TakeruK

I'm pretty sure SSHRC rules are very similar to NSERC, and you definitely don't have to indicate that you want to take the SSHRC to the US when you are applying for it. The only requirement is that you decline the higher level (if you get it) and take the lower one instead, and that you have finished at least 1 degree in Canada.

Got a letter from NSERC in the mail today, it was dated March 30, and postmarked April 3! CGS-D for Physics/Astronomy, but I will be declining it and taking a PGS-D instead since I'm going out of Canada!

You're welcome! I've heard many great things about people who live in the two apartment complexes owned by Queen's (John Orr tower on west campus, it's a 5 minute bus ride to main campus; or An Clachan which is closer to grocery stores but a 20 minute bus ride). They are generally cheaper than equivalent level of housing in their areas, so it's a good deal, I've heard.

In other threads, I've been against agreements between a department and a student that state students cannot work at all if they are receiving a stipend. But this case is a little bit different -- firstly, this is an agreement that you have with the fellowship sponsor (SSHRC) directly, not the department. In addition, SSHRC awards allow students to work part-time, up to 10 hours a week. So some questions for you: 1. Why is this summer job so important to you? I'm not sure what your career goals are, but if you want a full time job in your chosen field, you will have to give up this summer job eventually. That is, are you thinking that you will be at this summer job in 2013 as well? 2. How much more money does the job pay compare to 1/3 of SSHRC (which is just under $6000 at MA level). The point of a SSHRC is to provide you with money to pay for tuition and living expenses so that you don't have to worry about full-time work so you would be taking unfair advantage of the SSHRC program to be working full time instead of your studies. 3. Will you still finish your MA on time if you only have a few hours a day to work on your courses? If you end up taking an extra semester, will the additional cost outweigh any extra income from the summer? If you are not sure about continuing in academia and want to keep your recall rights, which is very reasonable, you should take the full time job in the summer. But, I think the right thing to do is to decline the last installment of SSHRC (I'm not sure how you would do this, but probably notify your school's financial award office that you will be no longer eligible for SSHRC because you took a full time position). If you want to commit to academia, then you will probably have to give up this job. But maybe you can work at this job part time (under 10 hrs/week)? As I said above, if you want a career in your field, you should be trying to find work in that field anyways. Easier said than done, I know! If you know for sure you don't want to go to academia, then you can probably risk getting caught and getting blacklisted from SSHRC. You will probably have to pay the summer portion back but it sounds like the summer job pays more than SSHRC so you should be okay financially. Of course, many people will consider this an unethical thing to do, and I would agree with them. But, realistically, you can probably keep it a secret* and the real question is whether your conscience is okay with it. (*I mean that if you get caught, and you leave academia, you can probably keep the fact that your SSHRC was revoked a secret from future employers etc. I don't know how easy it would be to keep the fact that you're working FT a secret.) My point is that whatever decision you make will have consequences and you will have to pick which consequences/risks you are willing to live with.

If you are 100% sure you want to be in the other program, then you should withdraw from the first school and accept the other school's offer. If you do it before April 15, it's a lot easier for you because you don't need to get a "release" from your first school before the second school accepts your acceptance. But as others said, you can still do it after April 15. There is never a legal obligation to stick with whatever program you're in. However, if you withdraw from a program after you already received financial support for it, you may have to pay some or all of it back. Withdrawing now will also minimize impact on other students -- the school will be able to offer your spot to another student on the waitlist. If you wait too long, your spot might not be filled and you could end up causing a student in the waitlist to not be able to attend the school of their choice.

