Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
Now imagine this, you worked your ass for for a total of nine years to get your masters and PhD, and you spent countless hours honing your skills and finally you get a dream job that merges awesome research, top-level engineering, and working on a product that millions of people use every day. And then it all goes tits up because of a lottery.
A. Fucking. Lottery.
The problem for people like me is that, if I want to work in the US, I have to go through a lottery that will keep me in uncertainty for months. Then, _maybe_, if I'm lucky enough, I can relocate only to have the same thing looming a few years down the line. I cannot build a life around such uncertainty. I cannot built a future like that.
So, I'm staying in Europe. Not having been born in the US means that a lot of jobs are just not open to me, not because it's impossible to get them, but simply because the hassle is just not worth it anymore.
EDIT: In response to the downvoters, Im Indian myself and I know the quality of candidates these bodyshopper/outsourcing companies bring in. They are pretty much the bottom rung if the Indian education system. Most of them barely even speak/write English legibly. They also bring an incredibly bad name to the rest of the Indian developer community.
One of a few reasons I'm glad to not be in the .NET world any more.
>IT service firms use H-1B workers in offshore outsourcing contracts. IT workers affected by offshoring decision will typically train their replacements as a condition of severance. This has been the situation, for instance, at Northeast Utilities in Connecticut, which late last year announced plans to outsource some its IT work to Infosys and TCS and cut around 200 IT workers.
>"The offshore outsourcing firms are once again getting the majority of the visas," said Ron Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. "The program continues to promote the offshoring of high-wage American jobs." http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9247241/Offshore_firm...
Canada has been a regular "holding pattern" location for Europeans trying to get to the US. It's about time Canadian authorities realised they could exploit this for their own economic gain.
If it were me I'd rather be king of the hill in my home country over putting my life on hold like that.
Not many people consider Vancouver as a first choice, but a lot of people who come here are happy with it and realize that it's a pretty good place to be. Outside of the SV echo chamber you can often get a better picture of what the world actually wants, vs. just what people in SV (though appealing to the SV echo chamber is what gets you the VC funding and buyouts).
Besides that, the weather is nice, the people are friendly, the cost of living is affordable for people in tech (especially compared to SV), nature is just outside the door, etc.
On top of that, it's easier to get talent; partly because people can get visas, but also partly because not every single startup and tech company is competing for the same pool of people. You won't earn a six-figure salary quite so easily, but you also won't have your employees poached away the instant it looks like a buyout isn't just over the horizon.
Thinking of it as some sort of holding pattern purgatory where people are cooling their heels staring through the bars at the Promised Land on the other side of the US border is a huge mischaracterization. SV may be the theoretical ideal, but the lifestyle is much better out here.
King of the hillock you mean?
Seriously, why do so many people go through the utter shit that is the US system, rather than go/stay back home?
There is only one Apple, and it is in California. So say all their products. Comparing it to any other company in the world is like, well, comparing apples to oranges! You may have made your peace with eating oranges, not everyone is willing/can/ready to give up that easily.
It's actually a nice place. Many friends of mine are doing the "holding pattern" thing and quite a few decided they'd just stay.
> If it were me I'd rather be king of the hill in my home country
It all depends on the size of your hill and the company you keep. Also, the hill gets lonely after a time. I like to surround myself with people smarter than myself and that becomes increasingly harder with a fixed size hill.
I'm not sure that's actually true. They want to work for Apple/Google/Facebook/Tech Giant Inc. - they must live in the US to do so. If Canada is smart it'll give companies incentives to build permanent bases in the country - then people won't always be waiting to move south.
Of course.. the U.S. has far more cultural influence worldwide so most foreigners hear and see more about it than Canada.
The H-1B is a non-immigrant visa in the United States... [that]
allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in
specialty occupations.
The regulations define a "specialty occupation" as requiring
theoretical and practical application of a body of highly
specialized knowledge in a field of human endeavor including
but not limited to biotechnology, chemistry, architecture, engineering[...]Plus, as a foreigner in Switzerland, you will always be looked down upon. It is hard to get accepted as equal.
Spain is just wanted due to the proximity to Africa and a lot of African immigrants/refugees using this vector.
> There are simply better ways of dealing with high immigration demand than "dump everyone into a pot regardless of education/experience/viability/urgency and randomly select a few".
We Germans deal with asylum seekers by putting > 2.500 people in camps designed for 1.500 MAXIMUM occupants (Munich, "Bayernkaserne" camp), blocking them from work and giving them free food and 140€ per month as pocket money.
Needlessly to say, that ain't fucking enough for non-food expenses in bigger cities, and what happens if the only thing they do is drink, smoke and fight (as asylum seekers you must not travel around the country, you have to stay in your processing city!) is basically a fucking violation of human dignity.
Of course it also leads to vast criminality - not just the fighting between asylum seekers themselves, but also massive amounts of theft, pot dealing (hello Berlin Görlitzer Park) and other criminality. In order, Nazi-parties and other right-wing extremists gain excellent popularity with "Kick em out" messages.
