U.S. immigration policy has been a boon for the tech industry in Canada

Vancouverite here. When major tech companies started setting up satellite offices here, I assumed it&#x27;d be a temporary situation, and that we&#x27;d be at the mercy of any change in the U.S. immigration process. The longer there&#x27;s an immigration bottleneck though, the more entrenched these companies become here. There are more senior roles opening up here all the time, and salaries are increasing in this competitive market.<p>From my experience on the media &#x2F; marketing side of things, a lot of people moving here that didn&#x27;t consider the U.S. as an option. For some roles, our entire crop of interviewees have moved to Canada from other countries.<p>Yes, the U.S. immigration situation is helping the Canadian tech scene, but cities like Vancouver and Toronto are more than a mere crashpad for people waiting to move to SV. There&#x27;s real momentum here as well.

The drop from 92% to 75% isn’t the complete story, or even the more important story.<p>The real problem is all the other nonsense people have to deal with.<p>We have a really great employee who single handedly wrote most of the company’s build infrastructure, and was happy in the US on his H1B because while it requires renewal every 3 years, he was well paid and enjoying his life.<p>Until about a year and a half ago when he went back to renew his visa in India but didn’t get an approval for about 6 months. The approval process required the company to submit the salaries of the entire 15000+ global employees from the janitors to the CEO.<p>Once his visa was approved, he packed his bags and moved to Toronto within a couple of months. And our company has stopped hiring more tech workers in the US because they don’t want to have to deal with this anymore.

I&#x27;m at somewhat of a cross-roads related to this matter.<p>Note that this mostly applies to immigrants from India or China. I&#x27;m from India. This applies irrespective of education level (I did my Bachelors in the US, just FYI)<p>Currently I&#x27;m in the US on a student visa (currently during a period of that visa that permits me to work) that expires in a couple years. I cannot renew it. If I want to continue working in the US. My only option is an H1-B (work) visa.<p>There is basically no other option to me.<p>Okay, so let&#x27;s say I do get the H1-B visa. Then, I have to work for a few more years on that visa, before I&#x27;m eligible to apply for a green card - which grants permanent resident status. Now, once I file that application, I&#x27;ll be on a waitlist. Guess how much time it takes to get a greed card? <i>Atleast</i> 100 years. I&#x27;m not joking. Unless there&#x27;s a policy change, there&#x27;s no possibility.<p>Even if there&#x27;s no possibility of me getting a green card, I can still work. I can still buy a house, get married, have kids, etc. A lot of Indians and Chinese in the US currently are in this limbo period, where they don&#x27;t have a green card. So they still continue to work, start a family. Because no other country will pay as well.<p>But personally, I hate the uncertainty. While even getting a green card isn&#x27;t a guarantee to get to stay in the country, <i>not</i> having a green card is much worse. A CBP officer has the authority to deny you entry at their discretion. If do deny entry, you are banned from entry for atleast 5 years.<p>That&#x27;s it. You&#x27;re life in the US has vanished into thin air.<p>While I love my current job, I trying to immigrate to Canada. You get a PR immediately if you quality based on a points system calculated using specific, meritocratic criteria. If I have a PR I feel I won&#x27;t worry when I buy a house, plant roots, that my life won&#x27;t be upended because I failed to follow my visa&#x27;s restrictions.

I&#x27;m moving from San Francisco to Toronto soon.<p>Staying at the same job, my salary will go from $180k usd to $128k usd ($170k cad). (Equity comp remains the same)<p>That&#x27;s a pretty big cut, though at least for me it&#x27;s worth it because of non-monetary reasons, like being closer to family, not dealing with immigration anymore, healthcare&#x2F;education.<p>The money stuff isn&#x27;t so bad. A downtown Toronto condo is a lot cheaper than San Francisco. That alone makes the pay cut easy enough to swallow. Either way I can comfortably live on a tech salary.<p>Starting prices for:<p>3 Bed SF condo: 1.2M usd<p>3 Bed TO condo: 0.7M usd (900k cad)<p>No rigorous comparison, just from me house hunting in both markets.

