How we moved from Canada to the US 

This is in my experience in my own words.

In 2018 my husband and I had a small RV Repair shop in Langley, BC for 5 years and normally our income taxes were approximately $3500/year but that year our accountant advised us that it was going to be $12,700.

Obviously, we were super shocked and knew that the head of our country thought small business owners were ‘tax cheats’. 

After having his fit of fury we sat down to discuss our options. We knew the writing on the wall and figured our country wasn’t headed into the direction we were seeking.

We had money to pay for our house rent, commercial rent, and one or two trips to Las Vegas each year. James asked “How about we move to Las Vegas?”  

I immediately responded “Hell’s to the yeah!” as we were living in White Rock but I was needing a change and well, men go where the money is.

We both got on our ipads and I looked up housing and he looked up commercial leases.

So after we decided that Las Vegas was the city we wanted to live in based on size and that most of our suppliers were there we were going to be crazy and try to move there.

We called Visa Place in Toronto, paid them $4500 and Danielle was our immigration lawyer. We knew we were going to do whatever she said to move our business to Las Vegas.

There are 30 different types of Visas to get to the US and ours is called an E2 Investor Visa. The minimum requirement is $50,000 US. You do got give this money to Homeland Security, no that is our money to invest in our business in the US.

We worked very hard saving our money for one year to get $70,000 Canadian or $50,000 US.

Homeland Security will not approve online businesses, businesses run from the home, consultants, Real estate agents, or a business you have no idea about.

They want small businesses where you do not need any employees at first like our RV Repair shop, Ace of Spades Custom RV and Repair or an ice cream shop in Florida or a photography store or a small brick and mortar business. You get the idea.

Our friends have a different Visa called E1 as he is a relatively famous Canadian metal sculpturer but that Visa is quite different than ours.

The H1 Visa is for larger businesses that require 10 employees at the get go. 

Getting the E2 visa is baby steps: I had to gather 120 documents for our lawyer but it was done over 9 months for us. This is NOT scary or cumbersome at all. Your lawyer just tells you what they need and you get it. That’s it. 

Since looking at various websites and being totally confused on how to start a business in Nevada our lawyer recommended we contact a business called My Corporation to do this for us. Their site is mycorporation.com

We paid them $2000 to organize everything: they registered our business license with the Secretary of Nevada, got our fake virtual address on the strip, got another company to organize our LLC operating agreement and other necessary filings. Random websites may have outdated or incorrect information so this was well worth it and super easy. 

Since we now had a registered legal, business in Nevada the next step was to start our website but not register it on Google until we were ready for business, which for us was one year later September 2019. 

I bought our domain name and website from Bluehost, in the US…not a Canadian domain. This is VERY important when people are trying to find your business in your state. 

While we were doing the website, researching, gathering documents for Danielle we took a 9 day trip to Las Vegas September 2018 to check out apartment complexes and commercial spaces. I coincidently had Canadian friends who had a condo in Vegas and we stayed there.

We also paid our lawyer another $3000 so I think it was $7500 to get to Vegas. Some lawyers charge by the hour and some a flat fee. We choose the flat fee. 

Now, we do not smoke, drink, or gamble. We’re entrepreneurs in our 50’s focused on our business. If people come here to drink or gamble Vegas will chew you up and spit you out. You move to the US to work not sit back and vacation.

With the E2 Visa you CANNOT get a green card or permanent residency. What people do is have their business open indefinitely. The renewal is every 5 years which I will talk about later. When we’re older we will hire more people and probably still work forever just like everyone else depending on the economy…

So now we’re into March 2019 and we find out from Danielle that we have to lease a commercial space in Las Vegas and start investing (spending) money there. We’re putting the cart before the horse? We’re spending $70,000 in Vegas before even being approved by the consulate?

Oh yes, they mean business…like right now…When you get approved you must be ready to go, like packing up your shop, getting the apartment and booking flights ready to go.

We got online and found a developer named Jordan who hadn’t even started building our commercial building yet but he was just breaking ground and he approved us for a 4000 square foot shop in South West Las Vegas.

This conversation was on a Thursday and we flew in that Sunday and signed a 7 year lease on our current lease space that Monday. We handed over a money order for $15,000 US to Jordan and went back to BC.

We also invested in an awesome $12,000 US trailer mover that still works perfectly.  