I hear this from time to time, but data paints a radically different picture. What you describe is only the case for sub-Saharan immigrants who are just a tiny, tiny minority of the inmigrants coming to Spain. Most inmigrants come from:
1-Romania (for which Spain is obviously not in the path to any other country)
2-Morocco (the vast majority of whom arrive legally since the late 90s)
3-UK (and contrary to popular belief, only 21% of them are over 65 years old)
Then, the largest component of immigration is from the former colonies, due to the shared language (so, again, not being used as a vector)
All of this data is available online on the INE (national institute of statistics)
My opinion is that the world seriously needs a new refugee convention to prevent economic migrants from abusing the refugee system. The governing idea should be that you can't use refugee status to move from a poorer country to a significantly richer one. If you're a genuine refugee then moving to a safer country with similar per-capita-GDP is something you should be happy with.
However you'll find most of these countries have opted to sell residency, albeit through business and job investments. Generally skilled workers have to be sought for locally before they get someone over.
Using a "lottery" system just sounds crazy. It's still possible to buy citizenship, yet everyone else has to sit on the side-lines and take a number. Sounds like a weird plan created on a whim..
As for the lottery, how else could it be done? There is a cap on H1-B visa each year. The USCIS receives more applications than spots the first day you can apply.
[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/153992/150-million-adults-worldwi...
Now adjust those numbers to the population of those countries... oh look, the UK all of a sudden came out ahead.
All of these studies comparing numbers usually just boils down to "The US is big". It has been brought up elsewhere that Canada, for example, has more immigrants as a percentage of population. But of course when comparing absolute numbers to the US, it will look like peanuts.
> Contrast that with how things work in the US (which I don't have time to get into in an HN comment), and you'll see why it deserves to be singled out for this.
I don't think anyone is questioning that other countries have much more lax policies. The question is what is your solution?
As someone who is a US citizen, held visas in Germany/UK, and has a Belgian technical co-founder trying to get the US, I understand this situation very well. But I simply can't sympathize with people who simply say "Why can't they just let me! It works elsewhere!" and offer no real solution that takes into consideration anything other than a "why not me" attitude.
[1] - http://247wallst.com/special-report/2013/09/25/countries-wit...
But I digress. The problem with the existing system is that it is insane and a waste of resources. One has to get a lawyer and wait for a long time with no certainty in the outcome while dealing with an extremely opaque bureaucracy where anything can go wrong at any time.
This has nothing at all to do with volume. Indeed, a simpler more streamlined and less opaque system would help with volume.
Say a system like the Canadian or the UK one. There's a point scale. You can compute the number of points you get ahead of time, now there's a simple web form actually. If you cross the threshold you will get in. There are known wait times, you can just call the embassy. There are points for things the country needs (particular jobs), for certain qualifications (degrees, etc), for language proficiency, some regional tweaks, family, and having an employment offer.
And extremely importantly. You get permanent resident status (green card), not an H1B. What Americans don't realize is that you want to hand out green cards. H1B lower both your salaries and ours. The H1B restricts immigrant mobility, can't move to a better job and raise the average salary, and encourages people to go home with all of their newly gained knowledge and money.
I'll give you a personal example of the difference between a sane and an insane system:
As an 11 year old I filled out all of our Canadian immigration paperwork (my parents checked it but it was correct and they didn't change it). We knew we would get in based on our points. The embassy told us the timeframe in which we should expect our paperwork to go through. It went through a bit early. We moved to Canada.
Now for the US. As a near-30-year old with a US PhD working at a top research institution I have to pay a specialized law firm several thousand dollars, spend weeks getting paperwork, bugging people in several countries to write absurd letters, building a case, etc. All of this to basically the same thing. And in the end, who knows what will happen because there are no standards, no appeal, no one to discuss anything with. Oh, and I have no idea what the processing time is.
So no. It is not an issue of "why can't they just let me in". It's a system that hurts your salary by restricting my mobility, hurts me by making me pay lawyers needlessly, hurts the image of the US by creating disgruntled people, and hurts the economy by routing business and increasingly prestigious conferences elsewhere. It just makes no sense.
Example: the DMV. In both Australia and the US the procedure for getting my licence renewed is the same. I go into an office, I fill out a form, they take a picture, and I get a licence. The difference is that when I did this in Australia I waited about five minutes and they printed my licence on the spot, whereas in the US it for some reason takes one or two hours and they print the licence in six to eight weeks. It's not that the California DMV appears to have fewer staff per customer or anything, it's just for some reason their procedures make no sense and nobody is able or willing to fix it.
Other examples: immigration and the TSA, but let's not even go there.
Exactly this. There's a myth that the US is less bureaucratic than Europe, for example, and while in Europe you have the things like Italy which are horrible (in Bureaucracy terms) a lot of things are simpler.
I have had driver licenses from multiple US states. My experiences on the matter vary in extreme measures from one state to the next. This is mostly based on local laws, resources, and demand.
One time, it took hours but I had license in hand before leaving the building. In another case it took around twenty minutes and I had license in hand before leaving the building. Things are different in different places.
Then again, I've never had a license from California so that's a pain I haven't endured.
Now, I'm not saying this is right or wrong; it's a complex issue, and I am personally undecided. But you seem to be missing a major argument against the "points system" you describe.