Hi, Tuition is indeed ~$6400, but there are also fees that you have to pay which is around ~$800/year (including the health and dental plan, so if you are covered by a spouse or parent(s), then you can opt out and save ~$200). The fees cost is something no one mentioned to me until I got here! Books and supplies depends on your program, but it seems really unlikely that it would cost $2000/year (unless this is something your department has estimated for you). A one bedroom place near campus is probably going to cost 800-900 per month, usually includes heat and water. I pay about $30-$35/month for electricity but if you live in an old uninsulated place, it could be over $100 in the winter. Internet is about $60/month, TV is about $50 if you choose to have it (we don't). Don't forget your phone or cell phone plans. We also have a renters' insurance policy, which is about $15/month. So Rent+Utilities could cost you up $12,000 a year. If you share a 2 bedroom place, you could probably do it for 8000-9000 a year. My wife and I spend about 7000/year in food (groceries and eating out) and supplies (toilet paper, soap, laundry, etc.). I guess your food+misc budget would cover all these things for one person, if that is what you meant by misc. I'm not sure what you have budgeted for transportation. Part of the $800 in fees you have to pay include a ~$50 fee for the bus system. You can just use your student card and ride all the buses in Kingston for free. The bus system is terribly lacking though -- it's okay if you are commuting and can plan your schedule around the bus, but it's not an effective way to get around if you are shopping or going out etc. (And they don't run very late either!). If that budget is for a car, then I think it's a bit low -- my 2002 vehicle costs me and my wife about $2500/year in gas and insurance and upkeep. Finally, you should also think about costs of going back home to visit friends/family if you want to do that. Not sure where you live so this could be relatively cheap or considerably expensive! In total, the expenses for both my wife and I is about 36,000 per year, including my tuition and school supplies cost (it was that much last year and it's on track to be the same this year). I think the cost for one person would be around 2/3 to 3/4 of two people, which is about 24000-27000, so your estimate is probably ballpark in the right range. My wife isn't a student, and she works full time, so we probably indulge ourselves a bit more than a typical student budget though. Also, is your scholarship the only source of income? Will you make money from TA work as well? For first year grad students, you may qualify for the Graduate Entrance Tuition Award, worth about $6200 (unless this was already a part of your quoted 22,000 stipend). If your overall question is whether 22,000/year is enough to live on in Kingston, then I think the answer is yes, you can make it work if you budget accordingly. Maybe you will have to give up a few luxuries, but you can definitely afford to live in Kingston due to the relatively low cost of living here, despite the fact that Queen's has one of the highest graduate tuition in Canada!

A few more things to consider as well: - Mortgages aren't an automatic thing. Do you have the right credit rating/history to get a good interest rate? Will your family be able to cosign to help you get a good rate? - You might also need to take out mortgage insurance, which could also increase your costs - As others pointed out, a $60k home in an area with $1000/mo rent is suspicious. I think, realistically, your actual monthly cost when buying will actually be higher than renting an equivalent place. But, you will likely recoup some of the cost when you end up selling. Don't forget all the fees related to selling a house too! When is it a good idea to buy a house? It would depend on each person of course, but personally, I would only consider it if there were two incomes, e.g. a spouse (I guess you could buy with a friend, but it's a pretty serious investment!).

Congratulations!!! This sounds like an excellent opportunity. To answer your question, YES! Actually, reference letters form NASA researchers may end up as your strongest reference letters, especially if this is the first time you are doing full-time research work. NASA researchers could also be well known in their field -- although a well known tenured professor is probably the ideal letter writer, they are not the only choice. You might already know this, but the only reference letters taken seriously are those written by your research supervisors (I don't necessarily agree, but I think it's the reality). I definitely agree that although career advisors and professors are very encouraging of students to apply outside of "traditional routes", the reality is that few schools are willing to take a chance on these students!

They don't HAVE to follow this rule. However, many Universities do have some official policy to allow for pregnant graduate students. My current University, Queen's (in Kingston, ON) just a few years ago created such a policy, but only for PhD students The standard policy is you can take up to 1 year off without affecting your scholarship or student status. You won't pay tuition during this year off, and all of your awards are deferred by one year without penalty. Also, the year off does not count as one of your years of guaranteed funding (if any exist) and your PhD committee would not count this year as a year you worked on your PhD. So, in effect, it's literally like putting the pause button on your school, and returning where you left off a year ago, in terms of paperwork! This is for your student status. There may be other employment related benefits for your work as a TA, TF, or RA. If you are unionized, you may get additional benefits (for example, at Queen's, you are entitled to take maternity leave in the middle of a TA contract and still get paid the rest of your contract, although this will count as one your terms of guaranteed TAships). By the way, my wife and I are planning to start a family while I'm doing my PhD (in the US). The nominal plan is to start trying in year 3 (after coursework is done and I am well into my project). Like a poster above, I only recently realised that the US standards are much lower (I don't think students get leave at all, and the standard in California is only 12 weeks !!). We will figure something out though. Fortunately other student parents at the school have told me they all had good experiences with the faculty etc. Good luck also!!