And then get this…we wired $50,000 to Stewart Title to some lady named ‘Linda’ whom we still have never met to this day. Again, this is our money to open our business.

This sounds so unbelievable as I type this but yes, its baby steps and you just do what you need to do to accomplish your dreams and get your life going again. Even in 2018 we were just paying taxes and not getting ahead any time soon.

Now we had given our 120 documents to Danielle, spoke to her on the phone a couple of times, invested our money, paid another $600? in processing fees and waited. I think we were approved 6 weeks later contingent on the interview.

We ASSUMED we just had to go to the American Consulate in Vancouver but NO…we had to go to the consulate in Toronto FFS! There is only 2 E2 visa approval people in Canada and they work in Toronto. Coincidentally, I’m from Barrie so we stayed with my family at the lake house. Hopefully, we were having a celebration party after the interview…

We fly into Toronto in June 2019 (if you end up going through this process we highly recommend getting approved in the summer so you don’t have to deal with inclement weather).

We get up early, drive into gongshow downtown Toronto, get yelled at trying to park and its pouring rain. We go through security and they escort us into the E2 Visa area (like we were important) like our life depended on it, beside the people trying to get visitor visas.

Our hearts were pounding so hard for the 20 minute wait we were surprised we didn’t see our hearts actually pounding. We just spent all of our money, gave it to Linda and Jordan and this one E2 visa approval person was going to decide our entire lives in 10 minutes.    

It was around noon and the 30 year old guy looked like he was in a hurry to go on a lunch date or something, had his coat on.

He previously reviewed our file and asked us questions like what the business was about, what we actually did and general security questions. Then he told us to go over to the other desk to pay for our passports. OMG, does this mean we’re approved? Why are we going over to the passport girl if we’re not approved? Our hearts were really pounding now. 

I gave her our credit card and we paid I think it was $100 for them to put the E2 Visa sticker in our passports and they couriered them to us in BC, our Canadian address which is mom’s house.

We scurried back to our 30 year old and right away he said we were approved!

You cannot believe the emotions that run through your body: relief, shock, happiness. It was even better than my first wedding.

We got the hell out of the building with that “Get in the car!” feeling before he changed his mind. The rain stopped and we got lost getting out of downtown Toronto and drove back to Barrie.   

Right away we stopped by my friend’s restaurant and told them the whole story. Her boyfriend said “You’re the type of guy that throws a ball over the fence and goes right after it”. We had a huge family dinner and back to BC.

Danielle said that if we get a yellow form instead of the E2 Visa stamped passport then they need more information. I got my passport but James got the yellow form. They wanted his social media accounts…I guess to see what kind of person he is. He NEVER comments on anything, ever so they had no problem with him. A month later of total stress we received his stamped passport.

So now its July 2019 and we flew down to Las Vegas to get our beautiful 2 bedroom apartment which coincidently, is right next door to our new shop. We highly recommend renting a reasonably priced apartment when figuring out your new city instead of buying a home or renting a super expensive home.

In August we packed up our shop and started worrying about the border crossing with 3 semi’s of all of our stuff. We hired Pacific Customs Brokers Inc to help us get everything to our new home.

This was a cluster but still doable. We had to pack and list everything that was going over the border and had to distinguish if each item was from North America or China. James and our guy, Eric figured out the values of each item and we sent him the list and which semi each pallet was going in. 

We gave away, sold or threw out a lot of items but kept our favorite furniture pieces and kept all of our machinery, tools and equipment. You do NOT want to have to buy your necessary equipment when you get to the US. You must be ready to unpack and start working.

James was so stressed during this period that he lost 17 lbs as 3 random guys come and pick up your life and hopefully you see your stuff again 3 days later. This cost was $8200. All his tools and equipment he has bought since he was 14 years old…

The owner of our trucking company said in 30 years he only had to open his trucks at the border twice and they only check the semi’s if there’s something suspicious in the paperwork. 

It’s September 2019, we unpacked our semi’s and 20 pallets of business equipment and had no money. You literally spend everything just to get to the US and have to start working your but off when all you want is a vacation. 

This is the time you get your appointment at the DMV for your drivers licenses. You have to check your states DMV requirements and be mentally prepared to go there several times to get this. You have time because you have no work anyway.

