We had some issues crop up with the plan for me to move back east. When I asked my company, they had some concerns about my moving to Canada, and New Brunswick in particular. Being a business, two major things came up: the need for business licenses and the need for new payroll services and benefits.
While we were able to pass on some information to Human Resources about this (namely that New Brunswick doesn’t require business licenses) it wasn’t enough. The company feels that the expense to check on all of this, including lawyer fees, payroll fees, time spent setting up new procedures within the company, etc., are not worth the business expenses for one person’s request to move.
However, there was a bit of a miscommunication with the HR department. While I had expressed that I wanted to be as close as possible to New Brunswick and my fiancée, my HR rep had only heard “New Brunswick or Maine” (the only state I mentioned as part of the “as close as possible” scenario). She thought her saying no was the end of it, and I thought she was still checking on other locations.
So, I brought it up again when I found we had an office in Boston. She was surprised, for the reasons above. However, once she understood my reasoning for wanting to be as close to my fiancée as possible, she then knew what to check.
It turns out that the company has business licenses and payroll/benefits support in both New Hampshire and Massachusetts, with an actual office in Boston. Since I have already cleared the hurdle of requesting permission from the groups/managers with whom I work on the work-from-home issue, all I need to do at this point is find a place to live in either NH or MA, move, and inform HR and Payroll on which date I will be effective from the new address. They would prefer that I try to correspond that with the start of a payroll cycle, if at all possible.
While this is obviously not the best solution, it gets me close enough to New Brunswick that I can drive rather than fly to see my honey. And she can visit me, too. It would be down to a few hundred miles instead of well over three thousand. We could visit on the weekends, holidays, and vacations much easier (yes, I grant that weather may conflict at times). It also allows us to further consolidate our resources, see each other much more often, and work on the immigration side of things with the lawyer under better circumstances.
I am still working on another potential solution on my end; a friend’s company has no issues with me working from Canada. They would like to hire me; however, they have some issues they must resolve before this can be accomplished. It may not fit into my time-frame for moving to the east coast. I am meeting with her regularly and hoping to hear some good news soon.
Another potential is on the New Brunswick side. Liz is going to provide my resume to her aunt. The aunt’s company seems to be in need of technical writers often and, if they like me, there may be another way to get all the way to New Brunswick on a sooner time frame. So I need to bring my resume up to speed and get it to Liz. Maybe I can interview while I am there on vacation? Or, I may take one step to NH/MA and work for my present company while looking for a more long-term employment solution in New Brunswick.
The big concern for both of us right now is getting some or all of the distance separating our relationship to disappear. As you can see, we are actively working on three options right now, and one of them, while not ideal, allows for a very immediate time-frame for moving, which would be nice. A few hours drive over an all-day, multiple plane excursion would certainly go a long way toward helping us move forward in the relationship.
Hopefully this answers any questions people have about where we stand on the move and shows that we are working on multiple angles on getting me to Canada and to my honey.
