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Comment by klipt | Hacker News Reader

Isn't Canada full of foreign PhDs driving taxis because they qualify for permanent residence on points but then can't get jobs because employers want "Canadian work experience"?

Canada also has a major housing crisis due to not building enough housing for population growth (which is entirely immigration, Canada's population would shrink without it).

Doesn't seem their system works very well in practice. At least the U.S. employer based green card system mostly guarantees that employment green card recipients already have jobs.

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"Canadian work experience" is a generic reason often given to people who the company doesn't want to hire. It has happened to people I know. There can be many reasons:

- Racial bias

- Sexual bias

- Age bias

- Candidate's English / French ability.

- Candidate's actual experience isn't relevant enough.

- Candidate's personality.

- Candidate's appearance.

- Candidate's communication skills.

Why would I give you the real reason when I can provide a generic reason and stay out of trouble?

Some people I know went to college to get local credentials. Luckily community college is affordable and respected. Others changed fields. Others started their first business. A few left the country.

Why do you have to give any reason at all. I never got any reason in USA 90% of the time.

I was going to say something similar. I don't believe in points any more. It just reproduces the class prejudices of overeducated people. The US has an abundance of "highly skilled" FAANG workers. It has a shortage of construction workers, plumbers, and electricians. The one "high skill" (really high class) industry where I'd make an exception is medicine, because there are shortages there.

But FAANG stuff? No, these are the companies that just had layoffs.

And we can see exactly how this has played out in Canada. Too many upper class professionals gouging each other's eyes out for $1M starter homes, and not enough people with real physical skills, like building them.

One can just adjust the points towards what you need, like Australia does. Me and then-wife applied about 15 years ago - she studied at the American school in Milan, graduated in the UK, and got a master and PhD in computational chemistry. I'd been living in the UK for a decade, working in IT. They said thanks but no thanks, Melbourne doesn't need you - whereas tradesmen, plumbers, miners etc have no problem whatsoever moving there, year after year.

>They said thanks but no thanks, Melbourne doesn't need you - whereas tradesmen, plumbers, miners etc have no problem whatsoever moving there, year after year.

Well, tradesmen build houses, schools, and hospitals people and a growing society need. There's only so much demand and value for society that (non-SV) programmers add. You could survive in a world with only tradesmen and farmers, but not so much with only JS coders.

Programmers are valued in places like the US because US is the home to big-tech, an industry generating trillions in revenue for the US, but the US is the global outlier here. In other places of the world that don't have big-tech, programmers have much less value to society.

South Park also did an episode on this.

The layoffs were for wage suppression, if anything, they need more H1B to continue that wage suppression. I work in BigTech, we had layoffs and are also hiring like mad.

> Isn't Canada full of foreign PhDs driving taxis because they qualify for permanent residence on points but then can't get jobs because employers want "Canadian work experience"?

Canadian here. Nope.

Also Canadian here. PhD might be a stretch but there’s absolutely a large number of Uber drivers with a foreign masters.

And that makes sense, since in some countries Master’s degrees are dime a dozen. PhD still means something

Canada has many issues.

Housing crisis is because of unsustainably high immigration levels.

In 2023 alone, there was a net inflow of over 1.3 million people. It's a lot for a country of 39 million. Where will they live?

Another major issue is the suppression of wages this causes.

Also there is a serious lack of diversity in the immigrant population (no cap by country as in the US). This is tearing apart the cultural fabric of communities.

> Canada also has a major housing crisis due to not building enough housing for population growth (which is entirely immigration, Canada's population would shrink without it).

I am not sure if this logic is accurate. There can be housing shortage if people move to certain part of the country internally too. USA has 'housing crisis' but houses are plenty and cheap in peoria IL.

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