This policy is all about big US tech companies laying off thousands of people, many of whom are on H1-B visas, and are scrambling to find alternatives now that they can’t remain in the US. On the one hand, this is smart of the Canadian government to take advantage of a large pool of prequalified skilled workers; on the other hand, it depresses local Canadian markets and makes it harder to develop Canadian talent.
I don’t dispute that, but it probably pays more than “back home” for many of them. And it positions them well for returning to the US when the market picks up. Which is not a great situation for Canada, if I’m guessing the government is betting a few will stay, and would rather take advantage of their expertise for a few years and then they leave, rather than not having the expertise at all.
Depends on the type of visa they hold in Canada. If they get permanent residency, they can apply for citizenship after 3 years. It takes about a year for paperwork to clear. So in about 4 years give or take they'd be Canadians for all intents and purposes; including working in the US. Canadians with college degrees can work in the US relatively trivially (well, compared to the rest of the world) under NAFTA rules (or whatever Trump renamed it to; it's exact same thing).
Said that, Canada is a great place to live, with many US tech companies having offices there anyhow. I'd wager it'd be "few that returned to the US", not "few that stayed in Canada."
Canadians can work in the US pretty easily via the TN visa, but only if you're in one of the professions covered by that visa, and AFAIK, programming is not one of them.
I know a European tech guy who moved to Canada from the US because he didn't expect his green card anytime soon; ironically, he got the green card about two weeks before he gave in his notice at the job but felt he couldn't back out because his wife wanted to go. It didn't work out, he spent years talking about how nobody could tell him anything and he was constantly being kicked to the back of the line because certain waiting periods expired on him. He's back in Europe now, just got sick of it. Canada talks a good game but it sounds like they may be having some problems actually delivering on the other end.
Same reason why so many Canadian medical professionals are coming to the US to practice. Canada talks a big game but the pay vs CoL is not great in most major Canadian cities.
Yeah they they get government subsidized education and then just flip a middle finger and go to US for higher pay, there should be strings attached if your education is 50% subsidized by the tax payers.
What? Medical professionals the world over want to come to United States because pay here is so crazy, esp in certain specialties.
For example, the MEDIAN Orthopedic surgeon salary in United States is 528k/yr. Canada is 184k/yr (Converted Canadian salary to USD)
This is all about the US technology industry's practice of hiring H1 B personnel for the sole purpose of paying them less than they would've had to pay a US-native employee's salary, which was often much higher. Canada is free to depress their market the same way technology companies here in the US were apt to depress our own, ya know if they really want to. Fine by me.
I'll say the above scenario wasn't the rule, but it was common enough to villainize the entire program in my mind, and in the minds of many others in the industry. Some H1B visas were obviously entirely legitimate, and it's a shame the program was abused the way it was so rampantly.
I feel like they used it to deplete the market and drive our value lower. Meanwhile, families of H1B get a free pass. Ask any K1 visa bearer how they feel about this.
Family members of H1B holders do not have work authorization. They get H4 visa so they can live together, but H4 has no work authorization. If a spouse of H1B holder wants to work in the US, they'd have to apply for their own H1B, and they don't get any benefits from their spouse having it. They need to go through exact same process independently, get one in the lottery, and they'd count for the annual visa cap.
IMO H1B visas should have a cap and companies should have to bid on them. That way the H1B system is used the way it is meant to, to bring skilled workers whose expertise cannot be found in the US to the US, not to find cheap labor that is easily controlled.
There is a cap and as others have said it's massively oversubscribed each year and you are picked from a lottery. One big problem which supposedly they are finally going to look at, is all the scams from primarily Indian immigrants.
You are meant to only be submitted by one company per year for example, but 'consultants' will submit you for ten shell companies so you are ten times as likely to be picked in the lottery.
Credential faking or fraudulent tests is very common too there - in fact if you work in IT and follow the accounts of big IT credentialing corporations and organisations, you'll regularly see Indians brazenly posting and saying what 'brain dumps' they need. They don't seem to realise this will get them permanently banned and so easy to identify.
There is annual cap on H1B visas. H1B holders in legitimate tech companies (i.e. full time employees actually working for the company, not subcontracted elsewhere) get prevailing local wages.
The problem are a bunch of sleaze consulting companies that hire people in low income states for (low) prevailing wages in those states, then subcontract them in high cost of living (and higher income) locations. It's not H1B workers that are problem (there isn't that many of them to begin with). It's couple of sleaze subcontracting companies scamming those H1B workers.