The Canadian system explicitly biases the system in favor of the wealthy and well-educated. That's exactly what the "points" system is meant to do. Now, many people think this is a good thing; their argument is that wealthy and well educated people bring good things in to the country. I'm not saying they are wrong, I'm just saying that you should understand how some people feel that is unfair.
The US system does this to some extent, too, for instance the H1B visa is biased in just that way, and even for the lottery, we set minimum "you can likely support yourself" levels, And we have special ways for really wealthy people to jump the queue, and of course, the way the lottery is set up, one could argue, is quite racist. But you can also make the argument that the US lottery system is a lot more fair to people that have the ability to support themselves, but maybe weren't wealthy enough to get an advanced degree.
Of course, in many countries the ability to get an advanced degree is not very dependent on being wealthy
The most relevant statistic in the link you reference is "Pct of population" with the US at 14.3% and Germany at 11.9%. Two and a half percentage points does not seem like such a big difference in scale.
My attitude isn't "why not me" but "why is this so absurd"? I got in to both countries, but one was a total clusterfuck and one wasn't. Obviously one of them is doing something better than the other. I'm positing that the ultimate solution to demand (if one exists), is more in the direction of the German system than the random lottery of the US.
Germany hopes for 1-3 months: http://www.germany.info/Vertretung/usa/en/05__Legal/02__Dire...
(Coincidentally, I'm trying to relocate to the UK -- or an English-language friendly part of the EU, like the Netherlands or maybe Berlin -- so that I can be with a lovely girl. Haven't even gotten to visas yet, but I am really really glad that I'm not trying to go the other way...)
Easier process than in the US, but not exactly an easy one.
In the US, the process is something like 6 months, although apparently there was/is a backlog, and they were taking something like a year to process applications for spouses.
It gives you an idea of how screwed up the system is.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/us/program-benefiting-some...
They don't seem like edge cases, either, they just hit a slow spot in their processing.
You call them, ask them, plead with them. Nothing. "Your application is in the system and is getting processed."
Nine months into it, it turned out that they lost my digital picture taken at a USCIS facility. How in this day and age one loses digital pictures is beyond me.
There are no limits apart from that.
Plus, the partner who's not working has some very real imputed salary value. In fact, the economic value of a non-working partner is much higher in a high cost of living area than a low cost of living area. If they save you from paying for professional childcare, the expense saved may be $4K/month rather than $500/month. Ditto for other services, especially meals at home.
As a Canadian who did three years of immigration horseshit in the US with a non-working spouse, the real issue is that your spouse is making a huge sacrifice of their freedom. Being a kept person can chip away at your sense of self-sufficiency and self-worth. The people I met in my situation all left the country (the majority) or had kids (one couple).
One answer is well why should there be a cap. Well there is a cap and one reason is probably because opening the gates wide open will skew the job market in US. For better or for worse it is hard to say but if you ask those in US they might say for worse.
So there is a cap. (And obviously it is being pushed against, there is demand, you wanted to work for Apple, others want to work for other companies and so on). So how to you fix the problem?
I can see these things as possible solutions:
1) First come first serve. That would be interesting, each year on a midnight of a particular date. Some server or some office in DC will will swamped with thousands of instantaneous requests. In less than 1 second it will all be over. Those with servers closer to the facility or those that have better synchronized clocks will win. Or put everyone in a long queue maybe and just wait year to year. Watch the queue extend for decades.
2) Make it an auction. So now each spot initially costs some processing fee to handle. Then well do first come first serve but increase the fee according to the demand. Maybe it takes $2k for initial spot. And $200k for last available.
> Since the job required me to be in Cupertino, the deal simply fell through.
Shouldn't you also blame Apple here too, at least just a bit. Presumably if there is this huge talent pool abroad they would at least consider opening an office in EU or let you work remotely in some capacity. Tech sector is interesting because that becomes possible (and has been done). I don't quite understand their position either. Here is a global company that they found a top person they want to join their team but well, they can't win some stupid lottery. Well fuck it, maybe they can do something more than just drop the deal? Wondering, what are you thoughts on Apple's position?
There's no need to raise the cap and all the Apples and Googles get all the applicants they want. Today the majority of H1-B visas go to Wipro and Infosys and the like for low paid tech grunts; Apple won't have any trouble outbidding them. And those tech grunt companies aren't doing anything valuable for the USA so it won't be any loss to have them struggle.
In fact, we should be able to drop the cap to a more reasonable 30-40,000 instead of the recent 85,000.
And we should be able to eliminate almost all the paperwork. In the current system, a US government bureaucrat tries to determine if you're qualified when you apply. Applicants hire lawyers to fake, translate, fabricate, apostille, and make up education and work experience that USCIS expects. If applicants are paying cash, we can presume they're qualified and reduce the application paperwork to one page.
The big companies that need highly skilled employees can afford to pay en masse.
Now if you are a US based small business and you found a dream employee in say Australia. Either this employee is so valuable that you would be willing to shell out something like 50-100k to bring him/her over, or what is more likely you become flexible and let him/her work remotely.
I do not foresee many small businesses who would actually need to bring a foreign employee in for a constant presence in US. Does a barbershop really need to bring a foreign born barber. If it does then that barber would probably qualify as an alien of extraordinary ability...
