Canada plans brain drain of H-1B visa holders, with no-job, no-worries permits
theregister.com
theregister.com
The majority of costs a person will typically have on a country are their initial K-12 education, and their health care costs later in life. Immigrants like these will never cost the government that first major cost.
At the same time, they are far more likely to have higher than median salaries when employed. That means higher taxes paid.
So from a purely economic point of view, an H-1B immigrant is a perfect profit center for government taxes.
Meanwhile a Canadian who gets their K-12 education here, gets a highly government subsidized post-secondary degree, then moves to the USA to work and pay taxes there is a huge loss, economically.
The inefficiencies of the country where I live and the quasi-xenophobic sentiment towards foreigners (mostly Americans foreigners) made me decide to plan to leave.
I agree with your points, and I think that Canada will have to work smartly to retain those people otherwise they’ll end up leaving.
Years ago, I went on a business trip to the US, and while there an Indian-American colleague said some very Islamophobic things to me. I guess he probably brought some of that with him from India, although certainly there would have been things in the US to reinforce it. Also, he was a 9/11 survivor and this was only a few years later, so that was likely a factor too. There is some obvious overlap between Islamophobia and xenophobia - although not all Muslims have an immigrant background (converts), and there are billions of non-Muslim foreigners
Australia is even more immigrant than Canada – around 30% overseas born.
But I think part of why Australia (and maybe Canada too) have less of a problem with xenophobia than some countries with less immigrants – greater selectiveness in the immigration intake, and skewing it more towards highly skilled/educated people.
If you take in 100,000 university graduates from China and India, versus 100,000 random refugees and economic migrants from anywhere at all – it is unsurprising the former cause significantly less social problems than the latter, and those social problems tend to fuel xenophobia.
I did not know this. Makes me wonder -- what is the point at which housing is so unaffordable that people start to riot?
The Canadian government still holds crown land that they will give away for free to anyone willing to settle it. That provides an option of last resort. Any location in the country that compels one away from free has got to be worth it. While one may complain, as people love to do, they are still pulling out their purses because they know it is worth every penny.
Should the balance change, people will leave for greener pastures before worrying about rioting. Canada's whole legacy is built on people moving around when certain locations become too expensive. Its ancestral people have done it over, and over, and over again. There is no reason to think this time is different.
hope you're comfortable with -40C or lower
You probably haven't even heard about my city, because it has only 60k ish people and still runs into that problem.
"But but but but zoning and developers can't build cheap housing because they aren't allowed to!". Funny, that didn't stop them from building hundreds of units of assisted living facilities right in some of the most expensive land they could find. Maybe it's because, in a capitalistic system, it's more incentivized to build a structure that can charge the state $12k a month per resident that they neglect than one that can charge each resident $2k a month because they actually have to be able to afford it.
Meanwhile grandma doesn't even know where they are.
The only advantage to businesses is that these people are modern indentured servants, due to their immigration status being dependent on their employer. I'm all for getting rid of that but I also think there should likely be a smaller number with a salary based bidding system (e.g. if you aren't paying in the 80th percentile or above for a person in the industry of that age, you're not getting H1-Bs, and yes age not years of experience since the latter is easily fudged). Otherwise, it simply continues to be a way for companies to suppress wages.
If companies can't bring someone over that they can overwork and underpay at threat of deportation, they'll rethink the MBA-brained "optimizations" and be forced to create a more resilient workforce rather than a loose collection of people to rugpull every time the rate of profit increase dips by .0004%.
without H-1B america would not have Elon (for better or worse)
The issues are complex - but one of the side affects are indeed artificial suppression of wages for citizens.
We have software titans bursting at the seam with imported labor - yet our domestic universities are also churning out more CS graduates than ever before. Some of these graduates are indeed from foreign countries - but not all.
It's very hard to believe companies need to import labor for commoditized software engineering positions when there are plenty of available workers already here.
We should be importing top-tier talent - the types of folks that are working in complex fields, inventing new fields, developing things that haven't been done before, etc. We should not be importing basic CS graduates and filling basic SE jobs.
H1B's are often cheaper to hire, and do not enjoy the same mobility freedoms a citizen does. In some ways, they are beholden to their sponsor company, and whatever wages that company offers - which may not necessarily be market wages.
Oh wait.
I don't claim that H1Bs have the effect of increasing pay, but rather that their effect on pay is non-obvious, and any assertion that they do depress wages should be backed up by evidence.
That seems like some wild calculus. Fewer people willing to accept lower pay and be stuck at a specific company = higher pay. There's no other way to make the math work, particularly for extreme-demand positions like SE.
The H1B game, as it's played today, is a relatively modern invention, and was not used to build startups into mega corps anyway.
Especially Americans working at John Deere, Dow Chemical and all the food processing
if you carefully look at silicon valley companies (even large ones) - most of product R&D and IP and innovation comes from immigrants. Native born americans are mostly working in admin jobs like HR, Admin, Sales, Operations, Finance, etc
If you look at your Googles, your Facebooks, your Microsofts, you will find a glut of H1B's working regular SE jobs, such as maintenance and feature development. That's exactly who H1B's are not supposed to be for - and that is the issue.
Mega corps laying off huge engineering teams while simultaneously importing more H1B's tells you everything you need to know. Follow the money, as they say.
but it is not the reason to get rid of the entirety of H-1B program, as some people advocate here.
Would love to see your source for this fact, genuinely curious.
Also you can check names on patents files by google or other tech firm
It's also bogus to say that H-1B is more problematic than L-1B for body-shopping: all the well organized body-shops do massive amount of intra-company transfers.
btw these indian body shops are already abusing O-1 and L-1 visas en masse as well, so your latter statement is also not 100% true
Given that it is much more expensive to gain skill when you are a native, the government somewhat pulled the rug from underneath the locals who spend a lot of money to go to uni etc and were hoping to have a decent return on their investment in education.
This also creates disincentive for locals to learn these in-demand skills.
If you combine this with the fact that companies can rent out these cheap workers at £500 or more a day, while avoiding paying taxes it is a poor deal that only benefits big corporations.
Have you applied for a job and been told that they don't want you because there's a cheaper immigrant available?
Have you had a job and been replaced by an immigrant?
I also saw a few jobs of colleagues not renewed and replaced by immigrant teams supplied by a big consultancy.
If this trend continues, I'll be looking at retiring early or moving overseas.
For example, according to WhatUni [1], the average computer science graduate salary after leaving uni is £27K. Even after a year or two of pay increments, the average (median? not sure) CS graduate could be earning less than the £35K threshold. It's not just the "unis" that deserve double quotes with this kind of salary range: Exeter is Russell Group, but the same site says their graduates have a £28K average starting salary.
Staying with Exeter, their 2023 pay scales [2] have postdocs starting at £31K, and lecturers in the £40K-50K range; by the time you're earning double of £35k, you're well into associate professor territory.
Sure, you won't get a good senior developer for £35K. But if your business model is lots of juniors and high churn, you'll get plenty of people in that range.
[1] https://www.whatuni.com/degrees/computer-science-bsc-hons/un... [2] https://www.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/humanresou...
We can go abroad to study it for much cheaper. Alternatively, foreign nationals can come to study here: they'll pay twice as much as us to do so. Our higher education is subsidised. Likewise, we don't have to work in this country. Immigration is not a one-way system.
The number of companies that can sponsor a Tier 2 Visa is limited. Those that do have to pay £1000pa for each individual they sponsor. The individual themselves will have to pay >£600pa to subsidise the NHS for you and me.
We no longer have the Resident Labour Market Test - it was abolished because unemployment rates were extremely low - but most people who have passed the 2 year curfew to be allowed to take an employer to tribunal are in a job where their employers first had to prove the job couldn't be filled by local talent.
Perhaps the government should update the SOC code for software engineers to be higher. They determine the going rate to hire into these 'skilled occupation' roles.
Right, someone will go abroad to study cheaper only to come back and get a poor wage. Sure.
> The number of companies that can sponsor a Tier 2 Visa is limited. Those that do have to pay £1000pa for each individual they sponsor.
Tier 2 visa has been replaced by Skilled worker visa and there is over 80,000 companies registered as sponsors. The £1,000 pa is nothing if you take into account how much profit company can make on such worker.
People of often having a cultural, religious and moral background completely different to more-or-less original value Canadians? How will that work?
Oh i guess by appeasing everybody to create that multicultural society with less & less identity of its own, just the same bland globalized aftertaste. The major Canadian cities beside Montreal and Quebec are already taken.
Many immigrants do come in order to work extremely hard to gain prosperity for themselves and their families, which honestly seems pretty in line with US values, but many come explicitly for the culture of freedom, freedom to do and think as they choose without having to constantly battle neighbors relatives over every little thing unconventional thing they want to do. They have given up the convenience of living near family, often given up the social status of being top in their society, for freedom, as embodied in the US culture of fast cars, eccentric geniuses, rock and roll, artistic and intellectual freedom and expression, and so on. The very living avatars of the US thirst for freedom, free of the entitlement and fear of hard work that seems to be a common outcome for growing up here.
Sizeable chunks of some immigrant populations simply won't melt, which IMO is fine in a place like Canada or the US. They'll still work with everyone else, and I feel like profession and class are both way bigger dividers than ethnicity anyway. A white SWE probably knows more Indian SWEs than white janitors.
Speaking a different language at home is a really good thing. Kids are going to pick up English through immersion anyway, so they're going to turn out bi/multilingual. That's great.
Being a second-generation immigrant of Indian-American parents myself, I see how different the H1Bs are compared to my own family. My family left India because we were mistreated. Now, the very people that mistreated them are coming here and bringing their regressive values with them. We value the rights we have in this country because they were denied to us in the old country. We honestly need less skilled migration, or if we do have skilled migration, we need to show that those skilled migrants are from a class that is being oppressed in their own country. The last thing we need are high-status foreigners with the means and social capital to bring their own foreign values. Better to have poorer immigrants, like my own family, who adapt to the culture. Moreover, those who fled their own country don't need to be re-terrorized here.
So many times my dad has been told to basically go to hell by other Indian immigrants because we're not the right caste. Once we had a wife of coworkers pretend to feel ill just speaking to my mother because of the caste difference; in professional environments! Hearing white people speak about all these things in the abstract is one thing. Having them actually play out is another. To come to this country, you should have to prove that you were not a racist, casteist nutjob in your own country. And realistically, many Indians are going to fail that test.
Most are not interested in western culture, they come here specifically for the salary, while maintaining the culture and social networks from where theyre originally from.