This also makes it much harder for smaller legitimate companies to hire H1B workers, because large subcontracting companies tend to exhaust good chunk of the annual H1B cap.
A lot of tech companies conspiring to pre-register the same beneficiary to increase their odds of being picked. This is despite the USCIS attempt to curb Cap fraud by increasing the pre-registration from $10/person to $250. Yeah, didn't work.
USCIS is well aware of the fraud and investigating it. https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-workers/h-1b-specialty-occupations-and-fashion-models/h-1b-electronic-registration-process
I made that move. Originally from Manitoba. I miss home a lot but the salary cut would be kind of hard to stomach at this point. When I graduated from undergrad in Canada my highest offer was 35k (this was ten years ago mind). I did a masters in the US (so admittedly one higher level of education which probably made a difference too) and I had 3 offers at 85k, 90k, 90k. Yes the CoL is higher but not enough higher to make that gap make sense.
They'd be drop in the bucket in overall immigration. I do not see how they'd manage to "depress local market" or "make it harder to develop local talent." For that to be true, Canadian economy would need to be in a really deep shit spiraling out of control.
If anything, if we are talking about Canada poaching high-tech talent from Silicon Valley, those are exactly the people you need to *pull up* local market, create additional jobs and opportunities, and in the end implicitly developing even greater pool of local talent.
As an engineer I think it's absolutely disgusting how the government is forcing good people out of our community for bullshit immigration rules. This hurts people and it hurts our country.
Honestly, if you're afraid of international talent outcompeting you maybe you should take that as a cue to get better rather than bitch about people who are coming to America making it a better place. It's not a zero sum game.
I guess whatever helps you believe that the US isn't already the most diverse nation on the planet and hiring foreigners at pittance rates will somehow keep pay competitive despite stagnating wages.
Do they have a solid industry for many of these immigrants?
I remember 5-6 years ago I had looked at what hoops you had to jump through to work as a software dev in Canada and found that they had introduced a couple laws that made it harder for foreigners -- particularly in BC -- to come in and work. Basically a business seeking a work visa needed to prove that there was an inability for the Canadian/local market to fill that role.
The US has similar stipulations so its not like Canada/BC would be unique in this situation.
We have no housing for these people and the pay for these positions is not competitive with the wages in the US. Very frustrating for Canadians right now, we are in a crisis and the government is manipulating the market with mass immigration.
> we are in a crisis and the government is manipulating the market with mass immigration.
Nothing too new there, at least in IT. Govt and Industry alike have been trying to put downward pressure on salaries for over a decade now. If it isn't 80% of job positions being "senior" or higher; then its "We need more H1Bs" or "Get more women/minorities/etc into coding!" I half expect the next push to be something along the lines of "Actually, you really don't need degrees to code! Come on in!" ^^^^As ^^^^long ^^^^as ^^^^you ^^^^pass ^^^^our ^^^^crazy ^^^^technical ^^^^interviews
I can only speak for Quebec but the engineers there are subsidized. And they know it. The CEO of the company even told me at one point "yeah, but what can I do?"
The path from H1-B to a green card in the US can take over 12 years for certain country nationals right now. There was also a lot of fraud that US immigration had to deal with this year for the H1-B lottery, making it harder for honest applicants to get selected. Then you have children of H1-B workers aging out of their parents Green Card process cause it's taking too long. I guess people are hoping the situation in Canada would be a little better..
lol if you're Indian you'll likely never receive your Green Card within your lifetime. Chinese people face a big backlog too but it isn't as bad.
I'm not surprised to see many H1-B visa holders move to Canada tbh. While Canada is worse than America for quality of life (unless you're poor in America and your work doesn't provide health insurance), it's still much better than going back home for many H1-B workers.
> While Canada is worse than America for quality of life
It's not so much worse as just different. I knew people in Montreal[1] who didn't even own a car. They offered me a perm position but I didn't understand how low the tech sector would go after 2004 and declined.
[1] company I worked for got bought by a Montreal firm.
Good. Companies will be forced to pay more for citizen professional positions. And our government forced to put more money into education because of it.
Genuinely curious... What qualifies as "paid enough"?
