Ever thought about immigrating to Canada? You can’t just go there and become a citizen; it’s harder than that. They have a complex point system that takes into account age, education, language skills, occupation (including how much training your occupation supposedly requires, and how much demand for it exists in Canada), number of years of experience in your job, and up to 10 points out of 70 for “personal suitability.” They say it’s rare to get 10 points in that category.
For some reason they lump graphic designers in with illustrators (not that there’s anything wrong with that), which has the effect of lowering the number of points graphic designers get for the amount of necessary training (or ETF). So—if I called myself a graphic designer, I probably wouldn’t get in. If I called myself an art director (15 rather than 7 training points), I’d have 64 points without considering the personal suitability factor.
At that point, to be eligible to immigrate to Canada, a Canadian immigration official would have to award me 6 out of 10 points for personal suitability.
Think about that.
The necessity of the occurrence of that surreal situation as a condition of Canadian immigration is quite discouraging. Just the phrase “personal suitability” gives me weird chills. Not even considering the actual risk I might not get 6 points—they say on average 5-7 points are awarded. [Naturally, I’d make an excellent first impression, so I’m certain I wouldn’t have to worry about that.] However, there’s also the $1475 (Canadian) entry fee and minimum savings of $10,000 (Canadian) to think about.
Don’t worry; I’m not leaving anytime soon. The joy of Minneapolis is that it has all the disadvantages of Canada (cold) and the disadvantages of the US (traffic), but without the advantages of Canada (socialized medicine and so on). <sarcasm>Hey, at least we can freely elect our president.</sarcasm>