I think you can improve your GRE vocabulary quite a lot in a few months by rote memorization. I've forgotten almost all the extra words I've learned now, so it's true that you can't truly improve your vocab in a few months, but you can at least know it for the test. Not the ideal way to learn words, but the GRE is not an ideal way to screen for grad school aptitude either!

Although being married may mean one of you is eligible to be a dependent on the other's visa, I don't think you HAVE to do this. I know some married student couples who each have their own F-1 or J-1 visas.

Ah, thanks for clarifying! I think the two year requirement is before you can get a "immigrant visa", such as a H-1B, L, or applying for US Permanent Residency. That is, they only check to make sure you've spent a total of 2 years in Canada if you try to apply to an immigrant visa. J-1s and F-1s don't fall under this category, as far as I know! Generally, international students choose F-1 over J-1 if they aren't bringing anyone with them, and even some married couples choose F-1 if they want to stay in the US indefinitely (maybe career prospects in their home country aren't so good for example).

That sounds about right! On Verbal, I got 630/800 (91%) which I was really really happy about (my goal was to 75%)!! I was lucky to get a lot of words that I studied for. On Quant, I got 800/800 (94%), but I had to guess the very last question on the adaptive computer test. Analytic writing, I got 4.5/6, which was the minimum I was aiming for, so I can't complain. Probably should have worked harder on that part though, but the general GRE didn't matter very much to the programs I were applying to.

Ah okay, I think understand your point now! So we can think of our "time/energy budget" as being split into a "free time account" and "work time account", and that the hours in one "account" cannot be used in the other. So if we now only talk about use of time out of the "work time account", we can avoid mixing up having a life vs. working a second job. So I still see no reason to say that 100% of the "work time account" has to be spent on PhD work. This is probably necessary for students who want to be a leader in their field and it's definitely in the best interests of the student's career (and their supervisors/departments). But why does the student have to strive to be the best they can be? There isn't room for every grad student to become leaders in their field -- some grad students I know don't want tenured positions at all. They would prefer something with less responsibility, for example. The amount of hours in the "work time account" depends on the person, so maybe for some people, making "satisfactory progress" means spending 100% of their working hours on their PhD. But if one already meets the "satisfactory progress" condition, and still have "work hours" left, they should be free to choose to spend it on whatever work they wish to do.

I suppose funding packages work very different in the US then, and that will be a change for me next fall. But, my visa status will not let me work anyways, so I guess it won't really matter for me, personally. If I was an American and my funding contract had a no outside work option, and I felt that I absolutely needed the work, I wouldn't go behind their back, but I would let them know my intentions and see what they do. But although I do want to argue that we should be able to do whatever we want outside our "work hours", I personally would want to spend more time on my PhD! But it really bothers me that schools offer a funding package and then expect you to work as much as possible (while maintaining a healthy life) in order to just make "satisfactory progress". It bothers me that it seems like TA assignments in many places have no real job protections. For example, your supervisor could make you work as many hours as they wanted. My current TAships all have set number of hours, I get paid extra if I work additional hours, we get overtime pay if we had to e.g. mark an exam on Sundays, we get sick leave, conference leave, bereavement leave, and if we take maternity leave in the middle of a contract, we get paid the remainder of the contract. I tend to work up to 10% more hours than my contract and not say anything about it since I enjoy my work as a TA and I want to take the time to fairly grade my students' work / prepare for labs etc. But just because I care about my job doesn't mean I don't care about working rights. I feel that schools know we want that valuable teaching experience so they take advantage of us by offering us that experience without pay, knowing that we want both the teaching experience and to gain approval of the faculty. My RAship has less benefits (RAs are not unionized here) but we still have contract hours, which the number of hours we are expected to work (~20/week) to make "satisfactory progress". If we choose to work more, that's our own choice because it's in our own best interests to do the best project possible, or if we want to finish earlier etc. That is, if one chooses to devote all their time to research (inside of outside activities), then they should be getting ahead in their research, not just making minimum progress! I think the idea that you should only have time for "reasonable leisure" and your studies is an unreasonable demand that schools have on their students. Graduate students should be treated like other workers, not acolytes devoted to research for our masters. I want to raise a family, spend time with my wife, etc. after finishing up the "busy" years of coursework and oral exams. So I plan to treat graduate work as an "office job", keeping regular hours, not taking my work home with me, but still working 50-60 hours a week. It's reasonable for students to work on weekends, but that should be an extra thing that a good student is doing, not the minimum level for "satisfactory progress". Unfortunately, I realise that these ideal conditions are pretty much never true and I expect to possibly run into conflicts about this when I start a PhD program next fall. Maybe I will then learn why I am wrong, or maybe I will find a compromise that makes everyone happy. It's just depressing to think about the lack of rights that American grad students seem to have!

