Back in 2000, my wife Sandy and I moved from Michigan to Canada to pastor Neerlandia CRC. Sandy is a Canadian citizen and had a "green card." I am a US citizen and I got a visitors record, and eventually obtained permanent residence in Canada. Now we have accepted a call back in west Michigan, and I can see the headaches and hassles on the horizon. Some of you may have extensive experience with this and so might have some advice (or at least sympathy!) for us. Some of the things we have to consider include:
1. Finding a moving company that is competent and experienced with cross-border moves.
2. Immigration, or more specifically, re-establishing legal residency for Sandy. Her permanent resident status expired in 2005, and if we had been more savvy about such things, we would have done things differently, but we weren't. We have filed US taxes every year for the past 12 years while in Canada. Our children are all US citizens.
3. We bought a vehicle at the beginning of the year, and we are getting conflicting advice about whether it can be taken across the border while we are still making payments. We also have an older (2002) vehicle and we have to look into whether it can be imported to the US of A.
4. Language Rehab. We've been living in rural Alberta for over 12 years, and now there are certain words that we say regularly among our farmer congregation that we have to avoid in west Michigan.
Any advice or resources on these issues would be most welcome!