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Silicon Valley is making plans to move foreign-born workers to Canada

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Re: Silicon Valley is making plans to move foreign-born workers to Canada

#21

Post by cronjobber »

battlebot wrote: post #4
hedora wrote: post #3

Wasn't the previous Canadian prime minister at least as xenophobic as Trump? (e.g., they revoked a bunch of dual citizens' Canadian citizenship) What will prevent Canadians from out-crazying the US in the next major election? (Honest question; Vancouver is a beautiful city, and presumably much less expensive than SF.)

The whole "this is crazy" bit is a matter of opinion only, you understand that, yes? What tech companies are so upset about is being cut off from their cheap source of exploitable labor. The rest of the huffing and puffing is just a smokescreen to make you forget what they are guilty of.

Yes, it's funny how the wage slaves cheer along with their billionaire idols. Mixture of the lottery player's hope of also winning the jackpot, and fear of losing the job they realistically must expect to be chained to instead (at least until they hit 39, that is.)

Re: Silicon Valley is making plans to move foreign-born workers to Canada

#22

Post by bostand »

serge2k wrote: post #16

I'm so sick of the "moving to Canada" talk. You get to come if we say so, not because it's your backup plan. I like living where I am now, and I don't want to leave to go back to Canada and earn drastically less with the same (optimistically) expenses. While working on less interesting stuff.

The idea is that some VC money follows them to Canada, which has always been what you guys lacked in comparison to SV.

So this will be good for native (??) Canadians too.

Re: Silicon Valley is making plans to move foreign-born workers to Canada

#23

Post by acchow »

mc32 wrote: post #13
api_or_ipa wrote: post #12

I'll say this everytime Vancouver comes up in HN. It's a stunning city, full of modern amenities (including a public transit system that's actually awesome and very well used) and incredible access to nature. None of this is remotely enticing to young engineers when they make 2x-3x as much in SF and only pay ~30-50% more for housing. Until wages rise in Vancouver, there will be much fanfare about tech companies movin…

Why doesn't silicon valley throw Mexico a bone? I'm sure Mexico would be up to taking advantage of the new congress's policies as a means to irk Trump. Why not contribute to the economic growth of the underachieving neighbor rather than the overachiever? People talk about sympathizing illegal immigrants from Mexico, but when they have a real opportunity to help develop the place, they kind of forget about them altoge…

You want highly-paid people who could live anywhere they wanted in the world to move to Mexico? How many people that get paid bay area salaries but work remotely do you think live in Mexico?

Re: Silicon Valley is making plans to move foreign-born workers to Canada

#24

Post by trapperkeeper79 »

serge2k wrote: post #17
hedora wrote: post #3

Wasn't the previous Canadian prime minister at least as xenophobic as Trump? (e.g., they revoked a bunch of dual citizens' Canadian citizenship) What will prevent Canadians from out-crazying the US in the next major election? (Honest question; Vancouver is a beautiful city, and presumably much less expensive than SF.)

> Wasn't the previous Canadian prime minister at least as xenophobic as Trump? God no. They passed a (bullshit) law saying that they could revoke the Canadian citizenship of someone under specific circumstances. You had to be a dual citizen (or eligible?) and commit one of a few crimes. - obtaining citizenship by fraud (this I think is entirely reasonable) - committing an act of terrorism - treason - taking up arms a…

A correction to what you said: Bill C-6 (which undoes the damage done by the conservatives) has been stuck in the senate for many months. I followed it closely, and it was a bit disheartening. Checkout the forums of the website canadavisa.com to see people's frustrations.

I'm a Canadian and I am very worried about the future of our country. Due to various factors, new laws affecting large swathes of the population can get effected very quickly. What starts off as reasonable laws can get co-opted into something very crazy (any student of history should know this well). I echo the concern made by a few others that we are one election away from craziness. Not sure how things are going to go at this point. As a visible minority, I am scared.

Re: Silicon Valley is making plans to move foreign-born workers to Canada

#25

Post by vostok »

api_or_ipa wrote: post #12

I'll say this everytime Vancouver comes up in HN. It's a stunning city, full of modern amenities (including a public transit system that's actually awesome and very well used) and incredible access to nature. None of this is remotely enticing to young engineers when they make 2x-3x as much in SF and only pay ~30-50% more for housing. Until wages rise in Vancouver, there will be much fanfare about tech companies movin…

Downtown Vancouver is a bit of a dream (early) retirement destination for me. It's clean, beautiful, close to all sorts of outdoor activities, doesn't get cold, and apartments are actually not that expensive.

