Comment by rglullis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rglullis | Hacker News Reader

Ok, for others who might be interested in immigrating, a few other things that I learned from my experience:

- If you already are done with your studies, look for jobs at educational institutions. Universities, research laboratories, think tanks. They are exempt from the quota and can hire at any time of the year and outside of the quota.

There a few downsides. First, most of the openings at these institutions will require some kind of grad school. Second, these institutions are not known for paying the same salaries as big name companies in Silicon Valley. Third, you can not transfer the visa to another company, so if you get an offer from another company that does not share the quota-exempt status, you are back in the position of waiting until April and hoping the new employer doesn't fuck up the application and that there aren't 10 gazillion other applicants from IBM, Google, Infosys, Tata and the like.

- One hack: consider first moving to Canada. Their immigration laws are much saner in the US and are more merit- and qualification-based than the US. With a simple job offer you can get a resident visa in Canada. After 2 years as a resident you can apply for citizenship. And Canadian citizens can work in the US, under the TN visa.

With this you avoid all the crap about the H1B lottery and have a stronger position to work in the US after ~3 years. If I ever plan to be in the US again in the next 3-5 years, I would actually move to Montreal first.

+1 on the Canada hack. Canada now has an "Express Entry" process for skilled workers that grants permanent residence in months 6 months or less. http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/express/express-entry...

However, applying for a Work Permit is still rather cumbersome (which is typically the first step after the job offer and before Express Entry) I just went through this process with an employee. While there is no arbitrary quota, the process does take between 3-6 months.

But overall the path to citizenship is much shorter than in the US.

And Canada has public healthcare. So, no need to worry about healthcare while you're self employed.

It will take 6 months before you're covered by a provinces health plan.

For Canada hack - you might actually like it better in Canada than in the US. I first moved to Canada after finishing my graduate studies in the US about 15 years ago with the plan to go back in a couple of years.

I liked Canada so much that I decided to stay here (Toronto, Ontario) and have been happy about my decision ever since.

Yes, taxes are a little bit higher, but the place feels saner and safer. Various levels of government are supportive of new businesses (lots of incentives, grants, R&D support programs), especially in technology sector.

The pay is terrible though.

After the PR via Express Entry which takes, say 1 year, you wait 3 years (recently changed by Harper[1]) before you can apply for Citizenship and then it will be almost a year after that when you get the citizenship (27% get in 12 months, 54% in 18 months). So you are easily looking at ~5 years from application. Then you need to find someone who will file a TN visa for you.

[1] http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/citizenship/become-eligibility....

[edit: to reflect express entry does not require 1 year of working in Canada]

The Canada part is misleading. It takes about two years to get PR (similar to green card) in Canada via Express Entry (well, technically 6 months to 1 year from the time you apply to CIC, but because you virtually need a work visa or provincial nomination to acquire enough points for entry, it takes an extra 1-1.5 years). You need to wait 4 years after getting PR to apply for citizenship. It takes about two years to get granted citizenship after that, but they are trying to reduce it to one. So the whole process takes 6-8 years not 2.

With that said, the immigration laws are indeed saner and merit-based.

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/times/perm-ec.asp

http://citizenshipcounts.ca/citizenship-act-changes

You may be right. I do remember looking at the process through Quebec, which seems to be a little different.

When I was more seriously looking, though, I read enough about it to make me pretty confident it could be done in 3-5 years. Of course I was starting with the assumption that I could get the job offer while I was living in Boston and enter Canada for job interviews as a visitor.

The Australian work visa is even friendlier than the Canadian one. I'm not sure how the Australian citizenship process works but it used to be you could apply for permanent residency shortly after going there for University. I think it's a bit stricter now but worth looking into.

Yeah, Australia also has a very good immigration policy. I seriously consider applying after I finished college in Brazil.

But the hack I described is as a way to possibly end up living in the US. Being an Australian citizen doesn't help much there, while being Canadian does.

Sorry, I meant, as an Australian citizen, you're eligible for an E3 work visa to the United States. You need a bachelor's degree in the relevant field or equivalent work experience, companies just have to spend 20 minutes filling out an LCA and prove they're paying prevailing wage (none of the "prove an American can't do this job" song and dance that makes the H1B so expensive), the quota is so ridiculously high it will never be reached and it's 2 hours at a US Embassy for a 2 year visa.

The only downside is it's a non-immigrant visa so you come in on an E3 then convert to a H1B at your leisure and apply for a green card.

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