25 karma · joined July 27, 2012
I haven't used a compass since I was a kid and at that time declination where I live was 21 degrees. Now it's down to 13 degrees. I had no idea it changed that much.
When I was switching jobs I encountered a handful of companies that would consider H1B holders but would not consider TNs because they simply had no experience hiring TNs. I didn't fit their hiring pipeline.
I had some banks give me a rough time when seeking financing for buying a house, who were not familiar with TNs. Wells Fargo were willing to work with me.
Another issue I experienced (I think, my memory is fuzzy on this one) is because various members of my family had passports that expired on different dates (kids get a 3 year passport only), the TN and TD (dependent) were only granted up until the expiry of the passport, so less than 3 years that a TN could be granted for. To avoid costly plane flights I used to drive down to the Mexican border where the border folks were nice enough to renew my TN/TDs.
The US/Mexico border folks don't get many Canadians entering there so they aren't really set up for it. One time they erroneously gave me a Mexican TN authorization which I didn't learn about until I went back there to renew after switching jobs and the border person basically told me to get lost because I had a valid visa. I had to do some quick talking because even though I had a stamp, the visa was invalid because it is up to me to ensure I have valid work authorization.
The website for Canadians entering the US for TN purposes is clearly geared to Canadians entering from the Canadian side of the US, but doesn't explicitly say Canadians shouldn't enter from the Mexican side. It worked out in the end but no guarantees.
My advice: if the company is offering to switch you over to H1B, take them up on it. My employer originally said they would apply to switch me over to an H1B, but when it came time to actually do it, they no longer had budget to do it. This eventually became important because in Texas it affects the ability of your kids to apply for (state?) student loans (I'm fuzzy on this one). I ended up moving back to Canada to be with my kids while they go through university.
What could happen is that once the US has manufacturing capacity it decides to tariff imported chips, causing your country to retroactively do the same. This is decades away, and the US has a problem sourcing chips it can trust right now, so it's not currently on the radar. It's not something I'm going to worry about.
Viewed through a pessimistic eye, the US finally is realizing that its arms production critically relies on chip production and it can't says its chips are US made when selling arms on the market. A change in mindset like this typically takes a generation and so even though this change in weapons really happened around the turn of the century, the people in power have mostly retired and the new generation now understands this reality.
Then you have the issue about a filling station.
Then considering taxes on fuel are nearing 50% of fuel cost, you're right around where this conversion gets you. (I don't know if NG at the pump would be taxed)
Electric solutions work around the issue of fuel cost and filling locations nicely. Electricity is cheap and basically available in every garage. If you have a garage. Having a hybrid electric works around the issues of limited range and cold weather.
Less efficient, much cheaper, and hopefully less environmentally harmful.
I like what this solution offers - a chance for someone like me who will probably never buy a new car to easily modify an older car to run at least partially off electricity.