How should we plan out our finances in the next year or so?

Hello! I've got a somewhat interesting financial situation that I'm interested in getting some input on. Here's the relevant info:

  • My Husband (25) and I (27) just got married, and are planning on moving to Canada, hopefully over the summer. I am a Canadian citizen from birth, and we will be applying for him to get permanent residency as my spouse.
  • He has just under 10k in credit card debt (APR 17.5% - 27%) and nothing else, and I have no debt whatsoever
  • Collectively we have around 15k in cash sitting in various accounts
  • Currently, our collective income sits at maybe 45k per year, however I'll be finishing grad school (PhD in Applied Mathematics) and intend to get into Data Science of some sort, and the kinds of positions I've been looking at should be able to get me a job with pre-tax salary of over 100k, if not more. Basically, we're going to go from making relatively little money, to far more than enough (assuming I don't struggle to find a job in my domain).

What I'm not sure about is how we should go about getting rid of that debt while maintaining enough cash for all of the expenses involved with moving. My mother does live in Canada and might be able to help some with cash too, and I've seen that there are plenty of banks in Canada willing to approve up to 15k credit lines with no credit history whatsoever, which could give us the credit line we need to get settled in before job money would start to really come in.

Would it be worth it to clear out that debt as soon as possible? Doing so would leave us without a healthy emergency/moving fund, but would leave us completely debt free. On the other hand, we could just keep our buffer and sit on the debt until I make more money, and then use whatever leftover cash we have to clear out the debt, and pay off as much as possible as quickly as possible to clear out the debt afterwards. I'm rather debt averse in general, but like to have a hefty buffer against emergencies and surprise costs, so I'm leaning towards the latter option of just sitting on the debt for now until we have the spare income to clear it out as quickly as possible (and then of course would set our eyes on investing).

Thanks in advance for any input you might have!