YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

Read up on the Perry expedition.

And the gains in the countries which supply the West with their goods are also significant.

So the world on average is significantly better off.

I think the issue today is

1) the huge disparity of the wealth distribution within that average.

2) the inability of human beings as meat space constructs to adapt to those changes. You can't train everyone to be programmers, and as you remove the niches for arts, soft sciences and so on, you remove the ability for the non mathematically inclined to find meaningful, gainful employment.

I would bet they had better union jobs before tech moved in.

You could always live in the outlying areas to commute, and not spend all your money on rent.

Tech bosses decided they liked San Francisco, and the rich enclaves like Marin County.

They decided to set up shop, and hire like no tomorrow. I have never seen more money just thrown away, except in certain areas of government. This did make things worse for a lot of workers. I don't want to say blue collar workers because a lot of you fancy yourselfs as white collar. White collar will always be able to move across the county and find a new shiny job? The problem is your not really white collar. This bubble will end. All those frameworks you memorized will become useless. You will be eventually looking for a union job, or any job. Good luck.

Yes--San Francisco has always been a tough housing market. I think tech needs to worry about where they are going to move to when the current party is over. I'm for better transportation, and more low income housing. All I'm saying is the influx of tech workers did not make the Bay Area better for a lot of us. Tech moved fast and loud, and did disrupt life. It kicked out many with the Ellision Act. It added to traffic. Many displaced workers who didn't look like a young Bill Gates couldn't get that shiny new job. Even those that could probally do a good job.

I lived in Seattle for a year, and I got depressed from the weather. My doctor handed me a huge bottle of Vitamin D to take, saying most of her patients that lived there are deficient.

I couldn't handle it, so I moved back to sunny California, and immediately, my happiness levels returned back to normal again. Humans rely on the light to regulate their biorhythms, and Seattle/Vancouver are so far up north that in December, the sun rises at 10 AM, and it starts getting dark at around 3 PM.

For what it's worth, I grew up on the East Coast in Pittsburgh, PA with its notoriously bad weather, and I could cope with the variety of having four distinct seasons, including real winters with snowfall, much better than Seattle/Vancouver's monolithic climate (excluding the short summer that gives you two months of what SF weather is like every day).

I do miss the snow, but that's what Tahoe is for.

Vancouver gets 1900 hours of sunlight a year. That's not a lot. Compare to Seattle (which is considered gloomy) at 2170 hours and SF at 3000 hours.

I lived there for four years and I had a very tough time with the lack of sun. It can be very oppressive. Vancouver has a lot of things going for it (as you mentioned) but I think it's unfair to gloss over the overcast weather.

My family is from Victoria/Vancoucer and likes it cooler to enjoy active outdoor activities like running, biking and hiking. For this SF and Oakland weather is wonderful.

I also work a few blocks from the ferry building and wear shorts near year round, though that isn't saying much spending all my time in a temperature controlled office.

Oh, and burning man. That might not be everyone's thing, but its culture permeates throughout the bay.

Climb, ski, bike, dive, kayak, hike. Top vacation destination activities available every weekend.

It's so far out of line of reason to believe that the US is going to basically end all - or any meaningful portion of - legal immigration, as to be nearly impossible to reply to. Where to start?

The US will switch, if anything, to a merit based system. Canada already uses just such a system. Nobody seems to be outraged about it, or proclaiming the end of Canada because of it. There's far too much emotion in this thread.

But all Europeans that would like to get visa are on hold right now. People that already have one are in limbo, worrying about how the coming ruling will affect them.

Not sure what the reasoning is here. How is YC doing anything to block people from starting companies? You don't lose anything by getting rejected from YC, other than the few days spent applying.

On the longer term, other factors dictate the government, but they are still only indirectly linked to change.

I just don't think a government having a big impact is surprising.

If you look at Fortune's list of unicorns, 3 of the top 10 are in Beijing. As they build, they're strengthening the founder/techie/investor ecosystem in the city even further.

http://fortune.com/unicorns/

Facebook and EA have presence in Vancouver, and Amazon has some there, too. But I get the impression that Facebook and Amazon are merely interested in using Vancouver as a 'feeder' office for getting candidates long run into their Seattle offices.