And there are 1.5 billion Indians and 1.5 billion Chinese people.
How that will work is: as they become the dominant culture your country will simply become either China west or India west.
In America they let the population of an entire state every year of immigrants into America.
Caveat: there are some states so sparsely populated there are more livestock than people.
> Caveat: there are some states so sparsely populated there are more livestock than people.
Not really. The political issues with immigration absolutely not do not include finding empty land to put them in.
Also, the frontier has been closed for a long time.
This is sometimes true, but irrelevant, because their children adopt the local culture and are fully integrated. This is anti-immigration red herring.
their kids are still getting arranged marriages.
their kids are getting their social networks from their churches.
their kids are going to culturally specific schools.
Even their neighborhoods are culturally specific i.e. Chinatown, Korea town, India town, etc
Fuck you know how dumb that sounds right?
Maybe they're feeling so guilty about that they've decided to invite in some more colonizers, to experience colonization from the other end.
- the primarily French and British traders with First Nations?
- the colonizing religiously oriented Europeans that committed genocide (forcibly removing all native children from their homes & putting them in schools where many died of neglect)?
- the over 600 current First Nations governments?
- the refugees Canada took in, from the Underground Railroad to the Kosovo genocide to today?
- post World War II Italians, draft-dodging Americans, a huge Irish influx, and before all of that Chinese immigration (which primarily built the railroads used to this day)?
Btw, what do you consider original Canadian values? Do you mean the Chinese exclusion in BC, which has lasted all the way into 1947? The genocide against First Nations people? The ongoing neglect of missing and murdered First Nations women? The significant Ukrainian population (the largest out of ukraine)? The generous refugee policy? The anti slavery stance which welcomed Underground Railroad refugees? The national railroad (from sea to shining sea) built by primarily Chinese labor?
sorry you weren't born at the right time to be fabulously wealthy for no reason, i guess.
If what's needed to shake this program up and shine a light on the corruption is some competition from our neighbors to the north, sounds great to me. Maybe Canada should extend this program to Americans who don't have health insurance, too. The resulting surge of expatriates just might force the parasite class to rethink America's archaic and corrupt health care system as well.
In this way Canada can achieve higher economic utility for itself. I'm imagining a system where everyone in the society is brought in on a temporary basis. They are imported after their post-secondary education and exported maybe 10 years before their retirement. In this way we avoid all the costs associated with having "people" in our country and instead we reap the economic reward of their labor!
I guess I shouldn't say "our" country. I would be exported fairly quickly... But! To those glorious (and brave) few on the executive committee entrusted to leading Canada Inc. through these difficult times, the society they get to inhabit will undoubtedly be the economic envy of the world!
This is how the Gulf economies work. (Also the Vatican, but for different reasons and at a different age.)
"A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout."
Sure you can. The only reason nations avoid allowing people to become stateless is an appreciation of the burden that places on those people. But if we're pursuing a modest proposal where the government shifts its perspective to focus on "realize[ing] higher economic utility for" itself, that becomes less a concern.
At the very minimum you can "export" those low-economic-utility people by sticking them them on a barge and towing it to well into international waters where the currents will take it away (and if you're a nice government, just outside the territorial waters of some other country).
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...
If you kick out people you don't like and expect them to go to different countries it will end similar to those migrant boats in the Mediterranean.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/assisted-s...
>Denise said she hasn’t cancelled her MAID application because she still suffers from painful chronic health problems that haven’t been properly handled.
She'll never have healthy-millionaire quality of life, but this isn't what medically-assisted dying is meant for.
"Canada Veteran Affair's department: Finishing what the enemy started!"
This has nothing to do with the article.
Given the current zeitgeist, I feel there's only a 70% chance that's an autocorrupt of Alzheimer's.
Or did, until I saw the alternative font in the comment box and realised that's a lowercase L not a capital i.
My mum died of that. Technically liver or kidney failure from dehydration, but that in turn was from refusing food in the care home and not having the awareness to get liquids separately.
I think it was worse for us than it was for her, overall, though there were a few occasions where her self-awareness of the nature of her condition caused her unhappiness.
Happy we are making progress with that and other degenerative diseases. I just wish we all had the opportunity to choose how our life ends, not just for our own suffering but also for those that suffer for us.
But the recent outrage over it is definitely an overreaction, and is being brought up by the same people that were complaining about vaccines and masks 2 years ago.
Make no mistake, I'm a hippie leftist even by Canadian standards. My argument is one I like to use with more right wing friend who oppose immigration.
You think our government respects people taking time to rear offspring? Of course not! They're not contributing their labour to our economy while being parents so we've structured the incentives to start families in such a way that they're driven back to work ASAP. Strictly speaking: having children is bad for our labour force and should be avoided.
In terms of across the board consumption, there is nothing as productive as a modern child. Clothes, consumable goods, travel sports, recreations, hobbies, and diversions all lead straight to the consumption that is so vital to our economy.
And yet, with sicknesses, evening activities, and other problems, there is nothing that disrupts an individual worker's productivity as a child.
I'm not sure I am smart enough to come up with an equation, but, it's in there somewhere to tell us whether a child is a net positive or negative influence on our Economy than the other.
I have two kids and it isn't that bad at all. Very small loss of productivity for me except when I took parental leave for 3 months. I have grandparents that live nearby and they can help with sickness and other babysitting though.
Just so happened that my family had to move for work, health, etc. I love raising my kids so it’s fine. It has been the equivalent of drop kicking my career against a brick wall occasionally, if I’m being honest.
The best economics can only tell you how to convert value into different units. It can't tell you what value is.
This is so ridiculous! Export where?? Isn't it what Hitler tried to do?
And also, Swift's was always a very s(ali|oyl)ent Green proposal is appropriate to Make Room! Make Room!
This is a big deal. Back in the early 2010s, software developers moving to SF pretty much willed into existence the tech industry up there. Before then, companies would start in SF and move down to the valley. If skilled folks want to move to your area, it can be a boon, and if I’m not mistaken, Canadian tax policy is better suited to redistribute the gains from that than U.S. tax policy.
Nothing attracts profitable businesses and high earning individuals more than a tax policy optimized to redistribute those gains.
Not a new policy. Gotta put in your time as a PR to qualify for a citizenship (that mostly can’t be taken away from you ever).
It anything, the physical presence requirements have been diluted because politicians realize they’re more likely to get your vote if they have you citizenship.
They're not saying that we should get rid of natural-born folks. They're just saying that often times the people who most want their nation to not allow other folks in, don't appreciate all of the things that those other folks provide for them. i.e. Immigration is subsidizing a lot of the things you probably enjoy about your life, and we should probably be considering it more as a blessing than a curse.
Nobody is trying to replace you. They're just trying to help you, and provide a better opportunity for their children once they've bought into the same system your parents bought into.
LOL
And while they may not explicitly be trying to help you, their goals are such that "helping Canada helps themselves." Way more than you give them credit for. But that's okay, please join the fear-mongering of "the great replacement."
It’s pretty bonkers to say people who immigrate to the US on H1-B visas are doing so out of an altruistic desire to “help” anybody but themselves and their families (not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
People seem to still prefer immigrating to the United States over Canada even though Canada’s immigration system is far more reasonable. They’re trying to scoop people up with policies like this but I think it’s worth taking a step back and reflecting on why that is. I think a big part of it is Canada’s cost of living especially wrt housing is even worse than the US’s and salaries are lower.
And I say this as an expat currently living in Mexico with a fair amount of Americans and Canadians. So this isn’t a pro United States comment, it’s just a reality check. The US has draconian immigration rules and hoops to jump through… but it seems like the demand is such that they can get away with it.
I'm trying to replace me! Humans are first and foremost economic units. Fungible and replaceable. There's absolutely no reason to prefer any one human over another -- except for their ability to produce economic output.
Society is a vain illusion for the true foundation of civilization -- economic produce. Things like care for the elderly or education of children only exist to maximize the future labor of the young and to deceive the middle-aged. We should cut these vestiges from our society and embrace a new future where only the economically gifted are permitted to remain.
I know at first this is hard to accept but its only through this radical, but sensible, plan that every citizen in Canada will be able to afford a Netflix account with password sharing.
edit: I hope we can make it there in time.
This notion that Bob from Podunk rural Canada with an IQ of 80 competes with an immigrant with a PhD makes no sense. The latter finances the welfare of the former. You need to create wealth first before you can redistribute it and keeping the strongest wealth creators out of the country is one of the stupidest damage you can inflict on yourself.
This sarcasm drenched replacement fantasy is the exact opposite of reality. Only if you have a strong economy you can continue to maintain public welfare.
That's too far fetched. They're more likely to start a company in their own country than Canada.
"Garnett Picot and Yuri Ostrovsky revealed based on data from 2016 that immigrants are 41.7 per cent more likely than Canadians who were born in Canada to either start a business or be self-employed.[...]Leaving aside self-employment, immigrants were found to be 30 per cent more likely to own a privately-incorporated business that provided jobs for others than were native-born Canadians."
And maybe even more important, from US data:
"Immigrants have started more than half (319 of 582, or 55 per cent) of America’s start-up companies valued at $1 billion or more,"
IIRC among AI related startups the number of immigrant founders or co-founders is even close to two-thirds. Attracting top tier human capital is pretty much North America's greatest advantage.
https://www.immigration.ca/immigrants-start-more-businesses-...
Not "in general, Immigrants formed corp more than Canadians born in Canada".
US is different. Cost of business in Canada is high due to red-tapes and lower RoI than US (plus less Capital to go around).
The romanticization of Indian programmers creating a successful tech company in Canada (just like they did in US) is just that for now, romanticization.
Indian, specifically Punjabis, done better as Entrepreneur in non-tech in Canada.
Hence, far fetched.
Citizenship was the world's first labor union.
Inherited citizenship is nepotism.
People love their children (genes).
Basically there isn't a fixed number of jobs. As you add people you need more jobs to provide goods and services for those extra people.
Wage growth in Canada isn't just stagnant it's terminal.
Disclaimer: I did move to Canada from Italy, one of the reasons was the insanely low salaries for IT
It is just all things being equal and they are specially not equal in this case. If they were so great countries producing them would have used them for no-downside profit but it is not happening. US being hub of thousands of high tech companies also not finding much use of them lately.
I guess good on Canada for finding such a profit booster in times of economic downturn.
Something about this is horribly depressing. It’s bad enough that the private sector is doing everything humanly possible to maximize profit.
