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Comment by jleyank | Hacker News Reader

Getting Yanks to Montreal is easy as long as (a) they are single, (b) they are married and the spouse doesn't work and there are no school-age kids or (c) the spouse knows French and there are no school-age kids. Getting a work visa at the border merely takes a CV and an offer letter. School-age kids require French schooling, and customer-facing positions require French (both of which might be show stoppers).

It's a great place to live and work, but we fall into one of the above categories.

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My husband's company opened a (English-speaking) branch office in Montreal two years ago. Language is definitely an issue for working spouses. It is very difficult to find an English-only job in Montreal if you don't work in tech or finance. Plus, the insular Anglophone community that used to make it possible to function in Montreal without French doesn't exist anymore. You need to learn French. Thankfully, if you're willing to put in the work, the Quebec gov't offers ridiculously cheap intensive French lessons that can be scheduled around a 9-5 job.

Also, if your children were originally enrolled in English, they can get into an English-language primary school in Quebec.

I might be wrong, but I thought that only parents from Anglo Canadian schools can select English schools? If those from UK, US, ... can pick English schools, that would remove a huge stumbling block.

Did some quick checking via Google, and what I found requires attending a Canadian english school (based on law 101).

You are right that it's much more difficult for immigrants. It is possible to send your kids to an English public school if you're on a temporary visa, but not as a permanent resident. If you can afford tuition, an alternative is to send them to an unsubsidized English-language private school while they learn French.

Either way, moving to Montreal requires that the whole family makes a commitment to learn French - kids included. It's not an effort that children generally appreciate until they're later in life. =)

Bringing people to Montreal in the summer is a pretty easy recruitment strategy.

That's just cruel, though.

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