In any case, the wages are lower here which means talent still continues to emigrate. Also -- the weather. I work for Google Waterloo and I suspect there are far more Canadians working for Google in Mountain View than there are here in our largest Canadian office.

Personally, I am ambivalent (and technically I am a Californian).

Edit: I obviously don't think a Calexit will happen but I'm just curious why you think it would result in a war.

(Has not looked for an apartment in Vancouver in the last 10 years)

I've had some trouble finding closely comparable values but it seems like the median SF detached home price is ~$1 million. Even considering the exchange rate, it seems like Vancouver is more expensive.

Certainly when one compares typical incomes Vancouver is dramatically less affordable than San Francisco.

American politics is in a terrible state right now.

As a Canadian who once got funded by YC and is no "\"startup\" bro" I wince at this comment, which is beyond inaccurate. So is the bit about solid long-term businesses—I can tell you from plenty of first-hand observation that you're quite wrong in YC's case.

Vancouver is, apparently, worse than SF.

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/University+of+Waterloo,+200+...

For a Canadian, Waterloo might be ok.

For most Americans, it would be like moving to Alaska.

I tried to hire into Waterloo, and for Americans, Canada in general is a really tough sell.

We brought in some Americans, most of them kept their homes in wherever.

We hired a bunch and let them live wherever, they flew in every few weeks.

It was far less than ideal.

That said, it might be better than many places in the US - but this is where California has such a massive advantage.

In Montreal, there are very few high-net worth individuals, and almost nobody invests 100K chunks in small businesses.

In America, particularly the Silicon Valley, there are tons of wealthy, and semi-wealthy people who back projects.

A 'simple idea' can get you $2M in Angel funding ($100K cheques by high net-worth individuals) in the Valley, while it would get you laughed out of the room in Montreal.

And that's just the start. The same for later stages. There are few later-stage funds in all of Canada, and almost zero big acquirers to 'end the funnel'. Both exist amply in the US, specifically the Valley, creating and end-to-end system for entrepreneurialism.

The same problem exists in Europe to a lesser degree, which is why there are so few big startups that come out of there.

While I have your ear, Milun, I was curious why Expa didn't open in K-W or Montreal first. They're much closer to east coast tech hubs.

I agree that on the Canuck side we have a lot of untapped potential and people working very hard for very little money.

I figured Garret was homesick :)

It's also starkly different if you look at share of wealth. Class divisions are smaller in Canada, noticeably so.

Canada has a very small population so you haven't noticed these divides yet but they will only get worse with time unless our government takes a serious stance on ensuring the middle class doesn't shrink.

So let's therefore demonize the majority smart diligent legitimate immigrants by lumping them in with the less than stellar ones!

That's the sentiment that is persisting with this trumpkin mess of epic proportions.

The original poster said that immigrants pay taxes. Do you not agree? He said they contribute to US companies. Do you not agree? He said they make the US more powerful. Do you not agree? He said they don't contribute these same things to their home country. Do you not agree?

If you are going to make an argument, make one.

That sounds like a grossly inaccurate generalization to me. A lot of "illegal immigrants" are an absolutely essential part of the economy, performing jobs like picking oranges in the Florida heat/humidity, doing roofing work, washing dishes, etc. Interview farmers in the south and ask them how many American born workers are willing to even take many farm jobs.

These people most definitely are not "sucking the system dry". And a system that can be "sucked dry" has a design flaw which should be rectified anyway.

Chat with an immigrate in a sanctuary city if you really want to "get" it. It's the feeder high schools (mostly Irish Catholic) that make police and fire departments fraternal, recalcitrant, racist and corrupt.

Or we could eviscerate the welfare state and be richer, freer, happier, and healthier! [1]

[1] Gratuitous Milton Friedman plug: https://www.amazon.com/Free-Choose-Statement-Milton-Friedman...

Vast majority of illegal immigrants perhaps just keep their head low and work hard. Also, they barely get anything from welfare and work below minimum wages. It is probably the criminal aspect that is sucking the system and good solution for that is to decriminalise drugs and help American companies sell drugs for a profit instead relying on Mexican cartels.

I have never understood why Mexican citizens cant get a 30 day to 1 years temporary below-minimum wage job permit

> not the smart, diligent, legitimate ones working in academia and top companies.