This is the time when you register your website with Google and hire someone on Fivver to do your SEO. This $200 is well worth the money. Since we were broke we could not pay our December commercial rent and called Colliers. They said the $15,000 deposit is for this time when we cannot afford rent so it was no problem to take it out of that.

You must also get your business on Google Maps and start putting your 150 photos of your business. 

Very important: when you leave Canada you leave your credit card dept as you’ve left the country and a collection agency will purchase it for 3 cents on the dollar and you have no contract or signature with them. 

You have ZERO credit in the US so get yourself a credit card in each personal name to start your credit. Capital One gave us a credit card with a $500 limit and that’s a great start.  

Very important: you apply for your Social Security Number as soon as you arrive and it states “For Work Authorization Only”. This means its like a HALF of a SSN. It’s for working at your own business, not any other business and you cannot buy anything like a vehicle with this.

For example: we wanted to buy a truck last year. Our credit rating was 750 but our SSNs get red flagged and if applying online you get denied in 2 seconds. Then you phone the company/bank and the millennial follows the rules and just says your denied and does not want to make an exception because you’re a great Canadian who pays their bills, etc etc.  

To get your vehicles registered you need: proof of ownership, a lien search or letter from the bank advising your vehicle is paid off, your new vehicle insurance, a VIN inspection right at the DMV, a smog inspection (was $20, now $29), the DOT form and the border form called 7501 entry summary from the border patrol at the border.

We had good driving records so we each got 6 star great insurance rates. Bring your driving records with you from your Canadian insurance company.

Now, what’s also super important is getting business credit because you will want to expand your business eventually. You do not need to spend a lot of money to do this. We pay $10/month for Ecredable.com that shows our commercial rent and bills are all paid for giving us 87/100 credit rating.  

The next step is Google Ads. In January 2020 Larry from the marketing company HIBU walked into our business and literally saved our business. We gave him $450 to get us on all the local directories and rank us higher on Google. It takes a month to kick in so our phone started ringing in February just in time for lockdowns.

We were in the category of an essential business of RV Repair just like auto repair shops so we kept open the whole time and the covid cops did not bother us. Plus if the Ferrari racing team near our shop was still open then we were for sure staying open.

By April 1, 2020 everyone wanted to get away from people so our business basically exploded with RV repair jobs and since new RVs were a 2 year wait we got lots of RV customization jobs. 

We have been consistently booked and working since then. Are we rich? no but we pay all of our bills and moved to a luxury apartment complex 2 blocks away and go to the strip any time we want. Plus we got a lot of company so this means we have taken helicopter rides to the grand canyon, rode camels, swim with sharks and stingrays, hike in red rocks and slot canyons and camped in Palm Springs.

We highly recommend have 10 year passport renewals (not 5) and a Nexus pass for each person. This makes the process easier and faster.

We also have to leave the country every 2 years and get a I-94 stamp in your passport. Border control wants to see that you still have your business. The first time we went into Mexico which was hellish so we recommend going back to Canada. If there is some glitch you want to be with family, not in Tijuana.

Plus, if you have your Nexus pass you don’t have to wait in the huge line-up at the border. Even better is that we found out since the border documents you leaving and coming back we can just go to border control at the Las Vegas airport and he can record the I-94. Now we don’t have to deal with those cranky border guys at Peace Arch anymore.

As I write this I’m at my mother in law’s house. It’s April of 2024 and we just got approved for our 5 year Visa renewal! In December we switched law firms to Pilkington Law firm in Guelph and coincidentally Danielle moved law firms and she’s our lawyer again!

After paying them $5000 US and forwarding another 50 documents they got us approved. There is a 92% E2 visa renewal approval rate. You just have to prove you are a working business still making money. Then they make you come back to Canada, send your approval form, visa passport photos, and passports to Toronto, they put the new visa in and courier it back to us. Danielle said it takes about a week so we are here in the rain waiting.  

We used to also pay approximately $20,000/year for GST/HST in Canada for parts and labor and here we pay $5000/year for taxes on parts only. And NO state income tax. Our income taxes are usually $3500/year.

This story sounds atrocious but we did it, are extremely happy we have left Canada in its entirety with no ties whatsoever. This is my experience and we’re happy going back to Las Vegas in 33 degree weather and lay at the pool.

If you’re so inclined, check out our most recent build: we took a VIP party bus and turned it into a luxury modern $800,000 RV.