Canadian seeking advice (Boise, Nampa, Meridian: health insurance, lawyer, home)

[Thannis]

Hello all! As the title says, I am Canadian and I'm looking for some help. I'm a 37 year old female living in Alberta and am currently very worried about the state of things and am looking at immigrating to the US. I was looking at Montana and now I'm looking at Idaho since it seems to have more places that aren't small town nowhere than Montana does and, thus, better opportunities, especially for the type of work I'm in. I'm in the answering service field and would like to stay there and I have found one company that offers work from home employment that was only offering employment in Billings, MT but doesn't seem to be restricted to a certain city in Idaho.

Anyway, I'm currently looking at Nampa. The city I live in now has roughly a hundred thousand people, so I'm pretty comfortable with Nampa's 81,000. What I'm asking here, is for an honest opinion about Nampa. Is it a decent place to live putting aside issues that any city that large would have? Looking at pictures,it actually looks a lot like my own city. Does it have any issues with flooding like I've seen in other states on the news? Is there extreme weather or is the climate pretty stable?

Also, I've emailed an immigration lawyer with this question and have yet to hear back, so maybe someone here will know. Would I have to pay taxes in both wherever I end up in the US as well as Canada, even though I am not living/working in Canada?

Thanks very much for any help anyone can give

[Threestep2]

Thanks to tax agreements there is no double taxation. Have you researched visas or do you have dual citizenship?

[oregonwoodsmoke]

Answering service field? There is still an answering service field?

There is nothing wrong with Billings. I think weather in Nampa is less extreme, but you are from Canada, so should be used to dealing with weather.

You can't just come to the USA and work. If you are not an American citizen, American National, or already a LAPR, you might not be able to get the sort of visa that allows you to work. ( With some special arrangements for some tribes of Native Americans, if you happen to qualify in that way.)

The big difference is that there is no National Health Care, so you would have to earn enough to pay for your own health insurance.

[Thannis]

Yay on the no double taxing thing. Thanks! Yeah, I've been researching Visas which is where I can really use the help of an immigration consultant/lawyer. They sure don't make it easy. Makes you wonder why they bother allowing immigration with how complicated they make things. No dual citizenship unfortunately. Would probably make things a whole lot easier.


Answering service field? There is still an answering service field?

There is nothing wrong with Billings. I think weather in Nampa is less extreme, but you are from Canada, so should be used to dealing with weather.

You can't just come to the USA and work. If you are not an American citizen, American National, or already a LAPR, you might not be able to get the sort of visa that allows you to work. ( With some special arrangements for some tribes of Native Americans, if you happen to qualify in that way.)

The big difference is that there is no National Health Care, so you would have to earn enough to pay for your own health insurance.

LOL yes, there is still an answering service field. For some reason, I thought Billings was a much smaller city. I've looked at the populations of so many cities, that I had it in my head that there was only 20,000 or so. Billings was one of my top choices before I started looking at Idaho. And yeah, I know I can't just come on down and start working. That would be too easy, LOL. I have to be offered/sponsored for a job first. I'm trying to find out if the company I'm interested in would do that before I get too far and end up back at square one.

I wondered about the health care thing. That's something you just gotta love about Canada. I felt so sorry for those involved in the Obama care fiasco. What does insurance run down there? The company I'm looking at says they offer 75% employer paid medical/dental insurance.

[ProtoStrata]

One major difference between the two cities (which may matter because you mentioned population as a factor) is the size of their metro areas. Billings is the larger city (pop. 110,000) but it doesn't really have any neighboring cities or major suburbs. Nampa (pop. 81,000) is smaller, but is also part of the Boise metro area, which has about 600,000 people, and is only a few miles from Caldwell (pop. 49,000) and Meridian (pop. 84,000). Granted, there's a lot of farmland between these cities, so it's not even close to being a metropolis, but it's probably not fair comparing it to your current city in terms of size.

[Threestep2]

An immigration attorney will be a waste of money. Uscis.gov gives you all details. Call center operator is not on the NAFTA list.

[IdahoBroker]

I am not qualified to speak to the immigration or taxation issues; however on housing, like all cities there are parts of Nampa that are better than others. I have friends and clients that could live anywhere in the valley and yet some still choose Nampa. You will see a lot of negative posts online about Nampa, but ask for specific reasons and you typically get "that is what I hear", not first hand data. Trust but verify is a good strategy when reading any data online. Best of luck.