I know founders who had employed 10+ American being rejected visa and sometimes entry for no good reason. I have seen cops, CBP officials and other government departments harassing these individuals all the time.

Undocumented immigrants, by definition, are going to be hard to track down. Businesses on the other hand have to have an office, be reachable, file taxes, etc. They're also probably breaking a host of other employment laws as well (easy to do when your employees can't go to the authorities). If the availability of jobs dried up, people would have no incentive to come here illegally.

Of course, that would involve arresting rich white people instead of poor brown people, so it will never happen.

Cities don't have immigration officers (especially sanctuary cities, which are cities that refuse to have their law enforcement act as immigration enforcers for the federal government.)

And local law enforcement is usually the biggest proponent of sanctuary city policies, because their job is made vastly more difficult when immigrant communities see them as immigration enforcers; cooperation with law enforcement in those communities (and not just by undocumented immigrants or even just non-citizens in those communities) drops radically when they are sending in that light.

> It's the illegal immigrants that suck the system dry

And you apparently carry a user name that matches your posts, at least this one.

Stuff like your last sentence is something that is heard (in Germany, at least) only on the right-to-fringe-right sphere. It's long since I have seen such outspoken racism here.

It's important to judge someone the most by what they do, and not just by what they say.

Trump outlawed legal visa holders from Iran from entering the US when he signed the first immigration executive order. I don't think Trump voters were against that.

If you are only opposed to the illegal part and not the immigration part, it's relatively easy to fix: just better align the supply of visas with demand. There's a number of obvious things you could do to achieve that:

(1) Keep by-category caps but eliminate per-country caps within each visa category entirely, or

(2) Keep existing caps, but allow immigrants qualified in existing immigrant visa categories to pay an (initial and annual) additional fee to skip the line and get a "supernumerary visa".

(3) Allow people who aren't barred entry but who aren't qualified in a y existing immigrant category to pay an (initial and annual) additional fee to enter on a special visa.

Obviously, if what one has a problem with is immigration and the "illegal" part is a smokescreen, then one will be less likely to support reforms which address illegality without aiming to reduxe overall immigration.

You are also absolutely incorrect on numbers of Native Americans or blacks killed vs the Nazi actions. The Nazis killed tens of millions systematically, not even counting incidental casualties.

The Native Americans were not systematically wiped out. The vast majority died prior to contact with Europeans due to simple disease. There's really no contesting this, all you can do is contest the numbers. Something like 50+% (conservative numbers) of the NA population pre-contact was killed by disease.

Many Native American tribes experienced great depopulation, averaging 25–50 percent of the tribes members lost to disease. Additionally, smaller tribes neared extinction after facing a severely destructive spread of disease.[2] The significant toll that this took is expounded upon in the article Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas. A specific example was Cortes' invasion of Mexico. Before his arrival, the Mexican population is estimated to have been around 25 to 30 million. Fifty years later, the Mexican population was reduced to 3 million, mainly by infectious disease. This shows the main effect of the arrival of Europeans in the new world. With no natural immunity against these pathogens, Native Americans died in huge numbers. The eminent Yale historian David Brion Davis describes this as "the greatest genocide in the history of man. Yet it's increasingly clear that most of the carnage had nothing to do with European barbarism. The worst of the suffering was caused not by swords or guns but by germs."[9] By 1700, less than five thousand Native Americans remained in the southeastern coastal region.[4] In Florida alone, there were seven hundred thousand Native Americans in 1520, but by 1700 the number was around 2000.[4]

That of course does not deny the past. The US mistreated natives and exploited them, there is no doubting this.

Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions have literally never publicly made a statement supporting genocide. The gap between reactionary politics and genocide is vast. Has Trump at age 70 ever even killed a man? Where does this idea that he's going to become genocidal comes from? How can you equate his actions (no deaths) to something which killed tens of millions?

I imagine the main concern here is uncertainty, though. The original travel ban was introduced with no warning and affected people who already had plans, who already had visas, and even who were already in flight. There's no telling if and when they might do something like that again. That kind of uncertainty tends to discourage people from trying to make plans in the first place.

But, I have to admit, Germany is planning something similar in even more sinister form: our government plans to buy forensic imagers for all immigration officers... to mirror and scan phones of applying refugees, to determine if they really come from where they claim. Of course, you won't get much resistance from refugees, much less from the general public... but who knows, in two years this "test balloon" can easily be extended to every immigrant.

