Relocation to another country: Just how realistic is it?

OK, so right now I live in a tiny little city (75.000 people) on the east coast of Canada, and I want to move to New York City for graphic design work, cos it’s just not happening where I live, and I definitely want the international experience. On paper, the theory looks great : Have portfolio, will travel. Sure, there are a lot more graphic designers in NYC, but from what I can see, the employment market is huge for both print and Web.

Really, though, just how realistic is the idea of picking up from small-city Canada to go to New York? Unless I’m very much mistaken, one can’t just move there and start looking for work without proper visas and so on, so that means I have to conduct my job search remotely via email and hope for the best.

My question to all of you is this : who has done something like this successfully? How long was the process before you secured a post somewhere? What steps did you take in the course of your job hunt? Was the employer willing to sponsor your working visa?

Any insight would be definitely appreciated; my ideal target would be mid- to late-March for relocation but, like I said, I don’t know how realistic this is.

And for reference, have a look at my CV/Portfolio on www.neueweb.com .

Cheers ! :mrgreen:

nicely done website. I thought that Canadians could move freely to the US. What about Toronto- the movie scene there is pretty good.

To my knowledge (which is a few months old), Canadians are subject to pretty much the same immigration laws in the US as other nationalities are … so much for NAFTA, I guess. :\

Thanks for the compliment :slight_smile: Toronto is an interesting scene, if you like the city itself. I had considered it at one point, but decided the city wasn’t for me. I know that sounds ridiculously shallow, but hey … I figured I’d try to find work in a city I like. :stuck_out_tongue:

Cheers ! :mrgreen:

I am looking to get out of the US and there are plenty of websites on migrating to a new place from here. As for migrating to here, there has to be some things that will help online with that.

Your website looks good, but the print work that it contains isn’t as good. Loose the B&W ads they just need to go. My advice to you is to do a little more work on the side that doesn’t pay, as well/at all, and just ask for some creative freedom. It just looks as though you were really struggling to put the print portion of the website together.

Its very realistic. I’m doing it right now. The whole process takes about 1 month.

Wow. Care to expound a little bit on your background and the steps you took to get to where you’re at? :mrgreen:

Why would anyone want to leave Moncton! I have to remind you, there are no Tim Hortons in NYC. heh.

Seriously though, you will need to be sponsored as far as I know. There are some career domains which are allowed to apply for a US work permit by Canadians under NAFTA, but I don’t believe that graphic design is one. I would suggest looking this up on google though. The info is buried in some legalise NAFTA stuff.

I would suggest contacting places that you would like to work at in NYC with some samples and telephone calls. If you could arrange a trip, you should probably arrange to meet some of the interested firms in person. You may want to especially hit the big firms because they will be more likely to have an HR department that handles all the paper work, and small firms may be put off to going through the process.

OR, marry a Yank.