It makes me wonder what the point of citizenship is if government officials and elected representatives see the cultivation of those born in the country as more expensive and burdensome than just bringing people in. And, it sounds like the government is more interested in higher salaries for new arrivals than longtime constituents.
And it’s not like this is sustainable either. All these much more profitable immigrants are going to become settled and have their own children, who will then become just as expensive to educate.
There's a pretty important point to citizenship. If you have it, you can't be kicked out.
I've heard your arguments time and time again, and sadly most people think like this. Even though any economic advantage of labour immigration is mostly reaped by big businesses.
A society has failed completely if it depends on abusing foreign labour to function. Let's not pretend that they are hiring the foreigners because it would be too expensive for them to hire locals of the quality they need. You can either side with the employers and think that this is great, or you could side with the people and think this is wrong.
I was born in a place were the school children are in the absolute top of the world in their knowledge as measured and awarded by Pisa. And I know from hiring local people, that the youth there are smart, hard working and honest. At the same time it is a place where the media together with politicians and businesses continuously blast out how there is a "shortage of competent labour" and that they need more immigrants. The truth is of course that they don't want to pay. I think it's just audacious to claim there is a shortage of competence, when there is nothing wrong with the stock material. There is a shortage of willingness to pay a decent salary for labour. And there is a fairly high amount of hatred from older generations towards younger generations. A hatred that I have never understood, but it is there out in the open.
Nobody has the right to cheap labour. If your business cannot turn a profit without paying lower than market rate salaries - you are simply a failure. You don't go demanding more immigrants so you can cut wages. You don't go demanding child labour so you can cut wages. You have to improve your business or admit that you are a failure and close shop.
No sympathy for businesses and sectors that cannot survive without abusing labour. They are not needed.
The talk about expensive education for native children is completely false, and just weird. Children are not expensive to educate anywhere in the world. Education turns expensive because corrupt practices of the governments that administrate education. The same government that then turns around and says the country needs more foreign labour because their own children are too expensive and incompetent.
Let's compare it with a farm. The owner of the farm notices that he can get more milk to sell by not letting the calves have any milk, letting them die instead. So soon he has no more cows and he goes on buying more cows from another farm. "Great! These cows start milking right away, no need to feed them for a year like I would have to with those annoying calfs"
And so on the farmer keeps milking his cows dry and just buying more from his neighbours. All the while people are complementing him for what an economic mastermind he is and how horrible those calfs where that were just drinking all his milk. That is the idea that has taken hold today.
As a datapoint: I immigrated to the US in 2008. After 5 years on an F1 visa and 10 years on an H1B, I'm still at least 10 more years away from being freed from the immigration and visa hassle.
No?
Could it be because you and I both know that FAANG companies' Canadian offices are basically places to stash those who cannot and will not ever get US visas, plus the occasional native Canadian who does not want to move to the US for family reasons?
Second, your supposition of my under/overestimation has nothing to do with the factual composition of FAANG and other US tech companies' Canadian offices. As I said, they are a) mostly people who cannot and will not ever get US visas (i.e., those who didn't make the first hurdle that xbonez was lucky enough to cross), and b) a few native Canadians who for one reason or another don't want to move to the US.
I don't know if you know this, but the rest of the world considers the US to be kind of a terrible place. Sure, it might be better than home, but Canada is way better than both.
Basically, yes. According to the Canadian government <http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2010002/article/11287-...> (table 1), for every two Canadian-born people moving to the US, one person born outside the US or Canada moves from Canada to the US. Given that during 2001-2006 20% or less of Canada were immigrants <https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/221026/g-a00...>, that implies that a Canadian resident born outside the US or Canada is about 50% more likely to move to the US than a Canadian native.
I've heard that New Zealand is similarly used by those seeking to move to Australia.
The exact same thing happens across the board, as I cite elsewhere <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36512411>: The best Canadian scientists move to the US, while an equal number in absolute terms of (presumably not the top) American scientists move to Canada.
Also, most highly skilled Canadian devs I know just negotiate remote positions with US based companies. That's what I used to do: US salary living in Vancouver
The Chinese Canadian thing does happen. It's usually 1st generation immigrants with very few ties to Canada and highly competitive families. They're parents usually barely speak English, and their entire families are still in China. Canada let a lot of Chinese immigrants come in during the 80s, and did very little to integrate them, and this is the result I guess.
For what reasons?
Having worked with a lot of Canadians over the years, I've discovered that a significant number of them have this very negative perception of the USA that is not accurate. I can see a lot of these reasons being based on incorrect assumptions, especially when considering how educated upper-middle class people live.
I spent a lot of time in Toronto about 7-8 years ago and I couldn't imagine living there as an American. Everything is so expensive (housing in particular), traffic is terrible, the weather sucks, and my role in Canada paid like 25% less. The food was pretty good, but that's about it.
Sounds like you moved to Toronto and tried to live like you were in the US. No wonder you had a bad time.
I presume he's among those I wrote about, the ones stuck in Canada because they cannot and will not ever be able to get a US visa. And/or believes everything he reads in /r/worldnews and /r/politics.
Shouldn't you save Reddit-tier comments like this for /r/worldnews or /r/politics?
Meanwhile, in a survey of scientists from 16 countries <http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra...>, the US is the top destination from 13 of the 15 others and the #2 choice from the other two.
>Sure, it might be better than home, but Canada is way better than both.
Sorry to shatter your illusions, but historically, every year four Canadians move to the US for every American going the other way. According to the Canadian government, this has not changed in the 21st century <http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2010002/article/11287-...>.[1] According to Reddit, Texas is basically one step from Nazi Germany, but Texas is those Canadians' fourth-favorite state <http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2010002/t/11287/tbl002...>; if you exclude Florida and its retiree-heavy flow, it is their third.
From the Canadian-government analysis:
* "Canadian-born persons who emigrated to the United States between 2000 and 2006 were relatively young", with a median age of 31. Unsurprisingly, "Nearly two-thirds of recent Canadian emigrants to the United States were employed".
* They are also younger than Canadians in general: "Lastly, Canadians who emigrated recently were also generally very young compared to the Canadian population where the median age according to the 2006 Census was 39.5."
* Canadian migrants have become younger in recent years, implying that retiring is further decreasing as a cause of migration: "While the median age of all Canadians residing in the United States was 49 in 2006, the median age was only 31 for Canadians who emigrated between 2000 and 2006. In addition, many of these recent emigrants were of prime working age: over one-half (approximately 53%) were between 20 and 44 years of age. Only around 10% were aged 60 or older."
* While retirement was an important factor for Canadian migrants to Florida and Arizona, those states only received under a quarter of all Canadian migrants to the US, with correspondingly higher median ages.
According to that above-mentioned survey, if you are a Canadian scientist, there is a 16% chance <https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/37lgxg/the...> that you will move to the US. That's not "16% of all Canadian scientists that move out of the country move to the US". Let me repeat:
*16% of all Canadian scientists move to the US.
* They're also likely to be among the top Canadian scientists, too.
By comparison, 5% of all American scientists move to another country, of which 32% go to Canada, so about 1.6-1.7% total. Since the US has nine times more people, that means that in absolute numbers the 1.7% of American scientists is about equal to the 16% of Canadian scientists, but there is no reason to think that the 1.7% makes up the top tier of American scientists; why would the best move north of the border? In other words, the US is receiving the best of Canadian scientists in exchange for an equal number of its non-best.
[1] It is true that from 2010 to 2012—during which the Canadian economy genuinely performed better than the US's—70,000 Americans moved north while only 20,000 Canadians moved south <http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/canada-politics/americans-mov...>, but this still puts the per-capita ratio considerably in the US's favor.
Anyway, I'm not denying any of those things. That still doesn't mean people think the US is a good place to live. They think they can make more money there, and the tradeoff is worth it.
But there's also plenty of people for whom that tradeoff is not worth it. Those people don't use Canada as a stepping stone, they just like living there. Because the US is kind of a shithole.
I took a small pay cut when I moved (from ~135k USD to ~125k CAD, after a few years of raises I'm over 140k CAD now), but certainly not cutting my salary in half. Yes, Canada has its issues, but I'm overall happier living here than I was in the Bay. We have a regional train system that runs every 3-6 minutes instead of the 15-20 you get from BART and better accessibility to the outdoors (I can get to a ski mountain on the bus). I had better accessibility to healthcare in California, but here I don't have to worry about being out thousands of dollars for healthcare if I get laid off.
I work for a smaller tech company founded and headquartered in Vancouver, but I've seen the big tech companies making huge investments in this city over the last couple years. Amazon is in the final stages of building a new tower that will house 6000 employees [0] and Microsoft recently moved into 75,000 sqft of office space and is working on another 400,000 sqft [1]. The tech industry in this city is booming and it's certainly not all driven by companies stashing employees who can't get US visas.
[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/amazon-canad... [1] https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/microsoft-vancouver-office-b...
125k CAD is 94k USD. Going from 135k to 94k USD is not trivial, and Vancouver is pretty expensive as well. Skytrain is pretty awesome though.
As an American STEM worker in Canada: salaries are definitely higher in the US. Not even close in some cases, easily a 40% difference for high-end roles. And while COL is high in SF or NYC, it's just as crazy in Greater Toronto or Vancouver but the salaries have not kept up.
Make no mistake, you can still do pretty well, but I could probably double my salary if I moved back to the big US East Coast city that I'm from.
Long-term I'm not optimistic about the US economy and culture, and my wife wouldn't be a fan, so I'm willing to miss out -- but sometimes it stings knowing what options are out there.
Yeah I made the sacrifice and lived in the Bay, crammed into a hacker house for a few years.
It totally sucks, but working with all those smart people and stashing the money completely changed my life.
Definitely a sacrifice I’d make again
However, I don't know if I agree with you about SF and NYC being equivalent to Toronto and Vancouver. They're just not. We complain about rent in Canada, but SF/NYC rent is another level of bullshit. And general expenses are definitely more expensive as well, I know I feel it whenever I travel to the US.
The other thing is that in most US cities you have to pay for a car. That's just not true in Canada. This makes up a huge part of the income gap.
* free healthcare, but only if you're in the CAN 51% of the year; they track this now
* strong immigrant cultures, esp. in areas like Vancouver or Brampton
* 5 years to citizenship, and then able to get NAFTA TN visas to the US, but still have a Canadian fall-back
* reasonable flights to warm parts of the US, without having to live in Sheriff Joe's AZ or Meatball Ron's Floridian Dystopia
* winters can be rough but 1st world means they're tolerable, and that's a downside that can be worked around
Look... we get you don't like him, but his state is home to more immigrants than most of the country, and pulls above his weight. How about we let the immigrants decide what state best suits them?
