Car registration for Canadians in the USA

[Langdon Alger]

So, I'm a bit stuck when it comes to registering my car. I'm from Ontario and am in Georgia for grad school. According to Georgia law I have to get a Georgia drivers licence and insurance but don't need to register my car in the state and get plates. However, my Ontario plate sticker is going to expire in a couple of months.  I can't renew my plates in Ontario without Canadian insurance (which I cancelled when I moved to GA). I looked into registering my car and getting Georgia plates (I'll be here for 3-4 more years) but they charge a tax relative to the value of your car when you register for the first time. They estimated mine would be just under $1000. I really can't afford to spend that just to register my car here. Has anyone had a similar situation? 

[TakeruK]

Yes. Most Canadians I know bite the bullet and pay the tax. I live in California where the rules might be a little bit different though. Here, foreign students are considered residents for DMV requirement purposes so we are not even allowed to continue using Ontario plates even if Ontario would let us since California will not allow it. If Georgia does allow it, then maybe you can check with Ontario's Ministry of Transport to see if they have exceptions to the insurance thing if you are temporarily outside of Ontario for school reasons.

 

I guess the only other thing I can say is to check whether they used the correct value for your vehicle when estimating the tax. For a used vehicle, it should be the current value of the car, I think, not the original purchase price.

[Langdon Alger]

Thanks I appreciate it. It's hard to find too many other Canadian students in GA. I've been here for almost a year now and every process I do it seems like I'm the first Canadian to ever do it! 

 

Side note, how are you enjoying California? Do you see yourself starting a career in the US or is your ultimate goal to end up back home?

[TakeruK]

Tough question! I will have to go back home at some point (I'm subject to the 2 year home residency requirement because I am on J-1 with Canadian funding). 

 

All I know for sure is that I want to aim for postdocs in my field and that a lot of what I do require access to telescopes, which US schools have a lot more access to! So I think I will want to do my first postdoc at US schools (I'll use my 36 month Academic Training to extend my J-1 to my postdoc). Beyond that, whether I even stay in academia depends on a lot of things (where I can find work, what kind of offers I can get, how well I do). 

 

While California is a very nice place to live, I can't see myself living here or anywhere in the US forever. But it's still many more years before I am at the point where we'll "settle down forever" so who knows what might change by then. But right now, I feel too much like an outsider compared to the "standard" American viewpoint (mostly on social policy and issues of "liberty"). I feel that many people in academia lean left like I do, but I often hold the most leftist point of view in any social group of Americans--it's not so different when I'm with work friends, but when I'm with people outside of academia, it's a huge difference. Anyways, maybe my views will change in the future, but I just don't feel this is the right country for me, right now.

[Langdon Alger]

Cool, thanks for the response. Yeah I get that outsider stance as well, especially in the south east. I've visited California a couple of times, I'd love to get a chance to live there one day. Unfortunately there's not many programs in my field at California institutions right now.