My views is biased as a European who programs for a medium sized US business and sees no need to visit US more than once every year.
A small business that's small because it's a niche can afford to have a dream employee work remotely. A small business that's small because it's not-yet-large in a fast-changing market will be slowed down dramatically by the timezone differences, and probably lose out to competitors that colocate all their people.
If your small company wants to employ someone then you have to be willing to pay as much as a big company will for the same employee. And that goes whether you're just paying salary or paying salary plus visa price.
The only disadvantage I can see to small companies is that a big company could afford to buy visas in bulk at the start of the year and figure out what to do with them later, while a small company wouldn't buy visas until it had a specific employee in mind. So I'd make the auction monthly, not annual.
I'm sure that was proposed as ridiculous, but you have to keep in mind that there's only a programming labor shortage in two, maybe three cities on the coasts.
For a national program like this lottery, every non-citizen the .gov lets thru will result in many social program costs not only for the one citizen who won't be employed and at a higher pay rate, plus all the downstream effects of lower salaries and less jobs for citizens leading to lower economic activity leading to lower tax revenue.
A $100K cost per immigrant is below the low side of what it costs .gov to take care of the local citizens.
What I'm claiming is the program is a stereotypical crony capitalist "socialize the losses and privatize the gains" scam. Screwing the program up or limiting it or making it very expensive to participate in is a net economic gain to the country. "Fixing" the program would be a net economic loss to the country. Furthermore the program is literally inhumane, a real wage for a human with real working conditions is X, but as a psuedo-slave psuedo-indentured servant you are less human than a real human so we'll only offer you 50% of X and treat you like dirt because thats highly profitable and helps rich guys get richer at the expense of everyone else. Its disgusting that the program exists on several levels.
Besides Canada has better medical system, better crime stats, arguably better recreational opportunities... I wouldn't necessarily describe being "stuck" in Canada as much of a punishment. Its not exactly like being trapped in Somalia.
Nah. They can bid with salaries rather than fees. Better to just collect the income and payroll taxes while giving the visas to the most valuable guest workers possible.
Maybe.
One of the factors evaluated for h1b approval is whether or not the immigrant's salary is higher than the mean wages for U.S. citizens working in the same SOC category in the same area.
"Opening the floodgates" would only serve to skew the average salary upwards for citizens, which is good for skilled labor.
You can make many valid arguments for loosening the American immigration laws; but driving up the average wage because that's what the government mandate assumes that companies are irrational. A profit-maximizing company is only going to hire a H1B if they are cheaper than a US citizen per unit work.
(You could make an argument that increased immigration drives up wages by generally increasing economic activity in the destination country, sure... but that's a rather different argument.)
Not true. What if the company can't find a qualified candidate? Then what they pay will likely be higher than the average worker in that industry. That's how salaries go up.
And you can't say "there are no US citizens available". Of course there are... for the right price.
Now you've got a question. Is the price excessive because there are too few US citizen workers available in that field? Or are the companies just being cheap and trying to drive down the price of skilled workers? In an environment of heavy lobbying, with very persuasive people trying to make their case, how can the government objectively tell which is going on?
Sure, if you attract them away from their current job. Then what happens to the company that had their employee taken away?
My point is that an immigrant isn't necessarily cheaper. I'm one of those immigrants on an H1B working in the US that isn't cheaper than an equivalent US worker.
Many skilled positions have scarcity, and employers are willing to pay more for an immigrant if their skillset is a better fit and/or can fill the position immediately.
Oh come now. All of us are fungible. None of us are irreplaceable (at least not to our employers.)
Can a janitor do your job? No? Then your labor is not fungible.
Can you do a janitor's job? Yes? Then that's fungible labor.
Most blue collar labor is fungible - meaning that just about any person who is not incapacitated can do it.
Rather than ask J Random Dude in the US, you should probably ask someone with a modicum of expertise in the matter, such as an economist, who will tell you that adding people is generally a net positive, rather than a negative.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
60% of the largest high tech companies were founded by immigrants or their children: http://pando.com/2013/05/29/mary-meeker-highlights-us-immigr...
The fact is the H1-B visa program is completely abused in order to bring in cheaper employees at the expense of the rest of the community. These H1-B employees have little recourse, limited career potential and supress wages. The uncertainty of their immigration status means they don't buy houses, start families, or participate in the community. The benefits economists suggest don't materialize.
Futher, the H1-B program has a negative effect on higher education. The H1-B program allows employers to avoid the H1-B dependent designation if they hire immigrants that possess a masters or higher degree from a US education institution. It is a well known backdoor into the US and drives up the cost of education and pushes the citizens of the US out of the classroom. The employers list a masters degree as a requisite which the citizen doesn't have because they couldn't afford it. Take a look at the UT Dallas enrollment numbers [0]. Nearly 90% of the CS masters students are international, and of the entire engineering school 84% of them are international.
It's a mess and it needs to be fixed.
[0] http://ecs.utdallas.edu/academics/assessment-docs/2013/2013F...
Because for an employer to sponser an h1b immigrant, they need to be paid more than the prevailing wage for their job in the area, which is a combination of salary, benefits, and other factors.
