H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies
191–200 of 378 posts
Re: H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies
#192Earlier 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.
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Don't forget Toronto's crack-smoking mayor Rob Ford. Stephen Harper's government was extremely "conservative" (corrupt and anti-science).
I have lived in both Alberta and Quebec. The casual, open, and brutal racism against Native Americans in both provinces is disgusting and makes any anti-immigrant sentiments seem tame in comparison.
Re: H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies
#193As 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.
I always believed that Toronto is a serious contender for the same reasons. > the city sure isn't offering much in terms of tax breaks Does it matter that much, though? As an insider you probably know better than me, but I assume that the lower cost of employment per head in Toronto would easily offset any kind of tax break.
I tell everyone the same thing: I don't know any specific details more than anyone else. But what I do know is how Amazon operates and makes decisions: via data, not feelings.
My guess is that there are two teams. One has spent the last few years (long before the HQ2 announcement) building an incredible formula that estimates the expected return over the next 25 years for opening HQ2 in a given city, given these 100+ variables. The second team is collecting those 100+ variables for each city, maybe making analyses on cities to make better estimates on what those numbers look like.
The decision will then boil down to the city with the highest number popping out of the formula.
That's what I would expect from Amazon at least. I have no actual knowledge of what the process really is. Then again, after the Fire Phone fiasco it's clear not all of Amazon's decisions are made this way.
Re: H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies
#194As 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…
You took the best decision. It's not worth even a million dollars per year, if living in the US means bonded labor. The amount of stress that comes along with it is mind numbing.
Re: H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm yeah hard winters or having your spouse deported. Hard choice.
I feel like the number of tech people who legitimately worry about their spouse being deported is extremely small. And it's only two years until the next election anyways.
> worry about their spouse being deported
And then there are others who are hoping for it...
Re: H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies
#196I 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…
> 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-GDP. Broken political system. It's a pretty long list of nice-to-haves up here.
If you're in the class of programmer than can half your salary by moving to Canada you're still going to be earning at the very least $120k in Toronto, and that's all that shitty. I continue to choose to live in a common wealth (in the old sense of the term) for a reason.
Re: H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies
#197I 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…
There's been no legislative change, but the the Trump administration appears to be enforcing the rules as strictly as possible. Per this article from Marketplace (https://www.marketplace.org/2018/10/05/business/recent-immig...), they've ended expedited processing of H-1Bs, they're questioning more H-1B applications and they're denying more H-1B applications. They are definitely making it as hard as possible for H-1Bs within the current rules.
Re: H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies
#198As someone who is contemplating this move, I can share some thoughts. First, money isn’t the force that’s driving immigrants out of India and into the US, Canada etc. Among the people I know and including myself, the top driving forces are safety, good governance, clean air and water. While living in the US has the benefit of higher pay, it comes at a significant cost. Here is a short list of things I can not do whil…
re: crypto mining, that’s funny. I thought a passive activity like crypto mining is allowed as long as one doesn’t actively “work” on it. Maybe the NAFTA/USMCA rules are different?
Mining is one thing, selling for a profit is where I think you run afoul. (IANAL)
Re: H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies
#199I 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 doesn't have a bible belt south (canada politics are like that of american coasts and the europeans).
Re: H-1B: As immigration furor roils Silicon Valley, Canada smooths way for techies
#200I 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…
> was never intended as a path to a green card
Not true. Congress clearly intended this back in 2000 when it passed AC21, and the government has also recognized this through regulation.