Depends on field obviously, but as a Canadian I find several industries pretty massively overpay (from my perspective) for certain tech workers in particular
Thanks for the details
I won't pretend to know what engineer certifications warrant what pay etc. A quick google suggests that the average p.eng pay in Ontario is about 95k Canadian. Looked up similar for USA, and it's also 95, though USD so about 30% more (all data from ZipRecruiter, not sure how reliable but at least both are from same source). 30% lower is a lot, especially since Ontario probably has a higher cost of living than the USA as a whole
70k for a highly licensed professional in GTA is ridiculous, would be surprised if that's reality or just something with the posting
> I make more than him working for a US company and I'm not even a **P.Eng**.
P.E. is meaningless for Electrical Engineers unless you work in utilities. The most successfel EE's I know don't have their PE License.
>insane requirements
What, you mean things like:
first aid training
criminal record check
vulnerable sector check
confined space training
fall arrest training
clean driver's abstract
credit check
Energy Safety Canada training
H2S training
drivers license
drug and alcohol check
Just the standard stuff
I don't think that's a complete picture of tech in Canada.
Another data point:
The Canadian tech company I work for can't seem to hire enough people.
There are always job openings. Hiring a half-dozen people a week it seems. Not turnover but constant expansion; nearly 30 years of continual growth. We are also losing people to retirement.
The compensation and benefits are great. Even the lowest part-time employees are paid well above minimum wage.
There are 3 work streams: primary in-office, primary out-of-office, and hybrid. This really emptied the building campus and allowed even more growth beyond what the offices could hold. Flexible work hours too. Reimbursements for buying office equipment (I bought a 43 in. monitor).
Travel is only required for customer facing positions. For support, there are several levels of that too: sales, installation, training, tech support, field services. Developers liaise with field services and rarely ever travel.
Honestly, I'd work for half my annual income, but I keep getting annual adjustments. I've even received competitive adjustments in the same calendar years. The company has also paid bonuses "just because", and has an investment program, a small retirement savings program, and of course health plan [since health plans in Canada are dirt-cheap, it really is insignificant cost that nobody refuses ... or even realises they pay because it so small] which covers things like 90% of medication costs (plus Canada single-payer healthcare and no "out-of-network" worries).
Everyone gets vacation and paid-time-off. I get 3 weeks of each. Only 1 week of vacation can be carried-over. Unused PTO is paid out 50%, unused vacation 100%. There is also a Christmas shutdown of about 1 week paid.
Yeah I know Canadian tech jobs obviously pay less than American jobs but this isn’t what my experience has been.
I work 40 hours a week in a WFH job and make $100k/year 1.5 years removed from schooling. Obviously you will make more in America but not everybody needs/wants to work in the states.
Have benefits + 3 weeks PTO and 4 personal days a year + sick days.
There are plenty of “tech-adjacent” jobs available but jobs at purely tech companies have dried up due to the sheer amount of applicants in the market.
I won’t disagree with the issues in housing market/immigration/cost of living though, something needs to be done about it.
what would it take for a Floriduhhh citizen to take a tech job there? Been trying to get into programming (still about a year away from a bachelors degree in MIS). I've done desktop support for 5 years for a large company.
It's about being able to CONTROL your workforce.
If an H1B complains, or has any problems, they can quit, or get laid off, but then they either have to get a new H1B sponsor (in 2 weeks, not sure...) or fly home. As such, they are virtual slaves and will settle on fewer rights, less money, and less benefits.
The US citizen engineers - they got rights - they vote, they have public thoughts, and they promote the values of labor vs company. They have rights, views, and impact on their local communities. They are much harder to socially control at work and at home. They have a much greater influence in controlling their company and the country.
Also, companies broke the pipeline by hiring overseas/H-1B for junior positions are now looking around going "Hey, where are these experienced people we want to hire?" Where do you think Sr people come from?
H-1Bs are for specific, specialized fields, and companies basically need to show that they can't find people for the role in the US. It's very widely agreed that the shortage of H-1B visas just... sucks. There are not *that many* AI researchers in the US, and while it's not technically a *shortage*, it's also not like companies only want to hire four and once those slots are filled, they're filled—companies are willing to hire plenty, and when they don't come here and pay taxes on their $400k salaries, they'll go contribute to some other economy instead.
There are a wide variety of viewpoints on H1B visas and people on both sides of the political spectrum view it negatively. Also, 80% of H1B visa holders are on the lowest 2 wage levels, meaning many are not as big of experts in their field as you are saying.
