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Comment by plaidthunder | Hacker News Reader

US citizen moves to Canada on a CUSMA visa:

  - 30-50% pay cut

  - points and lottery based immigration system that penalizes them for each year you age after 30

  - frequent unfavorable rule changes

  - fear of being trapped forever on a temporary visa and eventually sent back to the USA, poorer than their peers who stayed stateside.

Canadian citizen moves to us on equivalent CUSMA visa:

  - huge pay raise

  - retire back home wealthier than their peers and still enjoy socialized healthcare.

Canada's immigration system is just structurally tilted toward brain drain. It's all stick and no carrot.

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I don't know what a CUSMA visa is - I thought CUSMA was a trade deal?, but it seems very convenient to compare the standard Express Entry points-based immigration track versus (nothing) on the US side. Convenient is an euphemism, reality basically the opposite of what you're saying:

Moving to Canada:

- Rational points-based immigration system with transparent rules which you can actually look up and prepare for, start your life as a Permanent Resident with all but voting rights compared with a citizen, become a citizen in a few years.

Moving to US:

- Wait years for an H1B with a yearly lottery with 15% chance

- Wait another 10 years for a Green Card, equivalent to a PR card - Wait another ? years for full citizenship

CUSMA goes both ways, it allows Canadian and US Citizens to obtain 3 year temporary work permits for many skilled occupations with low friction, across both countries.

It's another contributing factor to the "brain drain" effect. In that it's a worse deal for a US Citizen to move to Canada on a CUSMA visa than for the opposite.

>US citizen moves to Canada on a CUSMA visa: - 30-50% pay cut

But what about "free healthcare". Don't americans want socialized healthcare over their despised privatized system?

> - points and lottery based immigration system that penalizes them for each year you age after 30

Many countries with socialized healthcare do this. They only want young people and don't want older people who are a risk at becoming a burden to the state before they paid a lot into the system. After a certain age or health status, many workers, even locals not just immigrants, start to become a net negative to the welfare state, consuming more resources in care than they contribute back, so you need a constant stream of young healthy workers to keep the ponzi scheme going.

US being private healthcare doesn't give a damn since your health conditions are your own problem.

>Canada's immigration system is just structurally tilted toward brain drain. It's all stick and no carrot.

And yet they have record immigration rates, mostly from india. So it seems there's plenty of desperate people on the planet that don't even need a carrot, they prefer the Canadian stick because the situation back in their home is so much worse than the canadian stick.

However, I do think that if you're relying on a stream of desperate people from all over the world to replenish your own brain drain because you manage to push away your most valuable people, then you're doing it wrong and it's not gonna be sustainable, you're just putting band aids on major structural issues to cover the rot, and eventuall y the piper will have to be paid.

>Don't americans want socialized healthcare over their despised privatized system?

I haven't lived in either country but as someone who lives in a country with socialised healthcare, it mainly benefits the older generations, as health issues begin to crop up nearer retirement.

If a Canadian spends most of their working life in the U.S. then returns to Canada to raise their kids or to retire then they're getting the best of both worlds.

> But what about "free healthcare". Don't americans want socialized healthcare over their despised privatized system?

Not really. The internet bubble might make you think that, but actually ordinary people aren't interested.

People with good jobs have health insurance, people without get government subsidized insurance. Either way most people are fine with what they have.

And the issues with healthcare in the US will not be solved by the government being the one to pay. Billing is too complex (i.e. costly), and Dr salaries are too high (compare them to other countries). Neither of those issues are solved by the government paying.

And don't forget how Americans hear stories from other countries about huge waits for care, and they want none of that.

There are zero proposals to make all Dr's employees of the government, on salary, who just take care of whoever shows up. But that might actually work to reduce costs.

>People with good jobs have health insurance, people without get government subsidized insurance. Either way most people are fine with what they have.

Clearly, all those people who lost everything or even became homeless from some health issue despite paying insurance all their lives must be fictional

How many people per capita become homeless from healthcare in US vs how many people die/suffer from long waiting times in Canada/socialized health systems?