And how is it ruining higher education? Isn't the point to have a better educated workforce?
If a public school accepts so many international students for their CS Masters program, isn't that a problem with the state school, not the immigration system?
So, US citizens can definitely afford a masters or doctorate - but they are in so much debt from undergrad that they prefer to work than study further.
Among many changes, one of them should basically be a fast track to citizenship for H1-B holders, and not have it be tied to the employer. If they are that smart and that needed we should make it easier for them to stay.
American here. I definitely wish it was easier for high-skilled people in other countries to obtain documents for working here.
Simply being curious here - didn't Apple provide you with the case ID? Typically, when you submit an Application to USCIS, you get an ID that allows you to check your status online and maybe you would have been able to know immediately that your application was not selected.
It's unfortunate that our government is becoming increasingly dysfunctional at every level -- federal, state, and local governments are all failing to do their jobs. I'm glad that Canada is introducing some competitive pressure.
Please do. Tarsnap will apply to be part of YC Vancouver if it happens. (I'm assuming that if you create a YC somewhere outside of the US it would be in Vancouver, because really, nowhere else in the world is anywhere near as awesome.)
FWIW, I think there's two "markets" of which you've only mentioned one -- in addition to founders who can't get US visas, I know plenty of talented Canadians and Europeans who don't want to live in the US due to the current political climate.
Startup dollars will go further here and the office will be twice as awesome. Much easier for new people to make friends and the art scene is not priced out. Montreal is undeniably more fun.
And lord, the festivals... Mind you, winter lives here but it is sunny even when it snows. Rain will tends to drive most people in BC a bit wonky.
I would say do Montreal if it is in the summer. Else BC. Or if it is about the quick plane ride to silicon valley, same deal.
You're right that in Montreal, investment dollars will go much further, and it is a more interesting city for a young person. If you are looking for a place to incubate, as a young company, Montreal might be almost perfect. Similarly, it's a great deal for a student.
But then you have to grow up and live there.
The tech talent pool is very thin, the laws are mindbogglingly perverse, and the taxes are very high. The French/English split becomes very difficult when you think about bringing more workers over from a non-francophone country, not to mention their spouses and partners.
Just like foreign students, a YC company that's growing up will probably want to get the hell out of Montreal.
At least in Vancouver you have some kind of chance to hang around, and if you want more techies there's a reasonable local talent pool, and people from the rest of the world don't mind moving here so much.
My kingdom for a fullstack capable graphic designer.
Secondly, it is cheap to hire someone for translation and companies should launch with multiple languages. It just increase the global audience for the product. I am sure YC could develop the capacity to translate the product at little cost.
Peixe Urbano, Baidu ... etc clones eat up the market that VC backed startup could accomodate for.
http://www.rudebaguette.com/2012/02/21/against-copycat-debat...
Winter... well try the rain in BC for a winter. Again I have no issue, I am from the Peg (Winnipeg) where it was -58 last year. It is the same weather as NYC and close to Boston (MIT, Harvard)
I know there is alot of development capital floating around.
http://www.investquebec.com/quebec/en/financial-products/smb...
Here is the total precipation over the last 3 months
Vancouver = 103.1 mm < Montreal = 366.4 mm
SRC = http://montreal.weatherstats.ca/charts/precipitation-3months... ( environment canada)
Next your going to try to convince us that poutine > sushi
poutine > sushi ... well not in Vancouver. Poutine is rough out there, all megabites with sesame seed pizza. It is just going to be tougher to bootstrap start ups out there.
Complaining about the cost of office space in Gastown is like complaining about the cost of office space in SOMA. There are many cheaper alternatives if you don't insist on being in a trendy neighbourhood. Office space in Burnaby or Coquitlam is a lot cheaper than Gastown.
You may think Montreal is more fun but I'd disagree. I can't scuba dive in Montreal. I can't walk five minutes and be hiking in a rain forest. Even if I agreed that Montreal is more fun this shouldn't be a consideration for a YC location. YC companies will be busy working.
Saying Montreal does not have the talent is silly. It is in the most populated region of Canada.
1) Mont Royal - Hiking
I don't think scuba might be a silly reason to discount Montreal. Fact is developers will build social ties faster in Montreal. Vancouver is clique driven and most people coming at not are really not prepared for the rain. Almost like Stockholm.
Metropolis real estate with creative spaces and inspire the imagination. McGills, Harvard, MIT, NYU all in the same time zone and a quick flight.
Burnaby or Coquitlam is like any other suburb and prices are already so high any big influx is just going to highten tensions. There is a strong Anarchist movement that surfaces time to time in Vancouver as well as crippling homelessness.
+1. With my current interests and life goals it seems like I'll eventually have head down to Silicon Vally, but the idea of living in the US terrifies me. Ycombinator opening up in Vancouver would probably prevent what would otherwise be inevitable just because of the domino effect it would have. Not to mention attending Ycombinator in Vancouver would be amazing, but that's making large assumptions.
Don't worry, Obama will be gone in '16!
I would definitely apply for YC Vancouver. The tech community here is vibrant and growing.
I get your point though. I'm an evil capitalist who doesn't want to fund Americans because they are unwilling to give up 7% equity, or something like that. Maybe you think that Sergey Brin and Paul Graham stole their jobs from some hard working, native born Americans.