Let&#x27;s not pretend that Canadian cities are a utopia for tech workers. Vancouver and Toronto are insanely expensive and salaries just don&#x27;t compare to those a hundred kilometres to the south. Hopefully it steadily improves but I&#x27;m not hopeful with these tech companies having virtually an unlimited supply and no incentive to boost salaries.

I moved from SF to Canada. Traded a higher salary and basically 0 shot at green card for less money, a PR when I walk in and guaranteed citizenship.<p>Most importantly, you <i>cannot</i> do anything besides your job on an H1B. No start ups, no side projects. You can&#x27;t even BE in the US without a job and just bum around for a year. Every interaction with the US border folks makes me feel like a criminal. The visa fundamentally restricts the shape of your life in a way thats hard for residents to really understand.<p>I already get paid enough to retire comfortably when I&#x27;m older and it&#x27;s no fun retiring young! Retirement costs in Canada are also significantly lower if you can count on free healthcare. Not worth it. I do miss the weather though :)

As unfortunate as this is, I think this only applies to Indians and Chinese. I was surprised to see Yoluk did not want to bother applying to jobs in the US.<p>I am a foreign person from ROW (Rest of the World) in the US studying with F1 visa and trying to immigrate here via employment based options.<p>I have friends who also immigrated to Germany and Britain. The process is definitely easier and guaranteed there but for us ROW, the process does not look so bad to me right now. Maybe I just don&#x27;t know how it should be.<p>After I graduate with F1, I can work up to 3 years with my OPT, companies apply to H1-B in that period. Some start the H1-B process even before you graduate if you have a bachelor&#x27;s degree already. You have 4 chances in H1-B in the end.<p>EB-2 green card is also an option for us, as far as I know I can get that in less than 2 years. I&#x27;ve read about people who applied to EB-2 directly without H1-B and got that in their STEM OPT extension duration.<p>Finally, even though it is a slim chance, there is also diversity visa lottery. I have friends who got picked from DV lottery while studying here with F1. Everything became easier for them.<p>The US is still attractive to people like me, I don&#x27;t think how this article portrays the immigration is true.

Toronto salaries are less than half than in the US for software developer roles. With the high cost of living, I dont know how anyone can live there.

As someone who did his graduate studies in Montreal and moved to NYC to work and then back to Toronto about two years ago I can comment on this. In Toronto I make about 10% less then what I did in NYC if you don&#x27;t factor in exchange rate. But since I did my entire academic career from undergraduate to phd in Canada, I am able to enjoin a large amount of tuition tax credits which sort of makes up for it. This year I invested in some property downtown Toronto which I plan to hold onto, either living here or leasing it if I leave.<p>However, I think given the right opportunity I would still head back to the U.S. Things are fucked in the U.S. but the sense of scale, velocity is unmatched. In Toronto you feel that people&#x27;s attitude is just not the same. There is no hunger or lust to be number #1 and I have always been competitive personality type. In NYC even traditional enterprise corporations (where I worked) there is an intensity and drive that&#x27;s missing here. Call it the american spirit.<p>Salary as this stage is relatively unimportant, making 150 or 250k is about the about the same to me. But the scale and types of opportunities is something else. There are roles and jobs that only exist in the U.S.<p>That being said, for me going back is just a tour of duty, once you are past the journeyman stage of your life and wanting to start a family, then Canada wins unquestioned. The environment, benefits, healthcare, and most importantly education for your children will outweigh just about any salary you can command state-side. Because now you are talking about intangible things that are harder and harder to buy with money.<p>My opinion is, stay in the U.S. when you are young and&#x2F;or talented. Then, if you are of Indian or Chinese birth, move elsewhere to start a family and take a senior position in Canada. Typically if you come from reputable shop state-side and demonstrate your worth, you can find a job where people will treat you with respect for that experience. They might not be able to compensate you the same way but you can usually get bumped up a notch.<p>If you are of white or European heritage and you are in a good place then you can consider staying the U.S. if you can make it work.

Raw numbers don&#x27;t tell the whole story. From personal experience, Canada is great for new immigrants to get educated and started, but US always vacuums up the best talents.

Just like me. I did my BSc in Iran and was applying for grad school for cs 3 years ago. I just picked Canada because of easier immigration policy. Thank you Canada.

