I am a Canadian-American, and I wish Canada actually did more to exploit US immigration dysfunction. Unfortunately, I think the weather gives Canada a bad rap. I'm not even joking, Canada needs a tropical island. That's really the last step to really compete with sunny California.
Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles
241–250 of 339 posts
Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles
#242Earlier this year I interviewed for a research/engineering position at Apple. I was offered the job, took it, and went into the H1B lottery. It took the USCIS four months to let me know that my application was not selected, even though it was filed under 'premium processing', and the draw had been done using a computer in the first week after submissions closed. Since the job required me to be in Cupertino, the deal…
American citizens are not entitled to work in the EU. If an American wants to plan their long-term life around working in the EU, that is far from a sure thing. Even with a masters and PhD. So why should the US be singled out for this?
Entitled? No, you have to demonstrate you can get a job (to get to work in Sweden. Other countries may have other rules). Either by actually getting a job or by showing you have required skills.
There are no limits apart from that.
Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but maybe weren't wealthy enough to get an advanced degree. Of course, in many countries the ability to get an advanced degree is not very dependent on being wealthy
>Of course, in many countries the ability to get an advanced degree is not very dependent on being wealthy I... find your assertion to be unlikely. Of course, I could be wrong. Do you have statistics? Is there a country where there is not a very strong correlation between high parental income and advanced degrees?
The correlation in Europe tend to be between parental education level and child education level. The correlation between parental income and education level of the child is weaker.
Being educated does not imply being wealthy.
Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not so bad if you spend some of that time raising children :)
Try to raise children on one salary living in a high-cost city like San Francisco/Bay Area when the spouse can't work for six years. Then try to find a job after six years out of work. I have friends whose marriage broke because of similar situations.
To be fair, that one salary is likely $100-150K/year. The median household income in SF is $72K, so you're probably going to be OK.
Plus, the partner who's not working has some very real imputed salary value. In fact, the economic value of a non-working partner is much higher in a high cost of living area than a low cost of living area. If they save you from paying for professional childcare, the expense saved may be $4K/month rather than $500/month. Ditto for other services, especially meals at home.
As a Canadian who did three years of immigration horseshit in the US with a non-working spouse, the real issue is that your spouse is making a huge sacrifice of their freedom. Being a kept person can chip away at your sense of self-sufficiency and self-worth. The people I met in my situation all left the country (the majority) or had kids (one couple).
Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles
#245Is there a Big Data / NLP / Machine Learning scene in Vancouver? I rarely see any Data Scientist positions being advertised in Vancouver? I am a foreigner with a PhD in applied NLP from a US university and I have been looking at such positions in other tech hubs like Vancouver, Montreal, Berlin, etc. But these types of jobs only seem to be in the Valley. I work in the Valley and I like it here but I want to move to a…
> Is there a Big Data / NLP / Machine Learning scene in Vancouver?
Not a big one; I could think of one or two companies but it's nowhere near e.g. NYC. But that's just specialization, just like there aren't many advertising businesses in SF.
London seems better for ML if you're into that.
Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just curious, what would you have done to fix the root issue -- handling a large number of H1B requests? One answer is well why should there be a cap. Well there is a cap and one reason is probably because opening the gates wide open will skew the job market in US. For better or for worse it is hard to say but if you ask those in US they might say for worse. So there is a cap. (And obviously it is being pushed agains…
> if you ask those in US they might say for worse. Rather than ask J Random Dude in the US, you should probably ask someone with a modicum of expertise in the matter, such as an economist, who will tell you that adding people is generally a net positive, rather than a negative. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy 60% of the largest high tech companies were founded by immigrants or their children: http…
Right, however this is where the details start to muddy the conclusion.
The fact is the H1-B visa program is completely abused in order to bring in cheaper employees at the expense of the rest of the community. These H1-B employees have little recourse, limited career potential and supress wages. The uncertainty of their immigration status means they don't buy houses, start families, or participate in the community. The benefits economists suggest don't materialize.
Futher, the H1-B program has a negative effect on higher education. The H1-B program allows employers to avoid the H1-B dependent designation if they hire immigrants that possess a masters or higher degree from a US education institution. It is a well known backdoor into the US and drives up the cost of education and pushes the citizens of the US out of the classroom. The employers list a masters degree as a requisite which the citizen doesn't have because they couldn't afford it. Take a look at the UT Dallas enrollment numbers [0]. Nearly 90% of the CS masters students are international, and of the entire engineering school 84% of them are international.
It's a mess and it needs to be fixed.
[0] http://ecs.utdallas.edu/academics/assessment-docs/2013/2013F...
Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Again, it's a zero-sum thinking error to assume that there's some fixed number of jobs and therefore more people equals lower pay. I would have made substantially less at Google if it weren't for all of the foreigners making the company a success :) I agree that H1B transfer restrictions are bad though. If people are good enough to let into the country, then they should be free to switch jobs just like anyone else.
> Again, it's a zero-sum thinking error to assume that there's some fixed number of jobs and therefore more people equals lower pay. I'm not stating the "more people" == "less pay". I'm stating that foreign workers are willing get paid less money, regardless of what the job pool is. They have fewer options available to them, so they accept "worse" pay for what maybe essentially the same job. Also, the amount of jobs…
New people consume stuff too. Hence yes, companies most certainly create new jobs to cater to their needs.
Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
Get O visa, as a PhD holder you should be fine. E visa is also a possibility, though it costs at least $100k to get in.
I tried for O, but was told my resume was not strong enough, even with a PhD from a good European university, and several a-rank publications.
Have you tried for an EB1-A green card? Contact one of these online lawyers (wegreened/hooyou), and they will evaluate your CV for free. I personally know a few (non-US) people who avoided the H1B problem this way.
Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles
#249Earlier this year I interviewed for a research/engineering position at Apple. I was offered the job, took it, and went into the H1B lottery. It took the USCIS four months to let me know that my application was not selected, even though it was filed under 'premium processing', and the draw had been done using a computer in the first week after submissions closed. Since the job required me to be in Cupertino, the deal…
Blame the offshore firms like Cognizant then. They are the ones scooping up 50%+ of the H-1B quota:
>IT service firms use H-1B workers in offshore outsourcing contracts. IT workers affected by offshoring decision will typically train their replacements as a condition of severance. This has been the situation, for instance, at Northeast Utilities in Connecticut, which late last year announced plans to outsource some its IT work to Infosys and TCS and cut around 200 IT workers.
>"The offshore outsourcing firms are once again getting the majority of the visas," said Ron Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. "The program continues to promote the offshoring of high-wage American jobs." http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9247241/Offshore_firm...
Re: Vancouver tech surges as U.S. immigration reform idles
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because a Google or Apple or Facebook can bid $100K+ to get someone a visa in this proposed auctioning system. A 10person startup couldn't reasonably.
"$100K+" I'm sure that was proposed as ridiculous, but you have to keep in mind that there's only a programming labor shortage in two, maybe three cities on the coasts. For a national program like this lottery, every non-citizen the .gov lets thru will result in many social program costs not only for the one citizen who won't be employed and at a higher pay rate, plus all the downstream effects of lower salaries and…
> every non-citizen the .gov lets thru will result in many social program costs not only for the one citizen who won't be employed
I don't think F1/H1B visa holders are entitled to ANY social programs. They HAVE to pay medicare/social security, but they cannot avail any of the benefits.