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H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies

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Re: H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies

#81

While many in the comments are throwing salary/cost of living/taxes numbers left and right but no one is making a case for extreme winters in Canada vs the Bay Area. I can understand that it might not mean a lot to some but for me it can be a deal breaker.

OTOH it might be a deal breaker for others that there is no local skiing in the bay area, no legal mountain biking, etc.

Therefore I would consider weather and environment also a bit of a personal preference thing.

Re: H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies

#83
As a software engineer who wanted to leave my country I read how H-1B worked and removed US from my list of wanted countries.

I am a PR in Canada and got it after have worked here for 1 year.

I have friends who worked with me at previous company in the US division living in fear of getting their lives taken away from them if the company fires them and they are in a huge waiting list for green card (mostly Indian and Chinese) and don't want to change jobs because of fear.

Re: H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies

#84
As an Amazon employee, I really hope this factors in highly in the HQ2 decision.

Toronto isn't perfect and the city sure isn't offering much in terms of tax breaks, but if Amazon wants to hire 50,000 more tech workers then they'd better be doing so in a country that will let those 50,000 people work.

Re: H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies

#85
post #76

Dunno. Salary in Silicon Valley - $300k. Salary in Vancouver - $80k. Rent almost the same. Weather in Silicon Valley - year-round sunny. Weather in Vancouver - 2 months of sun, rest gloomy. Are you sure you want to move to Canada? It used to be that MS/AMZN had a back up base in Vancouver for anyone who didn't make the cut with H1B/O-1.

Why would you move to second world country that is sliding the wrong way? Why not move a first world country that is safe and cares about its citizens?

Re: H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies

#86

Are people with GCs screwed too? I've been postponing getting a citizenship, for no particular reason, but I'm now wondering if I should get on that just so that I don't somehow get bounced out of the country or get locked outside when I travel.

Green Card has a risk of deportation that citizenship does not. But the current administration is working to make citizenship revocable.

Gotta give some context or a source for a claim like that. Is the revocation related to people found guilty of terrorism/treason, or is it a lower bar? Or is it if they found you lied in order to get citizenship, as was the case historically with Nazis?

Re: H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies

#87

Isn't compensation, even after adjusting for cost of living and health insurance, much lower in Canada than anywhere in the U.S.?

That doesn't particularly matter when you can't get or retain a visa to work in the US. Maybe salaries in those places will increase as a result.

It will be interesting to see if this is true, or whether they will go down and the local workforce will be negatively impacted as a result. Conversely, it will be interesting to see whether salaries for US techies will go up, or older people will have more opportunities. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Re: H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies

#88

Isn't compensation, even after adjusting for cost of living and health insurance, much lower in Canada than anywhere in the U.S.?

People who have spent a few years at Google, Facebook, Apple, etc would have accumulated more than enough assets[1] that the drop in real compensation is an easy tradeoff to make for massively reduced stress in life.

And a far easier citizenship process in Canada means they won't have to worry about their kids anymore.

[1] https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/

Re: H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies

#89
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds great. Come to USA after college, make a million dollars in a few years, move back home, get married, and build the Indian economy. You don't want a country where every who has the ability will leave.

It doesn't sound great for the individual, though. Standard of life in the US and Canada is higher than in India, and they'll likely want their kids to grow up in better circumstances than they did, if that's possible. Besides, you're not going to make a million dollars in a few years. New grad salaries take a while to turn into experienced developer salaries, and the money you make from 20-30 is unlikely to last you…

Parent's point is that rather than just improving the lives of a few hundred thousand emigrants, it's far more moral to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of Indians and that can't happen if the best and brightest all leave.

Re: H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies

#90
post #21

I am in the same boat. Planning to move to Canada next year. I have worked in the Valley for 10 years. Had a great time, but unfortunately the wait for GC is over 20 years now and the administration has signaled that we are not welcome (my H1 was denied for some BS reasons).

I guess the people like you have been stealing good American jobs and depressing wages in the Bay Area, and that has been keeping the wages at the artificially low 400K :)
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