For the General GRE, by section: Verbal: I studied word lists for about a month before the test date and I also did practice test questions from random websites and the ETS page. Probably 35-40 hours of work in total. Quantitative: I did 2 sets of practice questions from a sample test I think. My BSc meant I didn't really have to study for this. Analytical Writing: I reviewed all the possible topics (just looked at them) the week before. I wrote a practice essay the night before the exam.

Thanks titration! I didn't know that I would not need to do the interview. Like you said, I couldn't find the info anywhere so I prepared for the worst case possible! Your step by step description is very helpful. I just confirmed my acceptance so I'm not even at step 1 yet! I'm also glad that I won't have to mail my passport anywhere (a friend of mine from another country has to do this whenever he wants to enter the US, but I am definitely glad that I'm Canadian! Hopefully it's not much more complicated for a spouse. Did you choose to go from J-1 to F-1 and/or changed programs? Or did the J-1 "expire" (I thought they were valid longer than just 2 years?)

I don't know anyone who has lived in Skyline. I live in another Homestead building near Kingston Centre (a major bus loop) and I pay less than Skyline -- our rent started at $840 a month for a 1 bedroom. It's also much newer and looks better maintained than Skyline. The price, though, is the increased distance from school. Although it's not too far, but the buses take a REALLY roundabout route and it's a 25 minute commute by bus (my undergrad had a 1+ hour commute though!). I also heard good things about the 2 Queen's-owned apartment buildings (John Orr Tower on West Campus and An Clachan near Kingston Centre). Their prices are MUCH better than equivalent housing for the public and there are several buses between West Campus and Main Campus every 15 minutes at least, because it seems like all bus routes in the area will pass through these 2 points. Also, they are reserved for graduate students/families only, so it's NOT like a dorm (they are actual apartment/condos). Everyone I know who live east of campus is renting from smaller companies/individuals though. I think they are paying much less than Skyline's posted online 1-bedroom rates. My wife wanted somewhere more central since she didn't know where she would find work, and you can get nicer places for less money near Kingston Centre, so we mostly looked around there! Maybe the current grad students in your department can help you out though.

Maybe someone can explain why departments are against their students having a side job? Note: for International students, we are also forbidden to work off campus because of visa regulations, but that is a US Immigration issue. But for American/domestic students, why can't a student work on their free time if they like to? Is it because the school wants the student to devote 100% of their time to their work/studies? But that is unreasonable, a students' free time should be spent the way they like! I guess the situation could be different in Canada? Here, even our major government fellowship say that we are allowed to work up to 10 hours a week (most of this is taken up by TA work though). Graduate students do private tutoring all the time to make some extra cash. I know some people who do tutoring almost full time (20+ hours a week) during midterm and finals season (and makes up for it during the weeks before/after). Other students are on varsity sports teams, or do less formal sports and extracurricular activities. Some are also involved in student government or serve on the Executive of the school's TA labour union (some of these are "paid"/honorarium positions). The bottom line is that why is it okay for students to spend 10-20 hours a week doing things like play sports, knit, watch tv, but it's not okay if they take a part time job? Maybe things are really different, because someone above mentioned that they had the chance to be a TA for free! I can't see how it's ethical for departments to ask their students to work for free AND also ask them not to do what they want in their spare time. I can understand not being allowed to work because you are not a citizen of the country. But as long as you are making satisfactory progress on your research work and studies, which is what your stipend is paying you for, you've completed all obligations to them and they should have no say in how you spend your free time.