So, that means inflation and it is bad for the regular citizens. If before they needed to work forever to afford their own housing, now they would have to work even more.
What's more likely to happen is the people who take Canada's offer will be the ones that were let go for performance reasons or have other productivity or efficiency issues.
H-1B and other immigration paths make sense if the goal is to collect the most tax money. But the country has to (at least somewhat) work by the will of its people. Even many immigrants who have gained citizenship are opposed to easing the immigration policy.
US has awful public K-12 in most of School Districts. Private schools are very good, but cost just as much as college.
What I understand is that anything good in America costs $$$$. And all the free stuff is the same quality as a free couch on a sidewalk
There are (or were?) second or third world countries where private is the majority and only really poor people go to public.
Here's why:
Remember that Canadian graduates from engineering/CS university programs here can go directly south to the US without much hassle under a TN NAFTA VISA. They have a lot of advantages over H1B holders.
So what this really ends up being is an exchange between local talent -- who will go south to where the salaries are much better under TN -- for immigrant talent that currently struggles in the US.
Remember that the local talent was developed under subsidy by Canadian universities. Our tuition rates are a fraction of the US private universities -- while being very high quality. And while they're not free, they are highly funded by the gov't. So... indirectly, we are subsidizing US tech employers with Canadian taxpayer dollars.
I've heard numbers as high as 75%, 80% for the number of e.g. University of Waterloo (highly respected CS/SWE school) graduates who go south after graduating.
Meanwhile H-1B type candidates who come up to Canada will likely be doing it only as a stop-gap before returning to the US; because compensation here is on the whole not competitive with the US, the US was the destination they likely had in mind in the first place, and the selection of employers and interesting companies here is far worse.
And this will only worsen the compensation gap between here and the US by flooding the market with talent; which will thereby encourage more of our own homegrown talent -- who wants to get fair compensation -- to go south ... along with a bunch of these H-1B holders. Vicious circle.
The structure of things are such that Canada has already simply become on the whole a "landing pad" for talent before they relocate to the US. This only further entrenches that.
While I'd say this was not the case for Google Canada (where I worked before) it is the case for most other large US-based employers. And the local companies are on the whole choosing to underpay and take advantage of fresh-off-the-boat talent from overseas at lower cost.
Most shops here aren't doing much of interest, and the VC community here is fairly insular and conservative. The kinds of businesses that will generally succeed here will be places that can take advantage of large work forces of 'meh' imported talent, while the high quality talent finds ways to get to Silicon Valley.
It's also not a great deal for the immigrants who come here; they will find that cost of living here is terrible while compensation rates are lower. There's already a growing recognition/bitterness among many that the Canadian gov't is selling an image of prosperity and potential to skilled immigrants that it can't deliver on when they arrive. And it used to be that at least one could hope one's children would prosper, but the state of the real estate market here is such that most will never able to own a home or get out of debt.
That said, remote work may change this somewhat for some. At least it has for me, giving me a wider pool of (American) employers to choose from.
All in all, I don't think this is much of a good move for Canada. Canadian employers need to learn how to compete with the US for quality talent by offering quality interesting work with better compensation that matches the insanely high cost of living in cities like Toronto or Vancouver -- cities with Bay Area real estate prices & rent but with compensation ranges far lower.
I smell another SAP in the works.
100k for senior was good 5y ago, nowadays 300-400k is very doable
A lot of tech workers affected by the rounds of layoffs last year are still struggling to find other jobs, specially the most junior ones. I've been personally trying to help some friends and ex-coworkers and it is brutal out there. Right now there doesn't seem to be a lack of tech workers, at least not in Vancouver.
Canada housing situation is also not that great and with no signs of improving.
At first glance, it looks like those measures will only serve to devalue the tech salaries even more (already at a considerable discount over US ones) and make the housing situation even worse. I don't expect most people using the new visas will want to live in the countryside, specially considering if they come without a job lined up. The majority will likely want to come to Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal.
That's exactly the point, but they call it "addressing a skills shortage" and there is a huge entrenched interest in keeping the property bubble going higher and higher. Mortgage rates should be slaughtering house prices, more scarcity is the only way to keep them high.
Just to paint the picture, in Canada:
* Prime Minister Trudeau is a trust fund kind with rental income
* Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Freeland, has four mortgages
* Housing Minister Hussen literally purchased another rental property recently
* 1/3 of all Liberal MPs have rental income in their disclosures
What Trudeau is doing to Canada is what my friends and I call the Slum Lord's Delight scenario:
* Flood the country with people who will need housing, while offering them no warning of just how unaffordable things are.
* Do absolutely nothing to increase housing supply. Add as many new taxes, fees, and regulation as you can to ensure new supply declines.
* Do everything you can to allow younger Canadians and new immigrants to borrow more and pay more for housing. Your solution to affordability is helping them borrow more, not reducing prices.
* If anyone complains about immigration, call them racist.
* If anyone complains about housing, blame the provinces and municipalities (whichever level isn't Liberal).
* If anyone thinks of protesting, go Trucker Protests / Tiananmen Square on them
I would not be surprised if Trudeau achieves a China-esque market before he's eventually removed or self-exiles, meaning a market where people never actually own the land, but rather have long term rentals (under a different name) of the property from a State owned company or monopoly.
It's a pyramid scheme, and actually the Cons were even worse for it when they were in power federally, and a huge problem with Ontario right now is precisely the provincial Cons in Ontario.
Same sauce, slightly different flavour.
Some of the people I know that have been laid off mid-2022 and end-2022 and still haven't found another tech job have been driving for Uber, delivering for Doordash, doing cleaning and basic construction jobs to get by.
Those are completely different occupations, though, and appeal to people with probably different personalities.
The Housing problem in Canada is complex and not easy to explain in short sentences, but I can basically assure you that lack of construction workers is not the main reason it exists.
I don't think that the lack of construction workers is the main reason for current crazy property prices in the western world.
Real estate musical chairs is pretty much a central pillar of the Canadian economy. Like 1/5 people live in the GTA, and 1/59 workers in Toronto is a real estate agent. The numbers would be hilarious if they weren't so sad.
50% of Canadians live below this line -- https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1600907559216390146?la...
A word of advice: if you have employable skills in tech simply avoid Canada; and if you must travel here, then work for Americans. They'll pay you much more than anyone local will even consider.
I mean for parents in Canada they could get $10/day daycare in some places as that's ramping up more and more. That could be a dramatic cost savings for a certain person.
It would be interesting to see someone do a real comprehensive look between the countries that touches literally every possible cost. I don't think I've seen that.
With my own back of the envelope math comparisons, the countries did tighten up.
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/seattle-senior-developer-...
https://www.glassdoor.ca/Salaries/vancouver-senior-developer...
perhaps the parent had not considered USD CAD conversion rates or looked at a specific role
So ya, seems like a pretty in-coherent policy change. The only way to compete seems to be to just look to other countries.
Keep in mind:
1. Canada work Visas usually have a 4 month window for you to get a position.
2. The wages are usually much lower than the identical US position (after currency conversion)
3. The incremental income taxes are relatively high
4. After a few months stay, you will be taxed on residency, and not nationality. If you have US citizenship, than you will still have to report in your home state as well (usually it is whichever is greater that is applied).
5. After several months stay, you can apply for a Medical Services Plan. Note, if you develop some issue while awaiting the provincial coverage it is common they will back date coverage. However, it is still highly recommended you keep your private medical/dental insurance during this transitional period.
6.Housing is expensive, and difficult to find these days. It may take some time to find a place if you have a large family.
7. Do a search to learn about TFSA, RRSP, and CPP. It will help you retain your earnings.
8. Due to the recent stressed medical system over several years, it is now rather difficult to find a doctor in some cities. This should be dealt with as soon as possible if you require care, as it currently takes months to find a GP.
Do feel free to ask questions, as the parts of Canada currently not on fire are quite enjoyable. =)
then it doesn't apply to this case, since H-1B visa holders are on this vis because they are not citizens
on the whole I found roughly 40% difference, but usually decent benefits.
strong increases in tax brackets mean it's not really useful to offer you more money, since the gub'mnt will take more of it. meanwhile stock purchase plans or retirement options are generous. not great if you don't plan on staying in Canada long term.
> 3. The incremental income taxes are relatively high
this, like in the US, will depend on state / province; Quebec is the highest, but also offers great bennies, like free or low-cost child care / daycare.
> 4. After a few months stay, you will be taxed on residency, and not nationality. If you have US citizenship, than you will still have to report in your home state as well (usually it is whichever is greater that is applied).
you do not have to have a home state as a US citizen. if you need a home state, look into PO boxes in states without an income tax, like TX, FL, or WA.
> 5. After several months stay, you can apply for a Medical Services Plan. Note, if you develop some issue while awaiting the provincial coverage it is common they will back date coverage. However, it is still highly recommended you keep your private medical/dental insurance during this transitional period.
this is true. usually you have to be in province for 3 months before you can use the provincial healthcare. make sure you have private insurance coverage until then.
> 6.Housing is expensive, and difficult to find these days. It may take some time to find a place if you have a large family.
not true, generally was easy to find. if you live in the GTA or Vancouver you may have to go pretty far out, however. if you're looking for something large, cheap, and close -- you're gonna be holding your breath for a while.
> 7. Do a search to learn about TFSA, RRSP, and CPP. It will help you retain your earnings.
The only real takeaway is that the US IRS hates the TFSA, but RRSP are generally okay. The Canadian government will not be cool with you adding money to US retirement accounts.
Figure out what an FBAR is, and if / when / why you need to file them.
Also look into PFICs and penalties for holding Index funds, ETFs, or holding companies. It's not illegal, just a huge PITA with expensive overhead.
Taxes will usually be a non-issue since you will subtract your Canadian taxes (usually higher) from your US taxes, which will result in little to no taxes; capital gains can get messy though. But you still have to file, and you probably want a cross-border specialist if you're north of 100k USD.
> 8. Due to the recent stressed medical system over several years, it is now rather difficult to find a doctor in some cities. This should be dealt with as soon as possible if you require care, as it currently takes months to find a GP.
Did not ever have any problems in Calgary, Vancouver, or Edmonton; can't speak to the eastern parts of the country. Care will also be different if you're in a big city, 2nd tier city, or small town, and often not in the ways that you think.