How many ?

Yes, that's what I asked. Why are you repeating it?

He repeated it because you asked it as if implying it's an argument against "socialized insurance" as opposed to a mere question.

>you asked it as if implying it's an argument against "socialized insurance" as opposed to a mere question

And how did you come up with that conclusion? Are you reading minds? No, I genuinely asked to know, since many factors are important, there's no winner out of the gate.

But since you showed you can't argue in good faith and need to start accusing people out of the gate, I'll leave the conversation here and let you be. Good day.

>And how did you come up with that conclusion?

I didn't, the parent commenter did. I simply answered your question on why HE did it, and even said it your question was put "as if" it implied it, not that it necessarily implied it.

Of course one could also come with that conclusion from reading your lengthy comment at the start of the thread pissing on socialized healthcare: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48581228 and trivially putting two and two together too.

>But since you showed you can't argue in good faith and need to start accusing people out of the gate, I'll leave the conversation here and let you be.

Of course you will. Conveniently frees you from having to take into account my sibling comment with numbers and references :)

Quite a lot for the first case apparently (see 1).

The U.S. had roughly 770,000 people experiencing homelessness in 2024. Even if one-third of cases involved medical debt as a contributing factor, that gives 200 homeless people per 100,000 residents with healthcare costs contributing to their fate.

And obviously way more affected if we expand from complete homelessness to a housing downgrade (e.g. from a nice home to renting some appartment or going to a trailer or some motel) to cover medical costs that would have been trivial elsewhere, and even more so for those.

As for "how many people die/suffer from long waiting times in Canada/socialized health systems?", we know in Canada e.g.: 15,474 deaths while waiting ≈ 38 deaths per 100,000 people per year. And that's dying while waiting, not dying because of the wait. A lot of them are heavily impacted/elderly etc and would have died anyway with or without procedure (and the wait time of some of those could be comparable to a typical US wait time, or be totally independent from the healthcare system, and based on e.g. donor list priority, etc.).

To contrast, this report (2) estimates around 200,000 deaths/year ≈ 59 deaths per 100,000 Americans from lack of access / insurance/access-related mortality.

In recent years about 40% of uninsured adults reported delaying, skipping, or not obtaining needed care or medication because of cost. Even among insured adults, about 8% reported doing so. Gallup found 38% of Americans said they or a family member postponed medical treatment because of cost in 2022, the highest level in its long-running survey.

Keep in mind that about 8.2% of the US population that's uninsured (compared to ~ 0 in Canada). And that's not counting the US under-insured, claim denials, and costs that exceed deductibles and annual limits that all heavily burden even the insured in the US. In fact most US citizens with medical debt ARE insured.

1. https://publichealthpost.org/health-equity/medical-debt-home...

2. https://pnhp.org/news/estimated-us-deaths-associated-with-he...

Your 1/3 number is complete nonsense. The actual number is Zero of those people are homeless because of medical debt.

People do not become homeless because of medical debt, that's simply not a thing that happens. Nor do people "lose everything" because of medical debt, that also doesn't happen.

If the medical debt is that bad they just don't pay it, or they file for bankruptcy. Absolutely nothing happens in the US if you don't pay medical debt. Nothing. It doesn't even hurt your credit score.

That study you linked should be held up as a case study in lying with statistics. But as hard as they tried to lie if you actually read it closely you will discover that medical debt does not cause homelessness.

The free healthcare only matters if you get permanent residency.. Otherwise, it's just like the world's most expensive insurance plan thanks to the pay cut.

In terms of people in the tech industry I know of who moved to Canada from countries where they get a legitimate pay boost there.. Yes, it makes sense for them. If they never attain permanent residency, at least they made more money than they would have back home for a few years.

However, I've rarely seen one of them turn down a chance to get an additional huge pay boost by moving to the United States afterwards. In fact, it's common for top tier companies to just use Canada as of sort of waiting room or fallback option for folks who are ultimately dreaming of moving to the US to make those higher salaries.

