even have an association you can find with just a bit of googling.
My sister lives in a retirement community in Arizona and she says they’ve all migrated down now. She’s not too thrilled with it since the comunity is now full and traffic is worse. In summer, the community is half empty.
It’s specifically because of the laws regarding the Canadian health insurance system. You have to be a Canadian resident, at least part time, to keep coverage, and few Canadians want to give up that coverage.
As a Canadian, wouldn’t you have easy access to British commonwealth countries?
I can’t think of a worse place to retire than the British Virgin Islands for example. Or perhaps Bermuda if you’re a bit wealthier. Or consider Australia, if you don’t mind the distance.
Why would you want to retire in the US?
If you think about it, when you’re at a retirement age, you would likely be more dependent on national health. Wouldn’t you lose that in the US? Meanwhile most British commonwealth countries do have national health. Correct me if I’m wrong.
No. Your information is several decades out of date. Commonwealth citizens cannot simply move between Commonwealth countries anymore. It may be easier for them to immigrate, because of common language, legal systems, and family connections, but you do have to go through the process.
My mother was born a British subject in Canada, but by the time she was an adult, she was no longer qualified to live in Britain without going through immigration. I think that happened in the 1960s but I’m sure there are those in this thread who know better than me.
I have no intentions of moving south of the border even if I could, even though I HATE WINTER.