No problems for me either in the prairies or Vancouver. Hell, I was in Vancouver two years and found myself a doctor _twice_ in that time, requiring exactly two phone calls. No idea what everyone was bitching about.
Then I moved to Ontario (not Toronto). Heard the same complaints I’d heard for years and gave them little credence.
Yeah it’s impossible to find a doctor out here. My “family doctor” managing chronic conditions is the telehealth doctor. Even the walk in clinics have all gone patients/appointment only and every one I’ve called has stopped maintaining a waitlist at all because it was uselessly long (tried clinics in the city, in and around our small town over an hour away, and basically everywhere else). Some of the hospitals haven’t been able to keep their ERs open 24 hours. Which is unfortunate because any medical care we need that can’t be handled over a video chat a week from now is basically a visit to the ER at this point.
Then we keep electing the government whose solution is to continue to mismanage the entire system towards privatization and implementing a provincially managed waitlist. I’ve been on it a couple of years now. I’ve talked to other people that have been on it over five years. They send me a letter every six months asking me to let them know if I’ve managed to find a doctor so they can remove me and my daughter from the list.
An already broken system is being stacked against you
Housing prices are more expensive in Canada. Health care systems are crumbling within Canada. Wages are lower in Canada. General cost of living is more expensive in Canada
I was frankly shocked after a lifetime of watching CBC just how much my quality of life improved by moving to the USA.
Meanwhile COVID f'd up the health care system extremely badly and there's no real commitment from the province to getting the funding situation under control.
Is that much longer than normal in Canada? 30 year is the standard in US.
I'm not targeting the person you are replying to with any malice, but since almost all of the major financial and business institutions in Canada are headquartered here there is an overabundance of people that would claim they work in "tech" when in reality they are making a respectable but decidedly non-tech salaries at places like TD Bank or Thompson Reuters as examples.
The range of possible salaries for devs in Toronto is quite large.
Also as an additional anecdote, every single one of my classmates who went to the USA and decided they would like to start a family, came back to Canada to start that family.
That is not to say it is all rosy here. There is an overabundance of poor or terrible talent that's been shipped in to cover the exodus of Canadian educated people chasing better salaries in the USA while business leaders and purse string holders are content to celebrate their mediocrity while being confused why productivity is so low.
Our old house @ Oakwood & Vaughan was bought for $285,000 in 2005. It's likely "worth" north of $1M now, not 20 years later. My senior software engineer salary in that period was between $75 and $100k CAD. Are you saying that a SWE salary in Toronto is over $300k now?
I know it isn't, though there are plenty making more than that Google Canada, that is a huge anomaly from the rest of the market.
The distortion in housing prices and the continued upward growth has a negative effect on the ability of young people to prosper. It might help me retire, sure, but it isn't going to do much good for my kids.
BTW, I worked as a SWE at Google for 10 years. And my wife was at Apple before that. Does that count as "tech?" Just checking.
Instead of moving hours away to Toronto or Vancouver (if you don't live there), just move the same distance south and you can find cheaper housing, higher wages, more job opportunity, lower taxes and lower cost of living in general.
It's like a secret power up to your life.
The level of violence here is just so much higher than other countries. Even living in San Francisco where the murder rate is half that of the US it is still double that of Europe and Canada. There was a gun battle at our local play park a couple of weeks back.
The house price / wage ratio in Canada is shockingly bad though.
The Bay Area is not representative of the rest of the US. Crime is out of control in SF proper and the Bay Area more generally due to reduced enforcement.
San Francisco County 4.9
California 6.3
USA 7.8
Santa Clara County is safer at 2.7 though I would really miss living in a walkable neighbourhood.
Cherry picking stats doesn’t make it true.
SF-proper is one of the worst urban areas in the US. Maybe only topped by Philly.
The US limits gun control so even in states like California that try to do something about it there are many more deaths than in countries which actually do something about it.
Edit to add: It's not just the absolute levels that I worry about but the effect that ever present gun violence has on society with kids being subjected to frightening active shooter drills in schools that just aren't necessary in other developed countries.
But, isn't being a child in the United States significantly better than being a child _anywhere else_ 100 years ago? Even with the psychological harm caused by school shootings, hasn't there been a net improvement? I would much rather be a child worrying about a school shooter (with, in reality, a minuscule chance of it physically effecting me) versus being a child during the great depression, either of the world wars, or the cold war.
It's a very logical argument and coming from someone nowhere close to starting a family though; I am sure that most parents might agree but would continue to want their kids to be safer.
I'm not trying to say that none of this matters... I guess what I'm trying to say is that, those kids ended up alright in far worse circumstances, so kids today will be alright too.
My household income sits comfortably in the top 5% earning bracket and there is no way we can afford a bigger home even with a substantial equity in our current house. We've been looking into places 40, 50 minutes outside of the SUBURB we live (not downtown) and the prices are slightly lower but not enough to justify the move. Tell me how this will happen the situation of Canadian families here?
The strategy of pumping immigrants into the system is not sustainable. At some point, you need to have a sustainable strategy with a TFR > 2.1. We need babies, not immigrants.
The housing problem needs to be addressed if we have more immigrant or not. The renting prices doubled in Vancouver, I have no idea how people are living there right now, given the median income
When we look at the last time an enormous amount of apartments were being built in this country, through the 60s and early 70s, the Federal government was deeply involved both in directly subsidizing coops and non-profit housing and also through tax expenditure which aided market housing. There were a great deal of federal tax incentives to build market housing, many of which no longer exist.
Basically Chretien got the Feds entirely out of housing during the austerity budgets of 1993, housing construction plunged for decades and decades and now we seem to somehow have an enormous shortage.
The Feds also are in control of Indigenous reserves, so a failure to build housing there is their fault.
No major party that I know of have a coherent strategy to solve the housing crisis and the TFR issue. None. They all have contradicting ideas embedded in their policies. Usually it is a mix of more incentive to own property (e.g. incentives to first-buyers, incentive to construction companies, etc) while also increasing immigration to record levels, what changes is the flavour of immigrants they prioritize (different sectors of the economy, more refugees, etc).
I don't live in a major city, land is not a problem here, building permits is not an issue.
I really do not understand why people still can have any illusions about Canadian government after last 3 years.
Holy crap, I'm speechless. That's some bubble.
edit: also... not only a matter of size. But a lot of areas in Canada are just way too cold, so ppl just don't want to be there?
I'm in Vancouver, lived in Toronto for a year, but I don't see anywhere else besides Vancouver that I would like as much as here - for the green areas, mountains, ocean, and milder winter and summer. Toronto weather is bad, either too cold, or too hot.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_population...
And the Canadian government since has continued letting people leverage themselves harder and harder so the market doesn't dip. That is how modest homes are selling for over a million CAD. The US is in the same trajectory but with higher salaries and the dip in 2008 we are just 5-10 years behind Canada on this.
See also the UK now allowing for mortgages to be passed on to the children of the home buyer, so that the term length can exceed a human lifetime, so as to not explode the monthly payment.
Whereas in the US you have way more options.
We are building in Canada, but because of local regulations and just the fact that everybody wants to live in those few 3 or 4 major cities, it's way more difficult. Prices in other cities are WAY more reasonable.
If you built high-rise dorms or tiny apartments, you could probably fit even more.
https://www.designboom.com/design/brownstone-shared-housing-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/business/tiny-apartments-...
Are you sure that's true? I googled it it and it looks like the Johnson Government floated the idea but I can't see anything saying it's now a thing. And we've got two Prime Ministers since then.
This is horrifying that anyone even considered this. That is 100% a straight up return to serfdom. If things get that bad I suggest we take a page out of the French revolutionaries and the IRA on the proper way to respond.
The mortgage can be passed on to children, they aren't being forced on them.
My sister got lucky when my dad died that they let her assume the mortgage they took out together on their house. Not having that option would have been difficult for her, because she really wouldn't qualify for one by herself, and the payments on the home were less than it would be to rent something equivalent.
Actually, why not make this an option: children can assume the mortgages of properties they inherit from their parents? Because it isn't automatic right now, even if they are joint on the mortgage already.
Honestly, why do you think they could?
More than that, if you want to get to the top of your industry, all major companies (and their jobs) are based on Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver (plus Edmonton and Calgary for oil/gas). In the US, depending on the industry, it's entirely possible to get to the top of your field while living in (say) Denver, Dallas, Orlando, Charlotte, or Las Vegas.
If you think the recent US bubble is bad, imagine adding it on top of the 2008 bubble (minus the crash) and you have Canada.
Before the most recent correction in Canada, the average sale price in Canada was double that of the US. Let that sink in. A country with lower wages, higher taxes, no 30 year fixed mortgages had an average sale price of double the US.
Got laid off in 2020 during Corona. Jumped ship from private to government. Went from 185k US to 120K CAD.
Substantial drop in purchasing power and ability to buy a house. I love my country but it feels like it has become openly hostile to staying in middle class. Scary stuff. I can provide more details if anyone is interested.
As usual, there are many factors that contribute to the current housing situation. On the supply side, I feel a major issue is lack of qualified workers. And I am not sure immigration can solve this problem easily unless you are prepared to accept lower quality housing. It is not a coincidence that specialized trades like electrician, heavy machine operators, roofers are not immigrants. The standards are higher here. In the developing world, standards are much sloppier. So it isn't simply a "plug-and-play" situation. There are other issues though. I know that input prices have skyrocketed.
To me, the focus on the demand side is becuase it is easier to solve whereas the supply issues are more structural.
Software skirts the regulation where electricians cant
There's layers of rot that have created an untenable situation. The past few years Canada has become all about taking shortcuts and juicing numbers as much as possible. Bad decisions and incompetence create a feedback loop where we dig even deeper. If we built more houses, it would devalue the rest of the housing market - just for a start, it would wipe out the retirement plans for millions. It's not going to happen. It's a depressing downwards spiral where there is no easy exit. Not to mention that Canada wouldn't be able to execute that kind of plan because different parts of the government are trying to do different things.
They are, pretty much.
> Do you not have enough construction workers to build houses?
I don't think most people understand what's going on with Canada. Relative to their population size, the number of immigrants they're bringing in is absolutely insane. 500K+ a year with no signs of slowing down. And those people all need housing TODAY. Canada needs to commit to an absolutely massive, never-ending nationwide construction project to keep up with demand.
This is an existential issue.