Hi Blurry, The numbers that University of Arizona asked me to show were about the same too, and that was for a F-1 visa (default email that went to all prospectives). However, remember that this INCLUDES the funding that the University is offering you, and sometimes this number INCLUDES the tuition (which may be waived for you too). So, first check if the 20,000 for yourself includes tuition or not. If it does, and your tuition is waived, make sure you include the tuition waiver as part of your income. Secondly, the J-1 visa eligibility is a "significant" (or other vague word) portion of your living expenses must be covered by non-personal or non-family funds. Some schools interpret this as "at least 50%" of estimated expenses must come from something other than your bank account. So, you basically just have to show that your stipend (+ tuition waiver if applicable) is equal to at least half of the number they are quoting. This might not always be possible, but you could make up the other half if you can get a statement from your bank showing that you have the money for the difference, or if you could get a parent to lend you some money to put into your bank account for a month to have it appear on your bank statement. Even more extreme, some people have taken out a loan elsewhere (or get a friend or family member to do it) in order to have the money show up on the bank statement. I can't personally recommend any of these routes, but I know immigrants such as my parents may have done things like this in the past in order to sponsor their spouses or family members to immigrate to Canada. However, maybe OSU has a different interpretation of the above requirement -- I would ask them and check! The University of Arizona (not known for their friendly immigration laws) told me that they will NOT sponsor me for a J-1 despite the department offering a funding package that was $10K higher than the quoted "estimated living expenses". I think I could have fought them and gotten the DS-2019 since pretty much every other school would have sponsored me if they were offering a TA/RA stipend (or better, a fellowship), but I ended up accepting a different offer anyways. Ironically, compared to cost of living, the Caltech stipend is MUCH lower than Arizona's, but the International Student Program there confirmed that I will 100% receive the DS-2019 and they will sponsor me for a J-1 when it's time to do the paperwork.

When I moved to Kingston for a Fall 2010 start, some current students recommended that I look at apartments run by Homestead Land Holdings. I found that their buildings are generally very nice (a few bad ones though) but could be a bit more pricey. But they do have very nice descriptions on their website (google for Homestead Land Holdings) and they are very good landlords. Because of the high student population, and the constant turnover, there are many bad landlords in Kingston that take advantage of the fact that students tend to move very often. There are a lot of poorly maintained buildings because of this. If you live close enough, you should probably try to visit ~2 months before you want to move and sign a lease in advance. My wife and I visited ~12 places and about 9 of them were really bad!! We felt lucky to find a place that was decent and within our limited budget (although having 2 incomes helped). Another friend of ours didn't find a place until they got here and they were stuck between really bad places or paying a really high rent. And definitely don't sign a lease until you've actually seen the place!! Of course, you may be looking for different things in terms of housing, and maybe we are just more picky. Apparently the area north of Princess St. is not as nice (but it's not so bad unless you go more than a few blocks north of Princess). The area directly north of Queen's is the student ghetto and is filled with noisy undergrads most of the year. Most grad students I know live either slightly north of princess st. or in between downtown and Queen's (i.e. east of campus). Bottom line: All of Ontario has a 2-month notice rule for tenants to vacate. I'd strongly recommend that people visit ~2 months before they plan to move to sign a lease! A lot of undergrads move in (and their families come to help) in Sept. so pretty much all the hotels are booked up in the last 2 weeks of August. Since so many people are trying to move in during Sept 1, it might be a good idea to move August 1 and spend a month getting settled and doing fun things around the area before it gets too cold

Cool, that's interesting to know! And this will be helpful when I am in the US next year. Just to clarify though, in Canada, fellowship money is intended to be enough to both pay tuition and living costs and is not taxable. In addition, similar to your tuition remission credit, we get tax credit for tuition, living costs ($400/month), "textbook costs" ($65/month), and any monthly or yearly bus passes you buy. So with tuition averaging around $6k, and a basic tax-free income exemption of 10k, a full time grad student would have to make more than ~$22k per year in TA/RA ships in order to pay taxes. The average minimum grad student stipend, before tuition, is around $24k, and, for students without external fellowships, is 1/3 TA, 1/3 RA, and 1/3 internal fellowships. So grad students in Canada will generally not pay any taxes and also accumulate tax credits that can be used once you graduate and get a post-doc or other work.