I don't think Canada can compete on pay, but there are certainly people who could get that top pay but would trade it for a chance to live permanently in Canada. I'm guessing those are the sorts of people who have already taken pay cuts to work in highly specialized or speculative areas of science and technology. These are great people to have because they are low risk and high reward in terms of impact on the economy.

Sadly, if you look at any forum for Canadian immigrants you'll find a huge amount of depressing stories about never attaining permanent residency or of grinding for years to game the point system in a way that is soul crushing. It is a broken system on both sides. Let me try to explain what I mean by that.

The European Union does not have a points and lottery based system as it's sole mechanism of entry the way Canada does. If you make above a certain salary, you can get a blue card. You can accumulate time on the blue card in any country in the EU (except for Ireland, which has their own similar system if I recall). After 5 years you can typically apply for permanent residency, in Germany just 2 years so long as you attain B1 German (very practical for usage in daily life and doable in the timeframe without cramming or cutting corners).

The implicit reasoning seems to be that if you can stay out of trouble and earn a good living for 5 years. You're probably worth keeping around. I think a heuristic like that beats a point system which simply encourages gaming behavior anyway.

Check out all of the people cramming French to try to increase their odds in the Canadian lottery for example. Canada probably doesn't get the sorts of genuine francophones they seem to be looking for--cramming for an exam with a verbal component is not the same as fluency--and the people entering the country are doing so by playing arbitrary games instead of living a real life.

And of course the French is just one example, there are also all of the useless courses and degree programs. The points-based lottery encourages and rewards the accumulation of arbitrary points, or in other words, a sort of dissimulation.

I suppose you could argue that Canada is selecting for people who are willing to diligently jump through hoops. If so, that does nothing to address brain drain.

> companies to just use Canada as of sort of waiting room or fallback option for folks who are ultimately dreaming of moving to the US to make those higher salaries.

Nobody would mind the lower Canadian salaries if they also came with a matched lower CoL, but that's not what's happening IRL. Similar issues across the EU where some very expensive to live areas don't pay proportionally high so the issue isn't necessarily pay but CoL. However as a worker your only option is demanding more money from your employer as you can't lower the CoL of the area. So there we are.

>The European Union does not have a points and lottery based system as it's sole mechanism of entry the way Canada does.

That's not a pro for the EU citizens as they get lower quality immigrants than Canada or anglophone countries with a stricter points system.

>I think a heuristic like that beats a point system which simply encourages gaming behavior anyway.

Blue card system is also heavily gamed thanks to unscrupulous EU employers wanting to wage dump the local workforce, and much more easily because there's no multiple points criteria.

Yes, Canada gets many immigrants from the most populous country in the world (1M Indians in 2024) - should that be surprising?

It also gets immigrants from the China (772k), UK (427k), Germany, France (100k each). Saying its all stick and all those people are desperate is an insane take.

Believe it or not, not every person in this planet wants to move to the US.

>UK (427k), Germany, France (100k each).

Over what period of time?

>Believe it or not, not every person in this planet wants to move to the US.

No, but if emigrating to the US was just as easy as to Canada, very few would go there over the US. Similar with EU. Ambitious people don't like being lowballed.

Those figures I cited were a snapshot from 2024 (https://ourworldindata.org/migration) Data is cumulative of course. I couldn't find a yearly breakdown on statcan. Doesn't change my argument though.

>if emigrating to the US was just as easy as to Canada, very few would go there over the US.

Immigrating to the US, not emigrating. People emigrate from a place and immigrate to another.

And the thing about hypotheticals is you can't prove them. That's just your opinion.

>And the thing about hypotheticals is you can't prove them.

You can prove it by how many canadians move to work in the US versus how many Americans move to work in Canada. This discrepancy will scale if immigration barriers to the two countries would be the same, but since they're not we have to extrapolate based on other data.

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