Comment by hackermailman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hackermailman | Hacker News Reader

>The universities are reaping the benefits of the Trump effect, with record levels of applications from overseas students seeing Canada as a North American alternative to the United States.

It's been record levels since the beginning of Obama's term in 2008 and climbing every year. Reason is immigration laws since then are incredibly lax for foreign students. If you want Canadian citizenship show up here for ESL private school, a hair academy, a university, any accredited course and you can obtain a temporary work permit while attending classes (and for a period afterwards). This allows a local company to offer to sponsor you for full time employment, which eventually leads to citizenship. Vancouver is filled with Brazilian accountants who got in this way, they came here to take ESL, and went to go work for some accounting firm like KPMG with their degrees they have from Brazil.

Edit: they changed the laws in 2014 to make this a little more difficult, but temporary work permits are still available for any student esp somebody going to university/college. These always lead to full-time offer and citizenship.

The only real problem I see is that comp. levels in Canada are not as high as the US while COL in most of the major cities is similar to NYC. As a (legal) immigrant to the US, while Canada definitely sounds very attractive, I don't want to take a major hit to my quality of life just to escape Trumpland...

As an anecdote my friend's UVIC compsci grad class nobody stayed here and all took offers in Seattle instead because entry level salaries there are at least twice what you would make here. These US companies all directly recruit grads on campus too with large signing bonuses. It's the same story for nurses, if you have a nursing degree in Canada, US companies again directly recruit on campus and offer 3x the salary and signing bonuses, housing allowance benefits, ect.

> I don't want to take a major hit to my quality of life just to escape Trumpland

Major hit to your quality of life? I'm sorry, you may potentially have a little less money in your pocket, but you're trading direct cash for better social services (read healthcare and education).

You make it sound like we're living in a 3rd world country.

I certainly didn't mean for it to sound that way. I don't think that is what's going on though. If I received similar compensation and had more of my income taxed to provide social services... I would be 100% OK with that. The issue though is that Canadian employers haven't caught up with the fact that they need to match the compensation offered by US companies to attract the best talent. So the gross compensation itself is pretty low already, and probably gonna taxed more. Seen from that perspective, it doesn't seem like an attractive proposition financially.

> Major hit to your quality of life? I'm sorry, you may potentially have a little less money in your pocket, but you're trading direct cash for better social services (read healthcare and education).

What if "little less money in your pocket" means 50% (or more) pay cut? For software engineers you are easily looking at a substantial reduction in salary.

I think most people are willing to take a pay cut in exchange for better social services and free healthcare & education. But there is a breaking point where the comp. is too low for the extra services to make up the difference.

> I think most people are willing to take a pay cut in exchange for better social services and free healthcare & education.

Postsecondary education is not free* in Canada. It's certainly cheaper than in the US, but nowhere near free.

I paid around $10k/year for my B.Eng program (as a domestic student in the late 00's).

Also healthcare in Canada, while covering regular doctors visits and any emergency hospitalisation, is not entirely free. You still have to pay for dental/optical (unless your employer offers additional insurance) and you still pay for prescriptions (which can add up).

* maybe this is just your phrasing and you meant "better education and free healthcare"

Yes, I meant better/cheaper education and free healthcare. I am not actually too familiar with education in Canada.

Being from Eastern Europe my education has been completely free so I assumed it's the same in Canada as it is seen as a more socialist/liberal version of US (at least that's the impression I get about Canada from here).

The argument expressed in my comment still makes sense though, actually it's even stronger since education is not free in Canada.

Twelve years of grade school and high school are free in Canada. University isn't free, but is significantly subsidized, and there are various grant programs for people who can't afford even the subsidized rates. The Ontario student aid program is called OSAP.

You want an education in computer science at the University of Waterloo? If you're a Canadian or permanent resident, that's $7,278.48 per term for a total of roughly $58K plus living costs.

https://uwaterloo.ca/finance/student-financial-services/tuit...

$58K is crazy. How come in my home country where we have very low taxation (~20%) all of this can be paid for by taxes for everybody but in a rich liberal country like Canada you have to pay 58 grand for a degree?

And Canada doesn't even have an excuse of being the world policeman. At least US can say we have to pay tons of money for military and hundreds of our army bases around the world so there is no left over money for public education. But what's the reason for Canada?

I mean if you have rich parents who will pay it for you then you don't care but if you are normal and have to pay it yourself that means you probably need to take a loan, going into debt right at the beginning of your adult life.

That's bit unfair, you should have a clean starting slate and equal opportunity with others, not be forced to go into debt immediately.

Because in your home country, wages are lower, which makes everything cheaper than in Canada (I'm taking a guess here, since you mention some Eastern European country).

Also, I'm very much pro-environment and everything, but the reality is that regulations have a real cost. e.g. fire safety, parking space etc. Not to mention taxes for local, state and federal level... it adds up to make shit expensive.

Sure everything is cheaper but tax revenue is also proportionally cheaper.

Average salary is 12k euro per year. So if you are collecting 20% of that as income tax, that's a small amount of revenue to work with and it is still enough to cover free healthcare and education.

My point being that everything is cheaper but in proportion to that salaries and tax revenues from those salaries are also much smaller compared to a first world country like Canada.

You're right about compensation, but cost of living in our major cities is nothing like NYC. I live in the capital and pay under $1000 for two bedrooms very close to downtown. You can get a swanky condo penthouse here for less than a one bedroom in Manhattan. Or split a nice house with two other people for $400-600 each.

Friends in Toronto pay around $2000 for two bedrooms in the middle of downtown. Haven't checked in a while but fairly certain Montreal is somewhere in between. Those same friends were paying more than $3000 for less space in the far end of Brooklyn.

Vancouver is crazy but sort of a special case especially when compared to nearby Seattle, but it's the only major city that is so close to an American metropolis.

And that's leaving out the free healthcare and abundant green space which is a huge boost to my QoL.

I don't think the COL argument works any more. Toronto is at Brooklyn levels (if not higher). Montreal was better, but got worst when Toronto passed new legislation for rentals and rental properties.

The "free" health insurance - which your taxes pay for - is great for some things but non-existent for others (e.g. routine oral care, routine optical care, physiotherapy required by something other than work, etc). Realistically, you need extended health insurance if you're not elderly, disabled, or on some sort of social care.

Now the nice thing about taxes in Canada is that you won't be taxed at anywhere near the highest bracket. As a Canadian software developer you're looking at around 50% of the salary as your US counterparts [1] which means you'll be in one of the medium tax brackets.

---

[1] https://i.imgur.com/huhGbLA.jpg

Income taxes are progressive in both Canada and the US, so this tax bracket stuff is a red herring.

It isn't off the bat if the rates are very different. Which seems to be the case: 50% doesn't seem to be in the highest bracket in Canada, according to the OP.

Good points. Though I think the inflation from foreign rental/investment property ownership is semi-temporary - you can bet Montreal is going to pass similar laws soon just as Vancouver and then Toronto did.

Not everyone works in tech. A software developer can double or triple their salary by moving from Canada to SF, but a mechanical engineer can't.

Yes but given this discussion is on HN, there's a lot more software engineers than mechanical engineers. So you will hear this opinion a lot here and it makes sense from point of view of software engineers.

I agree. Because of its demographics, HN can sometimes turn into a bit of an echo chamber. As a mechanical engineer, I wanted to offer an alternative poerspective in case anyone was wondering why wouldn't everyone just move to the US.

Yes that's true. I think Canada would probably be an improvement in quality of life for many other professions but it's just not on a list of places a talented software engineer would want to be at.

Objective non-biased journalists can't let any opportunity to bash Trump slip by.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com