This fall, my wife and I will be Canadians living abroad (I'll be a student but not my wife). We don't have property to rent out but we were also wondering about our classification as "residents of Canada" for tax purposes. Although we don't have property, our TFSA contribution room only increases in years we are residents of Canada so we'll need to know whether we can contribute to our TFSA in 2013. We probably will not have Canadian income to worry about though! But when I checked, it seems like we would still be classified as residents of Canada for tax purposes? I'm using the information here: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/nnrsdnts/cmmn/rsdncy-eng.html -- Although it sounds like you have done these steps and ended up being classified as non-residents? I thought that students who study abroad would still count as Canadian residents (I'm going to set my "permanent/home address" to my parents' home and my "temporary address" to wherever I will be living). From another post about taxes, it sounds like you entered the US in Fall 2011, so you would definitely still be a Canadian resident for the 2011 tax year (since you presumably resided in Canada until Fall 2011, which is more than 183 days/6 months). So at least you won't have to worry about this Canadian tax payment for another year or so. This could give you time to plan for this upcoming payment -- perhaps increase rent if you get a new tenant to help offset these costs? Under US tax laws, F-1 and J-1 visa holders (and their dependents) are NOT classified as US residents for tax purposes for the first 5 years of their time in the US. After 5 years, the standard residency rule applies (which is similar to Canada's -- you have to reside in the US for ~183 days / year), so you probably will not be counted as a US resident for tax purposes until your 6th or 7th year in the US. So we might be "resident-less" for tax purposes (thus having no tax benefits) while we are doing graduate work then! =( Thanks for the warning, hope something works out for you!!

Most major Canadian graduate level scholarships are paid to the student without any requirement that we spend it on any specific expense. The money for the award goes to the University that the student attends and that University's financial office then pays the student (along with any other University awards). Sometimes, if the value of the award is, say, $15k, the government provides $10k with the expectation that the school provides the other $5k. There are sometimes stipulations on the maximum amount of TA work you are allowed to do if you win a scholarship though, since some of these scholarships are meant to cover your "wage" for research work. There is no "tuition" component because pretty much every graduate student has to pay tuition in Canada (however, our stipends are set at a value to keep this fact in mind). Some schools also have a special award which they might call the "Tuition Award" which is exactly equal to the cost of tuition. But again, in general, the award is paid out to the student first, and then the student pays tuition (although this may happen internally, but our student account will show money going in and out). However, I am pretty sure that the University CANNOT deduct tuition from our (external) scholarships before paying it out to us since they have an obligation to the granting agency to forward the money to us. Scholarships are usually paid at the beginning of each term and that money goes into our bank account and usually we have the choice to either pay the term's tuitions and fees up front, or sign up for an automatic monthly deduction for our convenience. Also, we get our "real work" (TA/RA pay) separately from our scholarships/fellowships. The former is paid by Human Resources department while the latter is paid by the Financial Awards office. Our "real work" pay includes deductions for income tax, Canada Pension Plan, Employment Insurance, Union dues, everything that a "real person" is subject to. We get pay stubs for the "real work" too and are paid on an hourly basis. For TA work, this is important because all our TA contracts specify an exact number of hours and if we are asked to work more, we get paid more. However sometimes the RA supervisor decides to pay $5000 and then that number is divided by some arbitrary number of hours/week to generate some arbitrary hourly rate. Finally, when a school makes you an offer they usually say the total value of all your funding sources as well as how much is coming from TA work, RA work (i.e your supervisor), internal scholarships, and top-ups to external scholarships. They will also give you an estimate of how much you're expected to pay in tuition, so that you know what your "take home" pay will be.

Just a note, for comparison: In Canada, we've *recently* (2009 or 2010) made the change so that fellowships and bursaries are no longer considered taxable income if you are a full time student. (Before this change, only the portion above $5000 was taxable income). We pay income tax only on RA and TA work. I noticed that many of my US funding packages just simply indicate an overall funding amount, but in Canada your stipend is clearly divided into its sources. I think it's reasonable to have your non-work income (e.g. fellowship/scholarships/bursaries) be non-taxable. Doing your coursework is not "work" like any other person, and it's not really "school" like undergrad was. It's more of an apprenticeship since we are required to learn this stuff in order to do our job! However, RA work and TA work is actual work like "regular people" so it makes sense to tax that. However, in Canada, there are plenty of tax credits available to students (every dollar paid in tuition and fee is an extra dollar you can earn as tax-free income, plus $465/month of tax credits for living expenses meant to cover other costs such as books). So the standard student in Canada will indeed not pay any tax on their stipend, unless you are TA-ing or RA-ing a whole bunch!! So, I can't really sign your petition since I am not an American, but I hope the information about your neighbours up north can help you!