That's the problem with zero-sum thinking. You believe that in order for a foreigner to get ahead, an American must be pushed back.
I have the opposite view. I believe that much of America's success is rooted in having an open and inclusive culture that attracts smart, ambitious, and determined people from around the world who come here and pursue their dreams. And that when they succeed, we all benefit. To me, anti-immigrant is anti-American, both economically and ideologically.
I think that this can be alleviated without being anti-immigrant though. For example, make it easier for H1Bs to move between jobs and/or start their own businesses so that they don't have to feel so tied to the employer that they don't want to risk 'rocking the boat' too much. Or make it so that switching jobs doesn't 'reset the counter' on building up towards citizenship (or is it just a green card, I forget).
I agree that H1B transfer restrictions are bad though. If people are good enough to let into the country, then they should be free to switch jobs just like anyone else.
I'm not stating the "more people" == "less pay". I'm stating that foreign workers are willing get paid less money, regardless of what the job pool is. They have fewer options available to them, so they accept "worse" pay for what maybe essentially the same job.
Also, the amount of jobs that are available at any point in time is fixed. Jobs are created when a company has a need to fill. Jobs aren't created just because there is an excess supply of unemployed people. They don't spring into existence out of nowhere.
Do companies create more positions just to accommodate the influx of foreign workers? Or do the amount of jobs stay the same regardless?
Agreed that this is the case in a lot of industries, but the problem in Silicon Valley and the tech industry generally isn't the cost of workers, it's finding enough highly-skilled workers to allow companies to grow and achieve their visions.
Straw man. Sergey Brin didn't immigrate to the US, his parents did and he came along for the ride as a child.
Nobody begrudges the success of children of immigrants to the US (which by definition is everyone but the native Americans), but middle aged, unemployed American programmers may well resent companies that claim there is a shortage of programmers whilst stuffing their IT departments with foreign visa workers who won't rock the boat or ask for a raise because their continued residency in the US depends on employer sponsorship.
Uhh, you do know Native Americans aren't actually native, right? They're from Africa like the rest of us.
And frankly, I do believe that Google -- and yes, YC too, viewing YC as somewhat of an umbrella organization of the companies it has incubated -- bear a certain responsibility to Americans that importing foreign workers has helped you sidestep. There's plenty of engineers here who can't / don't want to make large life sacrifices to live in the bay area. Where is your (or Google, or YCs) leadership on things like: community problems in the bay area (housing, transportation), education, engineering pipelines, etc. Google and YC's diversity numbers are pathetic [1], and that lack of diversity represents lots of potential employees that are already here.
Given the way you defend your proposed changes is to claim opposing them means you think foreigners are stealing jobs or some such stupidity, I think it clarifies our positions.
If certain groups of non-whites are not receiving the education required to contribute in SV, that isn't the responsibility of SV to fix. That's the job of the government and the schools. And it's on the communities where those underrepresented minorities grow up to change their toxic cultures so they don't look down on being educated as "acting white."
This is a discussion that needs to be had, because the current immigration system is tilted, like so much else about USAian government right now, towards "give the capitalists whatever they need and if everyone else survives that's good".
For instance, as I proposed upthread, if the H1B system was really about bringing in high-skill workers to fill shortages, visa allocation would go by auction, with the bids being proposed salaries. For N visas, the N proposed jobs for immigrants with the highest salaries get the visas, and the salaries are then legally binding.
This design is absolutely nothing like the current H1-B system, which is why most of the top users of H1-B visas are Indian outsourcing firms.
Because I'm not favoring big corporations. I'm favoring workers.
Agreed. But who decides who fits that criteria [smart, ambitious, and determined people]?
Today - it's money and tomorrow it'll be the same.
You see that now in Europe. UKIP isn't complaining only about muslim immigrants (though they complain about them loudest), but also about continental-European immigrants, especially eastern Europeans. I suspect something similar would happen in the U.S. if there were a large influx of European immigrants.
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/10/dear-congressman-gutierrez-...
Startup visas have nothing to do with diversity. It has to do with enriching the US economy. Nothing wrong with that. I support the startup visa moment, but not at the expense of other visas. We should be giving more visas - not less or the same amount reclassified.
True, but you should also be doing more to exclude the people who don't have visas, which is the main reason the US immigration system is currently broken.
I lived in the US for a few years, did everything legally, queued up at embassies, paid endless fees, and saw that everywhere I went I was surrounded by people who had entered the country illegally and the US government wasn't doing a fucking thing about it.
Eventually I decided "Fuck it", because if the US government is more interested in letting in a gazillion unskilled, non-English-speaking manual labourers who have already shown a complete disregard for its laws than it is in letting in me, then the US isn't a country that deserves me.
Ask Syria, Iraq or South Sudan, how they are enjoying their open borders. Meanwhile, Iceland, Japan and other countries are doing fine. Arguably, they could be richer if they allowed in more immigrants, but I'll take the rule of law over the chaos of uncontrolled borders.
And now that immigration is increasing in these places the amount of racism being exposed is shocking, even when compared to the USA where racism has been front-and-center for decades. Hell, just look at HN threads whenever Muslim immigration to Sweden/Norway comes up, it's like Stormfront on steroids.
