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

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

#231

Post by raquo » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 11:02 PM UTC

techie128 wrote: post #210

yhager wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds way too short. Until a few years ago you needed to be a resident (=reside) three years before you can apply (which takes about another year). I think now it's four + application processing time.

Canada requires you to be a PR holder and in the country for 1095 days in the past 5 years to apply for citizenship.

Up to 365 of those can be accounted for while being a temporary resident (on a work or study visa) on a "1 day for 2 days" basis.

You also need to actually be in Canada all those days. Any day that you're outside delays your citizenship by a day.

Then it takes about a year to process your citizenship application.

Overall, it's still much faster than most anywhere else.

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

#232

Post by Consultant32452 » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 11:04 PM UTC

martin_iden wrote: post #138

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.

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 fierc…

Just to provide context to that 70-90k range, median household income in Toronto is $78k.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Median_household_incom...

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

#233

Post by nafizh » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 11:05 PM UTC

csomar wrote: post #153

Is it really true, however? Or my experience is an outlier? I have been issued a 10 year tourism/business visa to the USA. The interviewer asked me a couple questions and then said "Your visa is approved". She didn't ask for any paper work. No kidding. I got the interview booked, interview and the visa/passport in the same week. The process was flawless and the employees very friendly. I know a few others in my socia…

It is really bad for Indian and Chinese citizens. I guess you are not one of them. Also H1B visa is a different thing. A tourism/business visa is not a difficult thing to get.

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

#234

Post by stock_toaster » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 11:06 PM UTC

jszymborski wrote: post #34

otalp wrote: post #16

I suppose my comments from yesterdays thread about "Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere" is relevant: I did the math for Toronto(which is more expensive than Montreal, and about the same as Vancouver). For a typical software engineer, taxes take away 25% of gross pay in Ontario while it's over 30% in California and New York. Cost of living is much less(by 30-40% if you rent) in Toronto compared t…

Overall, I agree with your points, but I have some points of contention with some of the analysis. I don't think it's quite fair to include tax if you're not going to include savings for things like health care. Furthermore, Toronto's housing market, while less expensive than Cali/NY, is still insane. I know you acknowledge this in passing, but Montreal's housing market is insanely affordable, and we've a great tech/…

As a non-Canadian, what about Calgary or Edmonton?

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

#235

Post by pteredactyl » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 11:15 PM UTC

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…

This is a reasonable comment. I don't understand why it is greyed out.

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

#236

Post by jorblumesea » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 11:45 PM UTC

overlords wrote: post #199

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…

Canada does not have "a far less valuable citizenship compared to other western countries". It's standard of living is (size of house, consumer spending power) is better than any large country except the USA. And the weather is not that different to Boston, Chicago, New York (for Toronto) and Seattle (for Vancouver). Canada won't develop a racism problem because 20% of the country are already immigrants and Canada do…

> Canada does not have "a far less valuable citizenship compared to other western countries".

I disagree, it really does. Obviously for someone from India they don't care that much, their standards are much lower for what a "good country" means. Don't get me wrong, Canada is a nice place to live. But it's not Europe or the US.

> And the weather is not that different to Boston, Chicago, New York (for Toronto) and Seattle (for Vancouver).

Those are the worst weather cities in the US. Your best weather (Vancouver) is some of our worst (Seattle)

> Canada won't develop a racism problem because 20% of the country are already immigrants and Canada doesn't have a bible belt south

I've heard Canadians express pro trump sympathies, so it's pretty arrogant to think that you won't experience any blowback from immigration policies.

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

#237

Post by dmode » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 11:46 PM UTC

bitL wrote: 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.

At this point, salary stocks doesn't matter. We have made enough living in the Bay Area. I can personally weather the low salary for a few years

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

#238

Post by __jochen__ » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 11:55 PM UTC

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #187

sincerely wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean...why can't you?

The same reason not every "I'm totally moving to canada/australia/new zealand/europe" liberal in the US can do so. Immigration laws.

Unfortunately for you, your conservative peers in the US don't want foreigners like you to immigrate.

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

#239

Post by btilly » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 11:55 PM UTC

d1zzy wrote: post #221

btilly wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the current administration is working to make citizenship revocable. I firmly believe that the current administration would love to change the rules on citizenship. However the 14th amendment is extremely clear on this, and the courts have consistently ruled for decades that Congress and the President do not have the right to change the laws to strip citizenship from people. (This was extensively litigated over l…

I would say that it heavily depends on the current justices in the supreme court. With the current court composition I wouldn't say that both of those issues have equal risk of being revoked.

The current court makes this one pretty safe.

The most recent decision relevant to this topic was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslenjak_v._United_States in 2017. It was a 9-0 decision that a naturalized citizen who had made minor errors of fact in their citizenship declaration couldn't have their citizenship stripped because of that.

Between stare decisis and how solidly the court has been in protecting citizenship, this principle is not in any sort of trouble any time soon.

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

#240

Post by martin_iden » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 11:56 PM UTC

3pt14159 wrote: post #196

dominotw wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> preparing to migrate to Canada or Australia. I know lot of ppl who have been dreaming of this for years but money and opportunity here in US is too good to pass up. 99% of ppl on H1B are not starting companies. Most ppl just don't have the appetite to slash their income by half. "preparing" doesn't count as a example.

The half-of-salary thing is a bit rich. Tech people unknowingly push up their second or third sigma downside in America and cost of living is hard to compare. In America you're more likely to get violently harmed. More likely to become truly poor. More likely to develop life-long medical conditions. Don't have actuarially balanced government pension (SS accounting is off book, CPP is fully funded). Higher net-debt-to…

I really like Toronto, but cost of living is high (one of the largest housing bubbles in the world, high taxes), salaries are low and jobs (not only in tech) are scarce. In the States you won't find engineers, doctors, accountants working in the supermarkets/starbucks. Go to any store in Richmond Hill/North York and you will see plenty. There is an ugly truth that people don't like to discuss much, Canada accepts too many professional immigrants relative to the number of available jobs. The proportion of underemployed immigrants is astounding (people who either have to work in unrelated fields or a few levels below their skills). Most of what you mentioned is true, but it's also true that in the States it's much easier to make a living or have a fulfilling career for a professional.