Re: Silicon Valley is making plans to move foreign-born workers to Canada

#26

Post by rubyfan »

This is a reality of technology and remote work. There is no need for most tech workers to have any geographic proximity to an office.

I suspect the H1B situation will cause many that currently use the program for low cost staff augment to just move their whole IT operation to managed services. This yields a loss of American jobs since he majority of work is done off shore. I believe this is happening naturally right now in some companies but a $130k per unit cost might drive that much faster.

Re: Silicon Valley is making plans to move foreign-born workers to Canada

#27

Post by throwanem »

bostand wrote: post #22
serge2k wrote: post #16

I'm so sick of the "moving to Canada" talk. You get to come if we say so, not because it's your backup plan. I like living where I am now, and I don't want to leave to go back to Canada and earn drastically less with the same (optimistically) expenses. While working on less interesting stuff.

The idea is that some VC money follows them to Canada, which has always been what you guys lacked in comparison to SV. So this will be good for native (??) Canadians too.

Will it? I gather not all are fond of what such money has done for San Francisco and the Bay Area in general.

Re: Silicon Valley is making plans to move foreign-born workers to Canada

#28

Post by Zach_the_Lizard »

acchow wrote: post #23
mc32 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn't silicon valley throw Mexico a bone? I'm sure Mexico would be up to taking advantage of the new congress's policies as a means to irk Trump. Why not contribute to the economic growth of the underachieving neighbor rather than the overachiever? People talk about sympathizing illegal immigrants from Mexico, but when they have a real opportunity to help develop the place, they kind of forget about them altoge…

You want highly-paid people who could live anywhere they wanted in the world to move to Mexico? How many people that get paid bay area salaries but work remotely do you think live in Mexico?

I'd move to Mexico. My purchasing power would skyrocket, and from what I've seen Mexico City is pretty cool.

It's obviously got some downsides, like not being an English speaking country, which is probably why it's not happening

Re: Silicon Valley is making plans to move foreign-born workers to Canada

#29

Post by deanCommie »

api_or_ipa wrote: post #12

I'll say this everytime Vancouver comes up in HN. It's a stunning city, full of modern amenities (including a public transit system that's actually awesome and very well used) and incredible access to nature. None of this is remotely enticing to young engineers when they make 2x-3x as much in SF and only pay ~30-50% more for housing. Until wages rise in Vancouver, there will be much fanfare about tech companies movin…

2x-3x is excessive, and is changing.

Anecdotally, the Amazon/Microsofts of the world pay "only" 30% less in Vancouver than they do in Seattle. I haven't confirmed but supposedly Salesforce no longer discounts.

And despite what the local fear-mongering suggests, these companies aren't just using Vancouver as an H1B parking lot - they are establishing real centers of excellence and hiring plenty of local talent.

All this to say is salaries take a long time to adjust, but local companies will learn they will need to pay more to compete.

Re: Silicon Valley is making plans to move foreign-born workers to Canada

#30

Post by throwanem »

conistonwater wrote: post #6
hedora wrote: post #3

Wasn't the previous Canadian prime minister at least as xenophobic as Trump? (e.g., they revoked a bunch of dual citizens' Canadian citizenship) What will prevent Canadians from out-crazying the US in the next major election? (Honest question; Vancouver is a beautiful city, and presumably much less expensive than SF.)

WRT citizenship, if I googled it correctly, C-24 requires a terrorism-related conviction, or having obtained the citizenship by misrepresentation or fraud, in order to strip a dual citizen of their Canadian passport. It doesn't seem to be in the same category of things as the sorts of things Trump's doing. I'd say compared with Tories, the Republicans really are in a class of their own.

> It doesn't seem to be in the same category of things as the sorts of things Trump's doing.

Indeed. While we have similar laws regarding denaturalization, Trump did not make them. But you're probably right about the rest; I doubt a Tory PM would demonstrate the same level of sloppy, slapdash, incompetent jackassery we're seeing from the new occupant of the Oval Office.

Tangentially: I get there's a lot of fear going around on the subject of authoritarianism, dictatorship, Nazis, et al. I don't buy it, not least because we had the same with Bush, and the only difference of note in today's rhetoric is that it's as much hotter and faster as the Internet that powers it - remember that Facebook and Twitter weren't a thing back then. (So far we've come!)

Trump is no Hitler, though, any more than Bush was. He's not even a Mussolini. He might be some fraction of a Berlusconi, but most of all, at least to judge his performance so far, he's an utter boob, and not the first we've had in the office. I suppose an appeal for moderation in rhetoric, and awareness of history in one's analysis, is foredoomed to mockery and oblivion in this age of hot takes and clickbait. But it might ease the mind a bit to take, where you can, a somewhat longer view.

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