It's probably an attempt to show the delta between Obama & Trump isn't as large as some imagine.

If anything, a falsehood weakens the position of the person making the argument. It's easier to defend the truth. It's more robust.

So not misinformation. And not only Israeli passports but any having Israeli citizenship even if they use another passport, and anybody who has Israeli stamp in their passport, isn't it?

The Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) is an online form which asks questions and determines whether someone is covered by the VWP. Using ESTA to determine this in advance is required when arriving in the US by air, but not when crossing a land border from Canada or Mexico.

The "doesn't guarantee anything" bit is true but misleading, since ESTA doesn't provide a visa and doesn't provide an absolute guarantee someone will be admitted under the VWP -- the determination of whether to allow someone to enter is always made at the border.

Couple things that are good to know:

1. VWP/ESTA is not terribly different from some other systems, like Australia's ETA, in using the "you don't need a visa, but you do need to check your eligibility online in advance" approach.

2. Not all EU citizens are eligible for the VWP. Citizens of Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania are not eligible for VWP. Which is something the EU has been consistently angry about, and recently the European Parliament rattled its sabers a bit about revoking visa-free travel to the EU for US citizens unless the US adds those five countries to the VWP.

Those people are dangerously ignorant.

To call the US a slightly less fascist regime than China is wrong. Go read up on human rights violations in China some time.

Other areas of concern include the lack of legal recognition of human rights and the lack of an independent judiciary, rule of law, and due process. Further issues raised in regard to human rights include the severe lack of worker's rights (in particular the hukou system which restricts migrant labourers' freedom of movement), the absence of independent labour unions (which have since been changing[3]), and allegations of discrimination against rural workers and ethnic minorities, as well as the lack of religious freedom – rights groups have highlighted repression of the Christian,[4][5][6][7][8][9] Tibetan Buddhist, and Falun Gong religious groups. Some Chinese activist groups are trying to expand these freedoms, including Human Rights in China, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, and the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group. Chinese human rights attorneys who take on cases related to these issues, however, often face harassment, disbarment, and arrest.[10][11]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China

The gap between the US and China in most measures of freedom and business rights is absolutely massive and isn't going to shift because six Muslim countries have restricted immigration. Maybe see how China treats Muslims in the western part of the country?

The US gives grants citizenship to more immigrants each month than the PRC has in its entire history.

Another interesting statistic is the total number of people the PRC has granted permanent residency to ever. It's definitely worth googling.

Because China is governed by an authoritarian regime guilty of a wide variety of human rights violations.

If you're brown skinned in China, you are treated far worse than you are in the US. Likewise, if you're Chinese (or look Chinese - people from the North East of India), most of India treats you very badly. And if you're a woman with Chinese features.. well let's just say that there's a (deeply pejorative) term for that in India.

In both countries, if you're white (occidental), you'll be treated MUCH MUCH better than a darker skinned person.

And if you're black.. it's even worse.

So it's not easy for Indians to move to China, or for a Chinese person to move to India. Of course moving back to your own country of origin is (usually) easier.

My point, don't make blanket inflammatory accusations of a current political party that just came into "rule" [I'm letting you get away with that claim] in the last two months). If you're going to interpolate, make a claim to the political action that occurred and what you feel is going to happen.

Right now we're seeing a lot of changes, to make a bold statement there is a direct cause is reaching. (It's because of the "fascist party" we have.. they ran under the conservative/right-party) To blanketly label the party/group of people "in power" that corresponds to the labels being thrown at it leads me to believe that your comment was motivated to just repeat the same catchphrases that are pushed in the left/liberal media.

Don't just blanketly throw the entire group under the bus.

"The problem with that way of thinking is [problem]. It's dangerous to think that way. In reality, my way of thinking is superior"

That's exactly what I'm talking about. That's relevant, doesn't pander.

>If you are curious to hear more about this, you can read the following articles, for a start:http://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/23/movies/european-minds-who-....

This is great, it also can be blamed on the government then.. because it's hindsight.. you've seen the lasting effects of what happened.

Consider looking up the definition, because the definition of fascism is not "having a leader who makes dumb statements".

Nor is this word a label for "a politician who makes you feel really bad emotions".

It means a certain type of government policy.