Your argument has been levied against just about every immigrant population that's made its way into the US. The Irish, the Italians, the Jews, the Chinese, all of whom were subject to enormous racist and xenophobic backlash, much of it under the guise of some vague notion of cultural integrity.
All of the above populations have integrated into American society and in fact the US would be markedly poorer - economically and culturally - without them now.
There's a small amount of schadenfruede I feel when I look at the struggles going on right now in previously-closed countries as they experience large-scale immigration for the first time. For years they tsk'ed tsk'ed at the US (and Canada) for their social upheaval, as people came to grips with living in a heterogeneous society, and criticized us for the many examples of blatant racism and xenophobia. Now that they're going through the same thing it makes me sad to see people from these very countries spouting the same justifications and views as Jim Crow-era America, as if they've learned literally nothing for themselves while observing us in judgment this whole time.
Even Native Americans were immigrants as they crossed the Bering land bridge ;)
(Plus, philosophically, I don't really support more H1B-type programs. If immigration is to be expanded, it should be proper immigration, not tied to employers, with a reasonable path to citizenship.)
As for a specific replacement, I'd support a Canada-style non-sponsorship-based points system. Although I think there is something to be said for just randomness as well, such as expanding the Green Card lottery. Many of the immigrants who made large contributions to U.S. society/economy did not come in already highly educated/skilled, so I'm not sure it's a long-term advantage to restrict immigration to primarily people with strong pre-immigration skills/credentials. Short-term yes, since it fills shortages in areas of the economy, and I think a points system is a good way of handling that without the unsavory employer-tied aspect. But longer-term the "American dream" idea is that people should be able to gain those skills after immigrating; you can come in without already being the kind of person who can command six-figure job offers, and work your way up. Historically that's where a lot of the benefits of immigration have come from.
China has been allowing domestic yuan conversion to western mortgages, boosting real estate demand in Vancouver, NY, SF & elsewhere, http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Secret+path+revealed+Ch...
I thought it was more like the US system where you had to invest money in a company of your choosing. If the company went under, tough.
The interesting thing is that the US program has an annual cap of 10,000, but hasn't reached it in the last few years. In Canada there was a backlog of tens of thousands of people.
[1]http://www.cic.gc.ca/enGlIsH/immigrate/business/investors/in...
Investing in a Canadian company is also an option to get residence.
And now it all makes sense.
To anyone of Indian nationality seeking a job in North America, and interested in permanent residency – strongly consider the Canada alternative, for education as well as jobs. Unless the weather means a lot to you, ask your company if they have a Canada office where you can work when you start out. Things will be way easier.
But definitely, weigh the costs and benefits, and do seriously consider Canada.
Less glibly, it might be worthwhile to target companies who already exist in SV/Seattle. I find it hard to believe that Facebook (the example given in the article) forced its engineers to accept a 50% pay cut to go to the Vancouver office.
Also isn't it only fair that if a company that's gonna spend all this money on changing your fortunes forever (i.e. sponsor your green card), then it should be able to get as much value out of you as it can? So the burden falls kinda on the employee to make the best of that period and propel her career.
If I work my ass off for 1, 4, or 6 years, I would much rather it be for an optimal outcome, regardless of who my employer is, or where they are located. If Canada is possibly offering a better deal, people should know about, and look seriously at them. This might even possibly lead to happier and more productive employees. Don't you agree?
I totally agree that the messed up US immigration system has benefited us here. I have experience with both immigration systems and the process in Canada was much easier than the US.
Why? Well, ask some of the 10million+ undocumented immigrants. They can live a better life in the US compared to their home countries, even undocumented. Tech workers or even middle-skilled workers take more issue with being "illegal" or "undocumented".
I think all immigration restrictions have to be put on the stand. Are they practical? Do they have a measurable benefit (beyond some hand-waving about supply and demand)? Do they have measurable negative impacts?
The situation around h1b visas is messed up. But the mess is multisided. First off, there is a large amount of unemployment in this country in the IT sector (especially around older workers) and no apparent desire to fix it. Second, there are "sweat shops"/consulting bodies milking the system to under pay for what is often basic/menial work like CRUD development/etc. Third you have the specialists at the whim of (2) and the number of allotted slots.
I think both (1) and (3) need to be fixed at the expense of (2). Any company bringing over labor that is basic and can either be filled by outsourcing contracts or simply training local labor should pay the price. Tata, IBM, Wipro, etc are at the top of that list.
The current system has few filters.
Edits: typos from posting using phone.
As far as I can tell, it's way easier than dealing with the US although one must be "careful and correct" when doing the paperwork.
It's good to see that things are finally changing, even if for some companies it seems they're setting up purely for immigration purposes. Hopefully even if these US immigration issues pass, these companies will realize the advantages Vancouver offers and continue to stick around.
* Highest rated North American city and 15th overall according to Monocle Magazine's 2014 Quality of Life city rankings.
I am a foreigner with a PhD in applied NLP from a US university and I have been looking at such positions in other tech hubs like Vancouver, Montreal, Berlin, etc.