I own two houses, both mortgages paid, make 150k as a family and would need to save for decades to put a down payment on a detached home in a far away suburb of Ottawa.
People who didn't own a house a few years ago bought too much house for fear of being priced out of the market and now their mortgages are coming up for renewal...can't pay it so the banks are doing 50-90 year mortgages!!
Year over year, Canada grew by 1.2 million new residents. That's 20% higher than Trudeau's already absurdly high target of 1 million new residents.
This is an engineered crisis in the making.
Canada needs a strong consumer market to respond when the US decides it doesn't like free trade
There's places where sure yes it would be technically possible to build some new town but it's so cold and miserable that no one would want to and there's no local economic reason to put such a town in such a far flung place. Ultimately we probably will though if the population continues to increase at such a pace.
However regardless of near term future policy that would enable more home development, interest rate hikes have soured the lending environment and caused housing development to plunge.
It may well be that we don't have enough construction workers too.
The fortunate thing is that the First Nations have rights over their land https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/vancouver-real-est...
The unfortunate thing is that others don't.
And no, canada does not have the capacity to build housing at the rate immigration is bringing people in. half a million per year is a small city each year, mostly going to areas where work is available.
I like to think I'm fairly competent.
For me it's a no-brainer that it would be Italy. Not much interest on living in the US, unless I was a millionaire.
These changes announced yesterday will make it much easier for me.
Right off the top you're earning CAD instead of USD, so with the current exchange rate that's a ~25% reduction in purchasing power.
On top of that, it's a smaller country, with fewer large and wealthy industries. Salaries are not only CAD but also the actual dollar numbers tend to be smaller. EG I've seen listings for roles in the States offering 200k USD, but similar roles in Canada offer 120k CAD, which is less than 100k USD. That's a "pretty substantial" pay cut if you want it. It's also not like they make up for lower salaries with other perks like super high vacation time or anything either.
Then you're living in a country where we have some of the most expensive real estate in the world in Toronto and Vancouver, which has effects in other markets as well.
Also everything is just more expensive here, with the exception of Health Care I suppose. Groceries are absurdly expensive right now, but even when they were cheaper they weren't anywhere near as cheap as my friends pay in the US. The cheapest pound of butter you can find is $6.50 CAD right now. Same with Gas for your car, insurance, etc. All of the tech we buy is more expensive too, and not just "cost of exchange rate", it's always just higher.
Don't get me wrong, I am happy here and in a lot of ways I am glad I chose to stay rather than chasing higher salaries in the States. I'm just trying to illustrate that there are definitely struggles here too and it will very likely be a very substantial pay cut to move here and get a job here. More substantial than you probably think.
tl;dr: It's very expensive to live here in a lot of ways, our salaries don't really compete in a numerical way even before factoring in exchange rate.
But most other groceries are cheaper in Canada than in the US. For example, the average cost of a loaf of bread in Canada is CAD3.50, in the US it's USD3.50, 33% more expensive.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_resu...
Most things are cheaper in Canada than in the US, mostly because the average wage is cheaper in Canada than the US.
But the things that are more expensive are the biggies, like rent & taxes.
I suspect this does not tell the whole story. Sticker price is one thing but how often does stuff go on on sale, what volume of coupons and other savings are readily available?
Maybe I'm completely off base here, but I've discussed this quite a bit with my friends who live in the states and overall they pay way less than I do for very similar items. And it's not some extreme couponing thing, it's just "these are buy one get one all the time", which is a rare occurrence here.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-pri...
Also... seems quite some people comparing quality of food, and usually US ends up losing. For bread and even kit kats
The gross salary is indeed very low compared to US offers--moving to DC would have increased my gross salary by >2.5x.
However, add in various public services. I pay a few hundred dollars a year total for my family's insurance and medical care and there's little danger of this suddenly changing. Childcare is literally 10x cheaper---and that's after very generous parental leave (50+ weeks). Quebec has fairly strong protections for tenants, so the rent is rising but not wildly. The city is very walkable with solid mass transit, so I can walk, bike, or bus to most places, insulating me from gas prices. Once you start trying to 'buy back' a similar quality of life in a big American city, the salary gap is smaller than you'd think.
We're interested in moving back for other reasons (closer to family, more exciting jobs, etc) but the economic case, butter aside, is not wildly compelling at non-SV salaries.
Healthcare is free but Quebec also has horrible healthcare (they seem ok for pregnancy though). And your employer would cover that in the US anyway.
Rent has historically been reasonable but is quickly getting just as bad as other Canadian cities, and there's no availability.
I think we pay $60 / day for daycare, which gets subsidized down to ~$30 ish. You paid $300 in the US? There is subsidized daycare buy only if you're willing to wait forever.
Parental leave is only pays you 50k a year or so out of your employment insurance.
I agree that driving in Montreal is so horrible that I don't use the car unless I absolutely have to. Some would consider that a positive, I don't.
There are some good sides to Montreal in particular compared to other Canadian cities and US cities, but it's still not the land of milk and honey, and you still sacrifice a lot of money for it.
Daycare for us is about $15/day (calculator here: http://www.budget.finances.gouv.qc.ca/budget/outils/garde-ne...). Some of the prices we got for DC in 2021 were over $2500/kid-month and they've only gone up, so $150/day is indeed in the ballpark.
Driving? Chacun à son goût. I found driving here better than DC or Boston, but...yeah, I'm glad I don't do it.
I agree that it's not a land of milk and honey--but nowhere else is either.
An additional subtle one where Canadians are paying less than Americans: In many parts of Canada property taxes are remarkably low when compared to the USA.
There's all sorts of reasons for this. But bad medical services is a big problem in Quebec, along with language politics.
I like many things about Quebec, but I wouldn't relocate there.
There's still a lot to like about Canada. I grew up here and didn't leave, so I'm not saying don't come here.
Just making sure you don't get here and are shocked that not only do you make way less, what you do make doesn't buy as much either.
So after rent and taxes, BC is 45k, ON is 44k, QC is 47k, and AB is 53k. Roughly.
Now you've got to pay for food, utilities, and so forth. That's probably another 30k. It's easy to spend 2500 CAD/mo on just food, gas, electrical, insurance, utilities and so on. Everything adds up fast.
So really, after all is said and done, you're working full time for 15k to 20k CAD a year; or 11k to 15k USD.
>30K on rent
Not unless you're living in luxury towers in rich areas. A 1 bedroom or a studio will rarely go above 2K, even in Vancouver or Toronto.
>2500 on food
If you're cooking, and not being frugal at all, you're spending 500 per month at most.
>gas
Canadian cities are walkable and have public transit, you don't need a car. If you do need a car where you live, then you're likely saving on rent.
>electrical
Electricity is dirt cheap in Canada. Never paid more than 60$ even in winter. Other utilities are similar to the US, that'll add up to 200-300 dollars.
>insurance
Not a thing. Welcome to modern society, baby.
I'm sure you can spend that much money if you want to, but that's a choice to live a certain lifestyle. This lifestyle is not necessary.
My first job in Canada I made 53K, 37K after taxes. I lived a normal life, studio downtown, going on vacations, drinking and eating out, and still managed to save 13000 dollars in a single year. Later I got a raises to 80K, 120K, and eventually 250K, but my (again, definitely not frugal!) lifestyle never cost me more than 25 - 30K per year.
Average price of an unfurnished 1 bedroom in Vancouver is well over 2k now.[0]
> If you're cooking, and not being frugal at all, you're spending 500 per month at most.
I said food, gas, utilities, electrical, and all the other sundries required of living in Vancouver. And 500 CAD on food was achievable pre-pandemic, but inflation hit grocery bills the hardest.
I paid for renter's insurance, and extended medical while living in Vancouver. It was worth it, because my storage locker was busted into several times by junkies and we had things stolen that we later replaced. And, if you bike you are potentially liable in accidents. Getting insurance if you commute by bicycle is sensible.
> Canadian cities are walkable and have public transit, you don't need a car.
Taking Translink will still run hundreds of dollars a month.[1]
0: https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/local-news/vancouver-rent...
1: https://www.translink.ca/transit-fares/pricing-and-fare-zone...
Inflation, sure, it's still not gonna be more than 700$. My 500$ figure is literally from 2022.
Rent insurance is 30$ per month, anything else is optional and your choice and also not that expensive. That does not add up to 2500 per month.
And yeah, I know transit costs money, just get a pass. Work pays for it, and if they don't you can deduct it from your taxes.
Utilities includes heat and hot water, electrical, home internet, cellular, gym memberships, and so on. I suppose if you never turn on the heater, don't have home internet, never hit the gym, don't make any calls, don't own a car, and only shit at work then you could save a bundle, here.
The transit tax credit was eliminated in 2017.[1]
0: https://rentals.ca/new-westminster?bbox=-123.08659,49.11473,...
1: https://turbotax.intuit.ca/tips/deducting-the-cost-of-your-p...
I had almost all those things you mention, internet and cell phone and gym membership, left the heater on 24/7 during winter, did plenty of shitting at home, and still never spent more than $1000 per month.
The only thing I didn't have is a car. A car is literally the worst financial decision you'll ever make. You're free to make it, but you can't come here and complain that cost of living is expensive.
Sucks about the transit tax credit though :/ I used to use that when my commute was by transit
Free heat and hot water is standard in older buildings with central boilers and radiated heating. Otherwise, you're taking on the utilities payment. If there's a separate service or dedicated service, then there's a bill.
If you don't have a car you're still renting a ride share to go hiking or skiing. Transit isn't taking you to Golden Ears or Cypress.
And clearly you've never rented a car with your mates or taken one of the shuttle buses to the mountains.
Renting a car and taking shuttle buses isn't free.
The total cost of living isn't just room and board, it's the expenditures one makes to be happy living and working where they are.
Most people my age don't want a car, we want to live in the city center. People that live with their parents have a car usually, but that's it. It's not a big deal. I get that it can be hard to understand if you've lived in awful car dependent cities your whole life though.
For one thing, I don't plan on living anywhere near one of the big cities.
Ie, Nanaimo was once a small town in central Vancouver island, with low rents and cheap housing. It's now one of the fastest growing cities in Canada[0] and has some of the highest rents and fastest growing rents in BC[1].
Really, here in Canada the situation is changing _fast_. What may have seemed a reasonable market a year ago could have collapsed into unaffordability by now.
Also, as a resident of Nanaimo: be prepared not to have access to Health Care. As a new resident you won't get a family doctor, and the _single_ walk-in clinic stops taking patients early in the morning. The ER is your only option, and often it only has one attending doctor.