Canada gets immigrants from developing countries; immigrants take advantage of the excellent education and healthcare system, after a few years get a citizenship, a TN visa, then move to US for a better salary and a lower rent. USA gets the cream of the crop from Canada and wins. Canada loses.

I understand the article is about visa, but the salary discrepancy between the two is very large. I am sure many Canadians are moving to SV to double or triple their salaries.

USA-ian in Canada here. Been able to work remotely for US firms consistently for going on ~5 years here.<p>I hope these changes drive up tech salaries in Canada -- I fear they won&#x27;t. Currently they&#x27;re about 20-40% less than the US particularly due to the currency difference. Cost of living is also a bit higher, and absolutely insane in Vancouver (and a lesser degree, Toronto).<p>I suspect it will continue the H-1B trend, in that it companies won&#x27;t pay better wages, just outsource to cheaper Canadian labor, who are in turn taxed higher and squeezed harder.

The situation is much more complicated. Many go to school in the US, work here to pay off their debts for a decade, then move to Canada for citizenship. Arguably, the US still takes &quot;our cut&quot; of the global workforce.<p>It also depends on where the immigrants come from. Chinese and Indians have the longest wait list, and therefore its natural for them to look for better options. They are right to do so, imo.<p>There&#x27;s also the weather and cost, the large cities in Canada can be insanely expensive, with terrible weather, and salaries aren&#x27;t anywhere near US levels. If your rent is 2-3k and you&#x27;re making 100k CAD a year, it doesn&#x27;t feel like you&#x27;re living the dream. Want to buy a home in Vancouver or Toronto? No big deal, just fork over 1-2 million CAD for a 1 hour one way commute.<p>The quality of immigrants is a factor too. The US still sweeps up the best and brightest of academia and business.<p>I know more than a few Canadians (from immigrant backgrounds) that moved to SV recently purely for the weather and salary reasons. I wonder if when they get their citizenship, many of those in the article will be back in the US or moving there.

Just for perspective - green card wait for Indian tech workers in US is 100+ years. In Canada, you can permanent residency even before you land there

Anyone else from western Europe had their ESTA cancelled and had to apply for B1&#x2F;B2 (non-immigrant visa) just to visit the US? It happened to me at the end of 2018, and it took me a year to get a visa. It&#x27;s apparently going to be issued this week. It was stuck in Administrative Processing the whole time. The situation is eye-opening.<p>(And no, I don&#x27;t have a criminal record, or indeed any hint of what I might have &quot;done wrong&quot;)

In the last decade US stock market went up by 256%. All other countries grew below 100%. The outstanding performance of the US stock market was thanks to tech industry. Without the tech industry we&#x27;d all be poorer whether you work in tech or not. Anything that hurts tech hurts all Americans.<p>See charts here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@petilon404&#x2F;us-prosperity-is-dependent-on-tech-b71848b24d84" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@petilon404&#x2F;us-prosperity-is-dependent-on...</a>

Taxes in canada are very high. The ontario income tax rate of 53.53% applies at 220K CAD. the equivalent rate for Cali in USD is 34.75%. you then have PST&#x2F;GST (14%), way fewer deductions and european gas taxes. The one thing that is a good deal in canada is cheap high quality education. The &quot;free&quot; healthcare that you get is not very good and even the for pay services are of surprisingly low quality.

It stands to be seen how many of them will go back to US when the immigration policy becomes favorable. Canada is still plan B for high skilled immigrants. If H4 work authorization is removed, there will be a surge to Canada. Many US skilled workers do a soft landing to get their PR cards as a plan B. Canada should stop issuing PR cards for soft landers who are playing Canada&#x27;s immigration system.

People who can be paid less due to being tied to visas&#x2F;desperation may be a boon to shareholders but not to the job market for locals.

Companies that are nowhere near as successful as those in the US, developer salaries that are nowhere near those in the US.<p>I don&#x27;t think I get it.

Might just as well say the same about every developed country&#x27;s immigration policy. Last I heard, all accepted fewer than wanted in. If you perceive you can&#x27;t get in one place you emigrate to another. Or stay home of course, making it also a boon for developing countries&#x27; tech industry (a very good thing, in my opinion).

