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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

#131

Post by vthallam »

___cs____ wrote: post #104

Canada/Australia have thriving scene, but somehow the number of jobs is really low. There was a nice discussion on reddit about brain drain to Australia/Canada. https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/9l1pug/w... https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/9l3ueo/which_coun...

Usually, jobs follow. Big companies already use Canada as a bench for foreign workers who couldn't get the H1-B through lottery.

In the last couple months, I heard 2 big announcements, Microsoft establishing their Canada HQ[0] in Toronto, Uber [1] is investing big time.

[0] - https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/09/11/microsoft-canadian-...

[1] - https://techvibes.com/2018/09/13/uber-expands-canadian-prese...

[2] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-24/toronto-b...

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

#132

Post by bgee »

bgee wrote: post #124
briandear wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don’t they get an E2 visa which is designed for immigration for those with high skills and advanced degrees? An H visa is a temporary, non-immigrant visa and was never intended as a path to a green card. Frustration around long queues for green cards for H visas doesn’t make any sense because that is, by its very definition, a non-immigrant visa. Expecting permanent residency from a non-immigrant visa is no diffe…

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. E2 visa is employment-based, which means the applicant needs to be employed by the time they applies (usually through OPT or H1B). So it's not an "either-or" situation.

Sorry, I meant EB-2 insteand of E2.

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

#133

Post by CydeWeys »

briandear wrote: post #100
CydeWeys wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why would salaries increase? If anything, they would drop due to increased supply.

Salaries are incredibly high in SF because of the high supply; it's an aggregation/network effect. SF is the world's tech center. As that starts fading globally, and SF is no longer the obvious and undisputed place to base your operations, great developers moving to other locations should drive up wages there and start heating up the job markets in those cities that are now becoming mini-SFs now that they're no longer being starved of oxygen from everyone migrating to SF.

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

#134

Post by jorblumesea »

adventured wrote: post #129
jorblumesea wrote: post #78

I wonder how much of this is just the political winds. Under the George Bush days there were similar sentiments and attitudes, but it never went anywhere and SV still remained dominant. Canada has long tried to capitalize on the US political situation with mixed results. Salaries are low, most of Canada has poor weather and unaffordable housing prices in the major cities. I guess if you're willing to stick it out you…

The US hands out one million green cards per year. There has not been a meaningful reduction in how much immigration is allowed into the US nor in how many green cards are issued. You'll notice something entirely missing from the article: there are no actual figures supporting its claims anywhere to be found, only a few individual anecdotes. What's happening is Canada is trying to become more aggressive in the pursui…

Right, it's an optics problem. Trump gets in office and suddenly everyone starts seeing old issues in a new light. But as you pointed out, almost nothing has changed.

Ends up US citizenship is in real demand. It's also not a surprise that two of the most back logged nationalities, China and India, have the most populous countries.

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

#135

Post by ashwinaj »

dghughes wrote: post #105
Thaxll wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't care about money, they want to raise family in a safe environment, I interview a lot of foreigners and there is clear trend that they don't want to go to the US with the current administration.

[flagged]

Thanks for posting this. It seems to me that everyone is looking for a way out of a difficult circumstance and see Canada as some sort of a paradise. I grew up in the Middle East, the labor laws there are much worse than the US; so I'm personally not worried. If I have to leave, I will.

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

#136

Post by belltaco »

briandear wrote: post #94
Bhilai wrote: post #20

I can attest to this. I have three friends who are preparing to migrate to Canada or Australia. Mind you, these are not the typical H1B workers from Infosys. These are smart legitimate people with a masters degree who work at top tech companies. They have no hopes to get a permanent residency in US because of long queues. Renewing H1B is a big hassle. Surely its a big change to pick up your life up and move to a diff…

Why don’t they get an E2 visa which is designed for immigration for those with high skills and advanced degrees? An H visa is a temporary, non-immigrant visa and was never intended as a path to a green card. Frustration around long queues for green cards for H visas doesn’t make any sense because that is, by its very definition, a non-immigrant visa. Expecting permanent residency from a non-immigrant visa is no diffe…

E2 visas are limited to few, mostly European countries. The people referred to in the article are from India. Also, China is backlogged in the green card queue so it's useless for them too. I don't think E2 is an immigrant visa either, anyway E2 is an investor visa, rather than founders.

>An H visa is a temporary, non-immigrant visa and was never intended as a path to a green card. Frustration around long queues for green cards for H visas doesn’t make any sense because that is, by its very definition, a non-immigrant visa.

It does make sense, because currently the quota is country based. So if you're from a small country, say Cambodia, and have an advanced degee, you can get on a H1B and get a green card in about 7 months, whether 'intended' or not.

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

#137

Post by NTDF9 »

I don't think US realizes that Canada and Australia are actively poaching talent. These guys work there for a couple of years, some of them start startups, businesses. They hire other top people (both local and talented immigrants). Then they sell their products/services to the whole world!

Major companies get attracted to areas with talent. That's why so so many companies have major offices in India now. Because of the pool of talent. Not just because of cost-cutting.

An example is: If Amazon doesn't hire enough smart people, they won't be able to expand/move nimbly and will get beaten by Flipkart in India (who have their own empire desires).

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

#138

Post by martin_iden »

Thaxll wrote: post #42
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #24

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

Most people don't care about money, they want to raise family in a safe environment, I interview a lot of foreigners and there is clear trend that they don't want to go to the US with the current administration.

That sounds great, I welcome less competition on the job market. Btw I've lived in Toronto before, have a family there and know the tech scene pretty well. If people didn't care about money and job satisfaction, you would not have that many Canadians here in SV. Most of the ones I talked too would like to go back at one point, but career prospects are very bleak. One would need to take a massive paycut and face fierce competition for a few available jobs out there. I know decent engineers making 70-90K which is essentially living paycheck to paycheck.
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