This is similar throughout BC outside of Victoria and Metro Vancouver. In no small part because of people like yourself, who are avoiding immigrating to the big cities; but also because of people fleeing the cities.
0: https://nanaimonewsnow.com/2022/02/09/nanaimo-population-jum...
1: https://nanaimonewsnow.com/2022/12/14/rent-prices-in-nanaimo...
You can probably do better but kind of gives you an idea about how big a US vs Canadian gap can get.
Uh, those are two different currencies, and Canada generally has a lower cost of living than the US. I don't see why the Canadian dollar being priced weaker than the US dollar would come into this.
Like, if you compare US vs UK MacBook prices the UK looks way more expensive, but after accounting for VAT they're basically the same.
And that's before taxes.
And American stores will not ship those sorts of items to Canada.
However, I’d read up on the healthcare shortage and high housing costs first though
I'm already aware of the healthcare issues and the housing costs. I have a region picked out that mitigates some of that.
Canada's official numbers do show that Q3 2022 was a record high for emigration (16.5k -- Q3 2018 was 15.5k), but other recent quarters (Q4 2022, Q1 2023, etc) are still lower than prior years. And you have a significantly higher population now than back then.[1]
[1] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=171000...
A very important detail here is that Software Engineering is a specific specialization under the Engineering faculty. This figure does not include Computer Science graduates, for example, as that is a separate and much larger department.
So, this is a poll of 87 students (out of ~107) of a very specific graduating class. To put this in perspective, the Computer Science department at Waterloo is 4,000 undergraduate students.[2]
I'm not refuting that Canadian graduates often look to the US for better employment opportunities (full disclosure: I did that), but I think we owe ourselves to look at this topic objectively.
[1] https://uw-se-2020-class-profile.github.io/profile.pdf [2] https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/about/quick-facts
According to the numbers this is not true. What specific numbers can you show that backs up yoru point?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/443066/number-of-emigran...
First and foremost, the Canadian tech scene is nothing like the US, Europe, or Asia where I'm coming from. Tech jobs are rare. The flagship tech employer is Shopify and they just recently downsized.
Second, salaries are garbage, especially for migrants. There is a term for this situation called "Canadian Experience": employers claim that because one does not have experience working in Canada, they deserve a crappy salary while they acquire it. This is of course bullshit. It got so bad that it's actually been addressed by the government and made illegal, at least in Ontario[0].
Finally, the cost of life is absurd, with respect to income. In Vancouver or Toronto, rents are completely out of control, and buying is out of the question unless you have some serious funds, especially with the recent hike in mortgage rate. Price of food surged dramatically in the past months as well, and although I have a decent job (in terms of distance from the median salary), I don't go out nearly as much as I would want because it's too damn expensive.
Now, Canada is a great place for normal humans to live in, especially with a family, and again I have no regret. But right now, it's not a good place to make it in tech.
[0] https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/policy-removing-%E2%80%9Ccanadian-...
Sap, workday, Cisco, Amazon, Microsoft , meta , etc
When issuing visas, the Canadian government uses a point system (age, degree...) that never actually checks for employability.
That's how you get people claiming they were "Senior Engineers" in their home country that can't pass a fizzbuzz test. With a signal to noise ratio this low, a lot of employers simply won't bother unless someone can demonstrate that someone else is willing to employ them at Canadian wages for the position they claim they can perform.
H1b comes through a lottery. This year less than 10% got through the lottery (mostly because Indian consultancy scams that US govt is trying to crack down on but mostly won’t). Even in good years, a good 50% don’t get through the lottery. If you complete your masters in US, you get 3 shots at the lottery after which you have to leave the country (Called the STEM OPT extension). If you pass through the lottery you are mostly set for life in US. If you’re not from India or China, you just need to find a company to apply for your green card and then get in in 3 yrs (All of big tech will apply for your green card). If you are from India and China you will have a long waiting line, Indians in particular might have a 100 yr waiting line because of the massive amount of recent immigration. Even then your H1b lasts a total of 9 yrs, after which you can apply for green card and then get an EAD while waiting for your green card, which basically ensures you can stay in the country and work as long as your green card is processing. This situation is a bit stressful, because if your green card processing has issues and you get a reject, you have to instantly leave the country on EAD (your life is uprooted) but by this you are either 100% committed to living here or you’re gonna leave (a lot I’d estimate 50% leave back to India)
Which brings me to my puzzlement regarding this law. The main bottleneck is the H1b lottery, I would guess easily a good 30-40% of Indians leave unable to get past the lottery and that number is increasing. Canada is also giving choice to those who went past the lottery. But if I went through the lottery, why would I ever consider going to Canada? No offense, but US salaries are easily double, and even higher the higher you climb, there’s no comparison really. And if Canada is trying to maintain quality of immigrants, the H1b is literally a lottery, a member of Google or an Indian outsourcing sweatshop like TCS have the exact same chance of getting through (and TCS applies way more for H1b) so this isn’t even a great quality filter. By my prediction, this won’t do anything to attract immigrants from US, because those who made it through H1b are not going to leave except to maybe return back to their home country. US is simply too good pay wise, and then on top of that most of the country is very welcoming to immigrants.
This is wrong. I understand why you say this, given the errors in the next quote.
> Even then your H1b lasts a total of 9 yrs, after which you can apply for green card and then get an EAD while waiting for your green card, which basically ensures you can stay in the country and work as long as your green card is processing.
The H-1B is issued for 3 years. You can renew it twice, after which you need to leave the country. If, within those 6 years, you have a green card application filed and have gone past the initial two stages, you can keep renewing your H-1B. But you will not get an EAD while you wait for the green card backlog to clear. Your stay in the country is not guaranteed while you wait. If you lose your job, you will have to leave the country if you don't find another similar job in a few months.
This EAD allows you to switch employers and even remain unemployed for awhile (though when you GC eventually becomes current, you may get denied if unemployed).
rents and prices spiking
"hmm maybe we should make it easier for enormously highly paid American tech workers to move to Canada."
I like the idea in general, but the specific timing of this, as high interest rates are making house construction slow down and fixing the housing crisis even harder, is going to make a lot of inadequately housed Canadians very annoyed!
Would have been invaluable a few years ago, right now the jobs market might not be so supportive of it. But we’ll see.
And no, don't start with the usual "they will create a new Silicon Valley!". That's not how it works.
In actuality I expect there to be a rise in "mid-shoring" of technical work to Canada rather than overseas (same time zones, less appearance of selling out since it's sending work to Canada, not a "real" foreign country).
2. There's actually not a lot of lumber. Mills are closing and lumber towns are dying. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/canadian-cen... https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2023/01/18/Running-Empty-BC-Fore...
3. People and the courts have come to realize that the "massive amounts of government land" are not actually the government's to give away. In many cases these lands are unceded by indigenous First Nations who are wrestling back control of their title and natural resources. All of this means that future use of the land is more complex than it may seem.
The housing crisis in Canada is extreme and well beyond the very real housing crisis in the US. Previously people focused on Vancouver, which is insane, but now the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) is essentially unaffordable basically everywhere. Possibly the only exception is Quebec. There is no political will to fix this problem because houses have become retirement accounts and anything that reduces home values is political suicide.
The second problem is that Canadian wages are incredibly low, even in tech. In the US at least software engineer compensation largely shields you from the housing and cost of living crisis. That is not the case in Canada.
Canada is very similar to Australia, which also has a housing crisis. Both countries have an economy geared to resource extraction and the respective currencies move with commodity prices.
I don’t expect this scheme to have much impact.
The H-1B visa thing is cool, but it's the other changes that are exciting for me. I'm particularly interested in the new LMIA exemption.
> the development of an Innovation Stream under to the International Mobility Program to attract highly talented individuals, options for which include
>
> employer-specific work permits for up to five years for workers destined to work for a company identified by the Government of Canada as contributing to our industrial innovation goals
> open work permits for up to five years for highly skilled workers in select in-demand occupations
and:
> the creation of a STEM-specific draw under category-based selection to issue additional invitations to apply under the Express Entry program
Feel free to shoot any questions
It's possible that my odds will improve with the new tech draw, though.
https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
https://www.canadianimmigration.com/working-in-canada/nafta-...
For the US -> Canada route:
> One of the benefits of applying for a NAFTA Professional work permit is that applicants are exempt from the Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) requirement. Further, professionals who are destined to work in Quebec are also exempt from the Quebec Acceptance Certificate (CAQ) requirement. NAFTA Professional work permits are only for individuals entering the Canadian labour market temporarily, and their work permits cannot be longer than 3 years in duration.
Immigration visas, however, would be different and go through a different approval process.
While I'd argue we need both, the latter is clearly better for the nation, considering our skyrocketing debt.
There were also other issues, like accounting practices, [2] which don't sound like thy have changed much either.
[1] https://danco.substack.com/p/why-the-canadian-tech-scene-doe...
[2] https://troymedia.com/business/tech-sector-canada-problems/
Pretty hard to attract tech talent with salaries that are way lower than American ones when your housing costs are fastly approaching NYC and Bay Area levels. Maybe someone desperate after the layoffs would bite the bait, out of sheer desperation, but this is neither sustainable nor human.
For those not from Canada: The Canadian government and provincial governments operate independently, in parallel, taking different areas of concern. They are considered equals, so there is no means for one to supersede the other. While the areas of concern are clearly defined, reality often sees matters cross into both, so you get such strangeness when one hand wants to do one thing and the other hand wants to do something else.
Edit: Can you please also write why you don't like the idea? Are you worried about competition? About culture? About something else?
Edit2: Wow, I wasn't aware of how much people love restrictions on working and traveling. Please tell me, I want to know your thinking behind this, maybe you are right about it?
I’m not aware of any that have chosen fully open borders, mostly because that’s not in the interest of the citizens and residents of the country.
Edit in response to P’s edit: if the country I’m in has a good balance of labor, jobs, and related resources, and is therefore a great place to live, what’s the incentive to open our borders to everyone and risk upsetting that balance with no way to turn off the tap?
What I say is, they shouldn't be doing it and any person anywhere in the world should be free to travel, live and work anywhere in the world. I'm curious about your argument against that.
If your position were the majority opinion, some nation somewhere would be trying it.
For me personally, I think that the US would be a substantially less appealing place for those I care about if our population doubled to 700M. With open borders, we couldn’t prevent that.
Do I support more immigration of high-skilled, highly educated people and their families? Absolutely. Do I support open borders? Absolutely not.
