First things first

The best plans are those that can be changed. Our plan has changed several times as our knowledge-ignorance ratio shifts, but there have always been a few things that Mr. O and I have insisted on: We fly together, arrive together, and find a flat together. It sounds corny but we both thought this was very important.

And that was pretty much the whole plan at first: move there, get a flat, kill time while waiting for the in-Canada sponsorship. How hard could it be? We were married, after all. We thought we'd save up and Mr. O would be a tourist for the first six months (poor baby) while I played the good sponsor and got a staff job. To be eligible to sponsor your spouse or common-law/conjugal partner you need to have a Canadian address (or a job offer from a Canadian employer, or some other "proof" like an acceptance to a Cdn university) otherwise we would have started the actual application process from here in Helsinki. We thought moving there first and then applying would be more convenient, as we could go on our own schedule rather than waiting for papers in Finland. The whole thing couldn't take more than six months, tops.

When we actually talked to an immigration lawyer we confirmed that if we wanted to move together and apply from in Canada, Mr. O would have to come into Canada as a tourist, which meant
a) no working, as we already knew
and b) he had to have some kind of proof, like a return ticket, that he would leave when his visa expired.

The three-month visa would run out long before our application was processed. So Mr. O's choices were suddenly
a) a year in Canada without a job
or b) a return flight to Helsinki, alone, where a job and a random furnished flat awaited. Work for three months, come back for Xmas (another ticket), and then hope that the application processed before the next visa expired.

Unless he could find a job in Canada, the nice lawyer said, his best bet was b, as overseas processing times were only six months, compared to 9 or more. This is, to my knowledge, the fastest way to immigrate to Canada: spousal family overseas application, ready for you in just 182.5 days. Best case scenario: we'll take your money and you pay rent in two cities and live apart for six months.

That is a long time to sleep alone, you know? Of course, a lot of couples have no choice, and for others this is a reprieve from far more unhappy circumstances, but to us this felt like active discouragement. We got defensive, howling at each other about how we were educated, young, exactly the kind of people that Immigration ministers and people who consider the economy first would want to entice, blah blah blah. We ruthlessly compared the Finnish system to the Canadian, taking sides like in World Cup Hockey (FYI Canada takes in more immigrants every year than Finland has ever taken in, period.) After we wore ourselves out Mr. O was still disgusted, muttering about the Man under his breath, while I was trying to reconcile my desire to go home with my total apprehension at the risks involved. By the time we went to sleep that night I wasn't sure we were moving anywhere.