Come to Canada, the weed is legal
this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
85 points (92.1% liked)
Asklemmy
47848 readers
811 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
Canada is certainly tempting if only on the basis that I would be closer to my family, and my family closer to me. And the recent election results were very relieving. Weed is legal here too though, haha.
the election results are much closer than you'd think. Popular vote had only a couple % lead. Everyone had to abandon voting for their preferred small party (e.g. greens, BQ, or NDP) to get liberals enough seats to beat the conservatives.
Yeah we're far from perfect, but for better or worse we would be the smallest culture shock (it would kinda feel like moving to a new state).
Reading the list, NZ does pretty well... Right to the end...
- good treatment of mentally ill, homeless and impoverished people......
We don't do that here
load more comments
(2 replies)
The Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia have all those things and people tend to speak English really well.
As for the 'No racism' part, skip the Netherlands. One of the current governing parties is openly racist and can even be considered fascist. Also, we have a huge housing crisis, so finding a place to live may be challenging.
European racism is casual compared to even everyday American racism, even considering the likes of AfD
Yes, I've had this suspicion awhile. Last year an ex-coworkerif mine was quoting the disproportionate crime rate among black people statistics at me and then leveled up into saying Africa is such a desolate place and so only unintelligent people would have stayed there in ancient times, thus meaning there's a selective breeding for unintelligence in that continent. I tried to argue with him about the dubiousness of IQ measures in the first place, let alone IQ heritability, and the deep statistical flaws in the crime rate argument, which don't disentangle race from poverty, but as soon as I tried to make these counterarguments he brushed me off as being "brainwashed" by "lies about equality".
I don't even know what to do about something like that other than just stop talking to the person. What's terrifying is he's otherwise pretty smart, totally fits in with respectable society. Not some stereotypical redneck racist type. I think about that a lot and wonder how many others like him are going totally undetected around me every day.
Yeah, racism in europe is largely stereotypes directed at whole groups that are rooted in truth but grossly overblown, eg "black people just want to commit crime", "arabs want to install sharia", "east asians want to eat your dog", "indians want to outgrow the native population" and other nonsense.
If you ask the huge majority of the people who are saying these things if they interact with people in these groups, they'll say "yes, but they're some of the good ones" not realising it's only a tiny fraction who aren't, but also accepting that race doesn't automatically make you anything.
Comparing that to the US where (from what I'm aware of) there's both "I refuse to even speak to members of xyz race because they're subhuman" and "xyz race needs all the help they can get because they have such a tough time" it seems so hard for individuals to just live a normal life in the US?
load more comments
(1 replies)
Thanks for this counterpoint, that's exactly the sort of thing I think people need to see when thinking about moving (whether emigrating from America or anywhere else) - what's the big problems for people there, what's their equivalent of these problems. Would you mind telling me which party this is so I can do some more research on it?
The party is called the PVV. Their racism is mostly aimed at Muslims, but they're not a big fan of most other groups of immigrants either. Highly educated expats with a work visa largely get a pass, though I think there are some plans to limit their benefits.
I wouldn't rely on Germany to remain stable and democratic these days. The fascists are the strongest party and the new chancellor is an oligarchy stooge of the worst kind.
Things aren't much better in The Netherlands. The PVV is part of the government now. The good news is that having to form a coalition with other parties, seems to have reigned in some of their worst tendencies. Also, their minister of immigration is a total nitwit that can't get any sort of actual policy implemented. If they keep failing to make any kind of progress on this issue, hopefully they won't do as well in the next election.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Privacy, food safety and environmental regulation basically mean Europe, but then Europe has crazy anti-migrant sentiment at this point. So, maybe one of the Scandinavian countries that's still relatively welcoming? Portugal might also track, if you don't mind a country that's economically moribund.
You should instead put energy into your environment and community to make positive changes in your area.
Yes, I've thought about this a lot and do make efforts to improve my environment. But it's disheartening, the vast majority of people in my community are extreme Trump supporters. I know people who threw parties to celebrate the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. It's hard to know how to improve my community in light of that, and in fact it's hard to even want to.
But I am open to suggestions, what do you think are some of the best things I could do to improve my area?
Consider your education and professional background and how well you'll integrate in the workforce of whatever countries you're looking at. Look into general unemployment rates as well as for your specific area of expertise. Can you work remotely?
afghanistan
Toronto and Vancouver are expensive but you definitely get what you pay for
Honestly I don't get what the hype with Toronto is. It costs like Vancouver but with Calgary's weather and general vibes.
Good transit, good jobs, lots of cultural stuff, amazing food. The weather definitely isn't great but it's still consistently a few degrees warmer than Calgary in the winter. Vancouver obviously crushes both of them in this category.
Yeah, similar weather relatively speaking.
I've never been to Toronto, so I can't talk too much trash, but I have been to Vancouver many times and experienced how awesome it is. And, they both cost a similar amount!
load more comments
(1 replies)
Ireland ticks most of your boxes. If any of your grandparents are Irish you can get dual citizenship. English speaking and lots of cultural crossover etc.
Closer for trips back too. Think it's only a 5 hour flight to New York for example.
Just maybe don't practice your Cockney accent while there.... The locals seem to hate that accent, for some reason.
I'm in a similar boat and was considering moving to Ireland or Chile. In the end, I couldn't overcome the immigration requirements, so I decided to just move to a better state within the US. Not sure if it's the best option, but maybe that could also improve things for you.