I simply don't see an argument here. Just because that's how it is now, doesn't mean it should continue to be the way it is. It's not even that old of a tradition, Some 100 years ago people were able to move and work wherever they like.
So you support particular kind of people come to your country, do you support deportation of people who are born in your country but don't meet the standards you impose on the immigrants?
My support for high-skilled/highly-educated immigrants is based on a nakedly selfish desire to have those immigrants improve the global competitiveness of my country, in order to make it continue to be a great place for my children and grandchildren to live. I assume other countries are making the same selfish calculations, resulting in similar policies.
Feel free to call my policy preferences selfish; I already have and will agree with you.
Why not? If they are substandard, why keep them there? What's the difference between them and the people you would like to keep out?
I'm not calling you anything. I'm trying to understand you.
I see a difference in kind between denying someone a right and failing to grant someone else a privilege.
(You are the only one calling them sub-standard, by the way.)
I guess your motivation of keeping substandard immigrants out but substandard locals in doesn't come only from your desire to stick to the definitions, am I right? Because if that's your worry, it's very easy to resolve it by changing the definition through a legislative process.
Changing the definitions and expecting the policies (which are the expressed will of the people in democracies or of the leaders in autocracies) to change is folly.
We happen to call the former group “citizens” and there are other paths to citizenship in most countries, but that word is merely a shorthand for “a person with a non-revocable right to live in a country”. If you change citizen to mean something else or change non-citizen to mean that, new words will emerge to mean specifically the difference in that right and we’ll switch to using that word.
Separately, the decision of whom to extend the privilege of entry or working to non-citizens is based on whom the population (in democracies) thinks will make the country better. If you’re picking your team to compete on a global stage, why wouldn’t you allow the brightest and most educated to come join your team?
You appear to disagree on my initial premise that people born somewhere have more rights to be there than others who weren’t. I respect your right to hold your opinion. I also reserve my right to hold my opinion.
That’s unsurprising that that would be stable over long periods of time.
My answer is that the demand will provide its supply.
Americas brief history of “free immigration” is also littered with atrocities.
I don’t think you can use an immature country (beginnings of USA) and use it as a template for a mature country (current day USA). Doesnt America already struggle with the level of immigration it currently receives, why would fully open borders improve this situation?
So is how easy it is for anyone in the world to move to anywhere else in the world within 24 hours. The situations and their outcomes are difficult to compare.
People want restrictions because of a long list of concerns with open borders. This seems to be the prevalent view in every country in the world (are there outliers?).
Do you not see the concerns that people have with open borders as valid?
EU was able to abolish those restrictions to great benefit and is trying to make it check-free through the Schengen agreement. It's Romania and Bulgaria who still need to show passports and this creates great friction at the borders but hopefully, this will be no longer the case by the end of the year.
In the United STATES of America, people are free to work and travel any any state and notice that people don't simply flock to the richest one.
I agree that sudden removal of the borders will create serious issues but this is only because there are borders at first place. The situation will stabilize and you won't see 8B people moving to Canada, 8B people moving to USA, 8B people moving to Germany, 8B people moving to UK.
That could be a lot of people. Canada is (I think objectively) a better country to live in that most of our planet (alas). Very many would jump at that offer. Where would they live? There is a housing shortage. Their health care would cost taxpayers a lot (universal healthcare is considered a right and source of pride in Canada).
Basically, it would be too much of an increase, too fast. It needs to be spread over decades.
In short there could be some problems but at some point it will stabilize and the would will become a meritocratic place.
Having a large pool of house builders isn't going to suddenly solve new home supply problems or make homes affordable. That is a far more complex problem and simply having a readily available skilled labor force will not solve.
I think you are maybe missing the scale of my point. Canada is a country of 40m people. There are 8000m people on this planet. If we "let everyone who wants in" in, then the country's population could double if just 0.5% of the planet thought Canada was a better place than they are in already. There are easily that many such people.
You think housing stock can be doubled? You think there are jobs for a doubling of population? On what time scale? Like I said already, it needs to be spread over decades.
See, the problem with punishment which is different for one group than the other is that you create an artificial subclass. You chose "violent crime", which sounds reasonable but someone can say any crime or even a parking ticket should result in deportation.
So let's consider that the politics in your country have turned very divisive and immigrants are protesting together with the citizens against something - should the immigrants be able to protest? What if the protests are considered illegal? What if the protest are legal but at the heat of it some people throw stones and maybe even injured some law enforcement officers. Is it O.K. to have a slap at the wrist for some of the protestors and life changing deportation to the immigrants?
I don't say it's easy and there are easy answers, it's just that I really don't like the artificial borders and I think it's worth paying the price of a transition period to get a global society where people are not divided like work cattle and are treated as individuals regardless of their nationality.
There isn't much point in debating border policy with someone who doesn't believe in borders. Believing in the greatest good for the greatest number of people fullstop is a respectable philosophical stance but it isn't one to which I subscribe.
If a country doesn't prioritize the interests of it's citizens, who will?
At first, I agree that an adjustment period will be needed but this is only because current we have artificial market borders and it will eventually stabilize.
There's nothing wrong with someone else takes someones job by providing greater value, be it by doing it for cheaper or doing it better. In other words, if Albanian window cleaners end up driving the Canadian window cleaners out of business, Canada will end up with better cleaned windows or more money to spend on something else than window cleaning. The Canadian window cleaners will need to adapt but the world will be a better place, except for some of the Canadian window cleaners who used to overcharge thanks to the artificial market forces.
Apparently not. If that was the case, you would have equal punishment for equal crimes.
If I move from Seattle to Toronto, I am going south.
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2023/06/11/i-respect-mys...
Just remember, Canada is geographically situated near the US but their attitudes to innovation, risk taking, rewarding talent, and merit based promotion are not the same. Even if they say that it is - the reality is very different.
Unfortunately, I don't think programs like these will have any beneficial impact until Canadian society can fix its abysmally low productivity (and productivity growth) as well as the severe under-utilization of skilled immigrant labor. All this will accomplish is exacerbate the housing crisis in metropolitan areas and further expose Canada's extremely poor economic performance - expected to be the absolute lowest in the OECD in upcoming years.
That's not the whole picture... Friend of mine is a doctor here in the Bay Area, originally trained in Ontario. There are agreements with some countries to transfer licenses (how he was able to practice here in America). Quebec, for instance, has agreements with France and Switzerland. When someone comes in with medical credentials from a jurisdiction where there's no special agreements, they simply have the candidate take the same exams as the medical students (which, should they be as qualified as they claim, shouldn't be hard). He told me the pass rate was abysmal for foreign trained candidates.
Apparently, it's the same for engineers (and is one of the reasons a lot of them end up trying to break into software since it's unregulated).
Canada has launched a bid to attract techies working in the USA on the notorious H-1B visa, by offering them the chance to move north.
The offer, announced on Wednesday as part of the nation's first ever tech talent strategy, means H-1B visa holders can move to Canada without having a job waiting for them.
https://reviewed.usatoday.com/canada/streaming/features/best...
https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?locations=Canada
The US is losing out on a lot of tax revenue because of poor policies disincentivizing an entire industry.
This was more or less the culmination of super-NIMBY California folks making an entire industry pick up and move due to hostilities.
Also from what I’ve seen, people often use Canada as a springboard to get to the US.
I always maintain that most of the time whatever is good for Canada is also good for the US. I have a team in Canada so will be good for hiring.
At the end of the day, the immigration is only part of it. The economics of being Software developer compared to US or India are not that great (in general). That is where Canada in my humble opinion should focus.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/13jl3gf/came...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/147p0tx/onta...
If you are a potential H1B moving to Canada think again if you really want to spend a major amount of your income on renting.
Meanwhile, laid off US work permit holders do if they move to canada
Wtf? This is so fucking stupid
Not only this, but Canada is already having issues with their own laid off people and their own housing bubble
Canada's new tech talent strategy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36506854 - June 2023 (59 comments)
There also aren't enough houses for the people who are already here. Vancouver has a Vacancy rate under 0.9%, and we likely have more homeless people than available rentals.
It must be weird to arrive in Canada, and then be told your presence is illegitimate.
We have been promised this time and time again in Canada, but it seemingly never comes to fruition. Call me cynical, but I don't foresee it working out like that.
The US’s policies are effectively worse in my opinion but the Canucks are often a bit short sighted with this sort of thing.
The people support immigration… but they elect leaders who enact laws that make it really hard.
Arguably recruiting foreign workers from a group that’s in an extremely precarious position probably isn’t great.
The downside is getting established can be difficult - many immigrants do end up in low paid sales jobs at appliance stores, driving Uber, working in fast food places etc. Living costs are extremely high (rent, food etc.).
Tech jobs tend to pay less than 50% of US equivalents (speaking from experience) though it is possible to work remotely for US companies and get paid substantially better than any Canadian employer would pay. Quite a few Canadians do that, but do have to constantly deal with the problems of cross border payroll as US companies cannot comprehend that Canada is a different tax system and keep screwing things up by filing stuff with the US IRS instead of the Canadian CRA and you then have to sort it out yourself and fill out mountains of paperwork to stop the IRS tax enforcement for taxes that are not due since you don't live in the US. Also speaking from experience.
It’s a point system, you need to get the points
The work permit has no relationship to the PR
Canadian work experience gives you points though
Graduates from Canadian universities, who had their tuition subsidized by the Canadian taxpayer, can easily go straight south to the US under TN-1 NAFTA VISA and immediately obtain compensation sometimes 2-3x local rates.
Meanwhile we'll bring in skilled immigrants who couldn't make it in the US immigration system. And drive down the wages even lower. Making it even less likely for local grown talent to stay.
Race to the bottom, and it will do nothing for the quality of work done here.
Good idea.
They will talk about how you reduce their wages
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36511005
> Artifactually (sic) increasing the supply of workers suppresses wages.
They will consider you bad for "regular citizens".
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36510490
> So, that means inflation and it is bad for the regular citizens.
Your existence will devalue their education
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36505802
> Given that it is much more expensive to gain skill when you are a native, the government somewhat pulled the rug from underneath the locals who spend a lot of money to go to uni etc and were hoping to have a decent return on their investment in education.
"Getting rid" of you will be considered a good idea
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36506071
> I think US will benefit in the long run getting rid of these h1bs.
You won't be considered to have "original values"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36505919
> People of often having a cultural, religious and moral background completely different to more-or-less original value Canadians? How will that work?
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_policies_of_Americ...