But these types of jobs only seem to be in the Valley. I work in the Valley and I like it here but I want to move to a place where I can have a stable immigration situation.
US immigration may be cumbersome but the most interesting jobs in Big Data seem to be in the US.
Not a big one; I could think of one or two companies but it's nowhere near e.g. NYC. But that's just specialization, just like there aren't many advertising businesses in SF.
London seems better for ML if you're into that.
While $2 billion is obviously a lot of money in real terms, think about what that is when you compare is to the collective revenues of Bay Area tech companies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_provinces_and_territor...
Lobby your MP! :)
Is anyone in Vancouver hiring? Perhaps there needs to be a "Who's hiring in Vancouver" thread, along with information on whether they will hire non-Canadians / non-Americans stuck in the Valley due to the immigration limbo.
Charge for the H1 but have no quotas
Let market demand and ability to pay tell how many H1s come in
But, with a twist..home country has to have a similar program for US workers wanting to work that country so that the economies of both countries have a chance to rise due to flexibility of worker immigration
- B.C.'s tech industry has many exploitative employers
- B.C.'s tech market is underpayed, below national average.
- B.C.'s living cost on average exceeds the average salary.
- B.C.'s high real estate cost results in many house poor population.
- B.C.'s political party places far more labor rights on nurses and people cutting down trees.
- B.C. has a problem of bleeding talent to other provinces because of above reasons.
I'm literally making 3x more here in NYC than a similar position in Vancouver. And housing prices (purchase, not rent) are scarily not that much lower than Manhattan.
The general small size of the tech industry also means that if you don't like this underpaid arrangement you're not exactly a very abundant job market. Vancouver is a huge employer's market, which works out great for founders, but not great for employees.
Vancouver is a lovely city - I have a lot of sentimental attachments to it - but the economics of it for employees is nonsense.
Perhaps the warmest major Canadian city, with a mild winter due to being coastal ('twenty degree below zero' - probably not).
Apart from the weather I'd say that a more legitimate reason not to move to Vancouver is the insane cost of housing, the most expensive in North America. For this reason alone I would never consider moving my family back to Vancouver.
This all being said, the current winter we're in has been particularly weak - lots of warm, sunny days. It's not the usual dreary, rainy Melbourne winter.
Sure you can, maybe not in the tiny downtown peninsula. Mid-rise along Mid-Main or Fraser, or some of the towers around Joyce goes for $500k. (Still a lot, but not that lot. I've moved to London and it's a lot more expensive than Vancouver.)
Also, rent isn't so crazy here, you just can't buy anything for a reasonable amount.
Vancouver weather is pretty close to London England, except sandwiched between an ocean and majestic mountain range.
Flights aren't that cheap here, but we usually just drive down to Seattle (2h) and fly to Vegas/Maui/SoCal for a good deal from there.
Temperature is only one factor. Another big one is humidity. Seattle is the 7th most humid city in the US, which can make 45 degrees feel like 30 and 80 degrees feel like 95. This is why Seattle weather is miserable year around except for a fe weeks in late spring and early summer.
Not to mention the constant rain, of course. Drizzle, they call it.
A drizzle does mean there is actively water coming out of the sky. You will get wet, but a single layer rain jacket with a hood is sufficient to mitigate that. I suppose YMMV.
The drizzle combined w/ high latitude create very dark winters though.
[1] http://www.currentresults.com/Weather-Extremes/US/most-humid...
Having lived in Mississippi and Seattle for 4+ years each (Seattle it was more like 8), windchill is much worse in Mississippi than it is in Seattle. In Seattle, you can pretty much leave your window open year round and have a nice sleep. 70 is considered hot in the summer; 40 is considered cold in the winter.
Now Mississippi: hot humid summers, cold humid winters. Life pretty much sucks outside of Fall/Spring.
Edit: in the interest of keeping people away from Seattle, I take everything back and agree with parent.
I lived in Seattle for six years. So I'm not quite "uninformed" as you seem to believe.
>>Now Mississippi: hot humid summers, cold humid winters. Life pretty much sucks outside of Fall/Spring.
At least you have Fall/Spring in Mississippi. In Seattle, it's overcast nine months of the year, so you don't really have seasons.
Spring and fall are really nice in Seattle, Summer is to. It is just the start of November until around March where the rain rolls in...why don't you just look at the statistics, the numbers don't lie:
http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/U...
and more about humidity:
http://www.komonews.com/weather/faq/4308492.html
Anyways, the more people who don't want to live in Seattle, the better, so I'd rather not convince anyone.
As icing on the cake, your "the more people who don't want to live in Seattle, the better" attitude is yet another reason not to live there. Basically a form of "just leave me alone!" syndrome. They call it Seattle Freeze. You can look it up if you haven't heard of it before (although that's unlikely).
Apparently Toronto has 22 days per year where the temperature drops to less than -10c.
http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Canada/Ontario/Places/...
I wouldn't be packing my swim trunks and sunglasses if I were being redirected to Southern Patagonia, on the basis of hearing that Buenos Aires has nice beaches.
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GEIXVszdb4Y/UUqKPJes1qI/AAAAAAAAP...
I'm trying to work as hard as I can and start my own start up and open a second location.
They are lost.