Newbie here 
been researching a lot on Canada immigration for the past weeks.. and I have some questions that I wanna ask, I'm very interested in migrating to Canada!
My hubby & I are from Malaysia. We graduated from US uni in year 2005. Both of us stayed using OPT for a year.
I graduated spring 2005. got OPT and started working for an insurance co around October 2005. April 2006 my boss agreed to sponsor me H1-B visa. I filed with help from an attorney. because I had a degree in English, obviously it wasn't related to the field of insurance, my application got rejected, the official letter was sent around end of Dec 2006. then I changed my status to F-2 (my hubby had gotten back to school attending graduate classes then). I stayed F-2 all the while until summer of 2007 when I decided to go back to school, brush up my GPA, (they required a 3.0 to enter graduate school, my GPA was only 2.3 something). didn't know F-2 cannot attend classes! so had to file to change my status back to F-1, wait for another 4 months, my F-1 clearance came 1 week too late, I missed spring 2008 semester! ok, I'm doing some free lance document design job to get by, and helping out at my friend's restaurant (I know it's illegal but I need the money). then summer 2008 I finally got to go to classes with my valid F-1 visa. finally spring 2009, my GPA was up at 3.0. by then, I had changed my mind, not wanting to go to graduate school anymore.
After hubby's graduation, he couldn't find a job (his major was Psychology), so he worked as an assistant manager in a restaurant using his OPT. Wanting to stay in US, he had applied graduate school and successfully got in (Industrial Organizational Psyc). finished all his major courses with thesis pending in Fall 2008. Not wanting to come back to Malaysia, he decided to take up second graduate degree, MBA in spring 2009. Wasn't able to secure an assistantship from the uni, he couldn't afford to pay the tuition fees anymore. This happened around the same time that I had decided not to apply for graduate school.
so with all the struggle and hard decisions, we sold our cars, we managed to garage-sell all the furnitures, donated most of our clothing, kitchen wares, decors, you name it. and came back to Malaysia Jan 2010. We stayed a little over the period - it should be 60 days starting Aug 2010, but guess that doesn't make a big deal now.
Need to be honest here. I couldn't afford to pay my credit card bills after we left US. (My debts were completely cleared after my full time job in 2005-2006, but they piled up again after I went back to school) I had struggled to pay the minimum every month until Jan 2010, the month that we flew back to Malaysia. We had settled all the other utility bills, except our phone bills. We wanted to pay because it really wasn't that much, but because we had just signed up with a new phone company with a 2-year contract, they had charged us almost US$400 of early termination fee. While my husband had stopped paying his credit card bills since mid of 2006, all the balance were mostly for the high tuition fees from attending school. And of course, his debts were sent over to collection agency and all those.
I know, we may sound like a "bad" couple, but all this while, we had been working part time very hard (even though F-1 visa is not allowed to work off campus). We maintained legal status. Just not paying the debts. =_=
After coming back to Malaysia, we are like re-discovering ourselves. I don't particularly like the working culture here. My job sucks with an arrogant Asian boss. Everything is different. I even hate the way people drive here.
So we're considering Canada immigration now. I've been reading a lot about bad US credit affecting the application process? I wanna know if that is really true, if so, I won't even consider to apply, I just can't take rejection anymore. =( If paying off the debts in US will help, think I have to borrow money from mom to settle the debts first.
Life has been tough on us all these years. Please enlighten me. Thank you first.
been researching a lot on Canada immigration for the past weeks.. and I have some questions that I wanna ask, I'm very interested in migrating to Canada!My hubby & I are from Malaysia. We graduated from US uni in year 2005. Both of us stayed using OPT for a year.
I graduated spring 2005. got OPT and started working for an insurance co around October 2005. April 2006 my boss agreed to sponsor me H1-B visa. I filed with help from an attorney. because I had a degree in English, obviously it wasn't related to the field of insurance, my application got rejected, the official letter was sent around end of Dec 2006. then I changed my status to F-2 (my hubby had gotten back to school attending graduate classes then). I stayed F-2 all the while until summer of 2007 when I decided to go back to school, brush up my GPA, (they required a 3.0 to enter graduate school, my GPA was only 2.3 something). didn't know F-2 cannot attend classes! so had to file to change my status back to F-1, wait for another 4 months, my F-1 clearance came 1 week too late, I missed spring 2008 semester! ok, I'm doing some free lance document design job to get by, and helping out at my friend's restaurant (I know it's illegal but I need the money). then summer 2008 I finally got to go to classes with my valid F-1 visa. finally spring 2009, my GPA was up at 3.0. by then, I had changed my mind, not wanting to go to graduate school anymore.
After hubby's graduation, he couldn't find a job (his major was Psychology), so he worked as an assistant manager in a restaurant using his OPT. Wanting to stay in US, he had applied graduate school and successfully got in (Industrial Organizational Psyc). finished all his major courses with thesis pending in Fall 2008. Not wanting to come back to Malaysia, he decided to take up second graduate degree, MBA in spring 2009. Wasn't able to secure an assistantship from the uni, he couldn't afford to pay the tuition fees anymore. This happened around the same time that I had decided not to apply for graduate school.
so with all the struggle and hard decisions, we sold our cars, we managed to garage-sell all the furnitures, donated most of our clothing, kitchen wares, decors, you name it. and came back to Malaysia Jan 2010. We stayed a little over the period - it should be 60 days starting Aug 2010, but guess that doesn't make a big deal now.
Need to be honest here. I couldn't afford to pay my credit card bills after we left US. (My debts were completely cleared after my full time job in 2005-2006, but they piled up again after I went back to school) I had struggled to pay the minimum every month until Jan 2010, the month that we flew back to Malaysia. We had settled all the other utility bills, except our phone bills. We wanted to pay because it really wasn't that much, but because we had just signed up with a new phone company with a 2-year contract, they had charged us almost US$400 of early termination fee. While my husband had stopped paying his credit card bills since mid of 2006, all the balance were mostly for the high tuition fees from attending school. And of course, his debts were sent over to collection agency and all those.
I know, we may sound like a "bad" couple, but all this while, we had been working part time very hard (even though F-1 visa is not allowed to work off campus). We maintained legal status. Just not paying the debts. =_=
After coming back to Malaysia, we are like re-discovering ourselves. I don't particularly like the working culture here. My job sucks with an arrogant Asian boss. Everything is different. I even hate the way people drive here.
So we're considering Canada immigration now. I've been reading a lot about bad US credit affecting the application process? I wanna know if that is really true, if so, I won't even consider to apply, I just can't take rejection anymore. =( If paying off the debts in US will help, think I have to borrow money from mom to settle the debts first.
Life has been tough on us all these years. Please enlighten me. Thank you first.