The Bay Area is full. Voters certainly don’t want any growth here. It’s time for companies to move out of the bay area

This is really a terrible thing that&#x27;s happening. We need the brains that are immigrating to Canada!

This was the case for me.<p>I was looking to move from the UK.<p>US salaries were the highest, but it was too difficult to get in.<p>So I started looking in Canada and found a job in New Brunswick.<p>I like it here, but part of me still wishes I could have gotten into Texas instead.

It&#x27;s remarkable that the United States can have the highest number of immigrants for any country by a wide margin and still be in this position.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pewresearch.org&#x2F;global&#x2F;interactives&#x2F;international-migrants-by-country&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pewresearch.org&#x2F;global&#x2F;interactives&#x2F;internationa...</a><p>Over 44 million residents of the US were not born in the US, as opposed to 8 million in Canada. As a percentage of the population, that&#x27;s lower than Canada, but by weight of sheer numbers, the US shouldn&#x27;t have any problem with this.<p>The US takes over 1.2 million immigrants into the country every year, we just don&#x27;t have much of a skilled immigration system - ours is largely based on family reunification. Canada and Australia, on the other hand, have a points based system that favors immigrants with education and skills.<p>I actually do blame the high tech industry for some of this. I just don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s a &quot;bug&quot; that the US system was largely based on a very indentured approach, where high tech companies got to decide who is allowed into the US and the circumstances under which they are allowed to remain, with long, grueling waits for a green card, where a would-be immigrant was beholden to an employer (called a &quot;sponsor&quot;) and could be fired and deported at the employer&#x27;s pleasure.<p>Facebook, Google, Apple, all the big companies - you see, what they <i>wanted</i> was a freer, more open system where skilled immigrants got to choose what they&#x27;d study, where they&#x27;d work, what companies they&#x27;d work for, and even whether they&#x27;d work in tech in the first place, in accordance with their own personal values and interests and market signals such as salary, cost of living, and work conditions.<p>That&#x27;s what google and Facebook <i>wanted</i>. Unfortunately, all they could get was an visa that they bestow and control, putting them in a position to determine micro aspects of a would-be immigrants life.<p>Right. This utterly corporate self serving H1B guest worker visa system that undermines markets and is an affront to freedom did terrible damage to the public perception of skilled immigration.<p>Want to be clear, I don&#x27;t blame anyone for working on an H1B, this wasn&#x27;t your choice, and it was your only option. Don&#x27;t blame you for going to Canada, either. But I just don&#x27;t buy it from the corporate lobbyists. This was hardly a bug, to the companies that make heavy use of the H1B, the control over the worker&#x27;s right to live int the US is a feature, and they lobbied hard for it.

What boom? I see no boom

They will all eventually will migrate to US once the policies are relaxed. This is a typical path for immigrants who can’t get into US directly: Rest of the world -&gt; Canada -&gt; acquire TN Visa -&gt; migrate to US

Many of these jobs can be performed anywhere--even on the go.<p>Whatever the ultimate corporate goals may be, this topic is clearly a control issue, not a talent one.<p>In software, talent can do what it wants wherever it feels like doing it--businesses will yield to it.

US was playing the last few decades with an easy cheat code of sucking in smart immigrants while the rest of the developed world was twiddling thumbs.<p>Now that the US has shot itself on its foot and others are waking up, the playing field appears to be getting more balanced once again.

I think it&#x27;s hilarious that the tech companies in the States say that they &quot;can&#x27;t find talent&quot;, and yet there are reasons for that.<p>One: These companies want to pay less for more. Smart developers are not going to go for that, so they&#x27;ll look elsewhere. Then the companies can say &quot;Oh, we can&#x27;t find anyone, boo-hoo, let&#x27;s hire someone cheaper now. From overseas.&quot;<p>Two: See one.<p>IF you don&#x27;t believe me, just do a job search and see all the shit software jobs out there. 12 bucks an hour for a full stack? 75k a year for 5 years experience in five languages? Oh, and you gotta be DevOps too.<p>These companies are just trying to take advantage of a system.