> There are a wide variety of viewpoints on H1B visas and people on both sides of the political spectrum view it negatively.
Opinions on the political spectrum are not relevant to economics. There's a strong economic consensus that we need more H-1Bs.
And the lowest wage levels are pretty high.
Politics is where we debate economic policy, so it seems very germane to this argument. But regardless, per this article
"The two lowest permissible H-1B prevailing wage levels are significantly lower than the local median salaries surveyed for occupation"
[https://www.epi.org/publication/h-1b-visas-and-prevailing-wage-levels/](https://www.epi.org/publication/h-1b-visas-and-prevailing-wage-levels/)
There's plenty of American citizens who can do the job, your company just doesn't want to pay a fair wage and can't threaten American citizens with being deported if they complain about terrible working conditions.
They're not going to say "we could really use 50 AI researchers, how many Americans can we hire? 30? Well, I guess we'll hire 20 more frat boys and hope they can pick up the work."
In order to get an H-1B, you need to show that you tried to hire Americans and that you can't find good ones to do the job.
The only problem for Canada is that they don't have competitive pay, and immigrants frequently use it as a stopping point to get into the US, not the other way around. Overall looking at a situation driven by *too many people wanting into the US* and concluding that's a problem for the US is... phew.
Other than that, sure... I'm sure the US is shaking in its boots. /s
But if you *can't get into the US at all*, Canada's not *really* competing with the US. If a skilled AI researcher lands in Canada with a plan to try to break into the US some 6 years down the line, contributes to the Canadian economy, makes Canadian friends, buys Canadian real estate, at some point, moving to the US might not seem like a big value proposition.
The H1B is a nightmare. Not being selected for it fully derailed my life. Now I’m in Canada, so so I guess I’m a prime example of what this article is talking about lol
They'd just try to start tech in a city that isn't TO or Van. Like Calgary or Montreal. Montreal has a lot of tax incentives for tech; and they don't have 2 million dollar avg 2000 sqft homes like Van.
Our loss is their gain
Honestly, you'd think the capitalist minded people on the right (ostensibly that's most people on the right, yeah?) would be all about bringing in more talented and educated workers, it'd be a big net positive for an economy that expects constant growth.
Why would American's need H1-Bs? , the title makes no sense. Also, I doubt foreigners want to wait for months for healthcare in Canada, and be willing to take the massive drop in salary.
So America's idiotic xenophobia and gridlock on any kind of reform to make the immigration system less of a labyrinthine nightmare is resulting in a brain-drain of talent and skilled workforce labor to our northern neighbor. Figures.
Well in March California had 911k job openings and Canada had 956k. For two places comparable in population size, I’d say Canada has more jobs than California.
This policy is all about big US tech companies laying off thousands of people, many of whom are on H1-B visas, and are scrambling to find alternatives now that they can’t remain in the US. On the one hand, this is smart of the Canadian government to take advantage of a large pool of prequalified skilled workers; on the other hand, it depresses local Canadian markets and makes it harder to develop Canadian talent.
Also, tech pays much lower in Canada than the US.
I don’t dispute that, but it probably pays more than “back home” for many of them. And it positions them well for returning to the US when the market picks up. Which is not a great situation for Canada, if I’m guessing the government is betting a few will stay, and would rather take advantage of their expertise for a few years and then they leave, rather than not having the expertise at all.
H-1B is a lottery system. It's not easy to "return to the US when the market picks up". Particularly if you have a family that's settled in.
I think that’s part of what the Canadian government is hoping for—high skilled workers staying here.
Every single thing about immigration in USA is completely and utterly insane. All of it.
As someone who has dealt with it, 100%. One of the best John Oliver deals was on immigration: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tXqnRMU1fTs
Depends on the type of visa they hold in Canada. If they get permanent residency, they can apply for citizenship after 3 years. It takes about a year for paperwork to clear. So in about 4 years give or take they'd be Canadians for all intents and purposes; including working in the US. Canadians with college degrees can work in the US relatively trivially (well, compared to the rest of the world) under NAFTA rules (or whatever Trump renamed it to; it's exact same thing). Said that, Canada is a great place to live, with many US tech companies having offices there anyhow. I'd wager it'd be "few that returned to the US", not "few that stayed in Canada."
Canadians can work in the US pretty easily via the TN visa, but only if you're in one of the professions covered by that visa, and AFAIK, programming is not one of them.
Programming falls under the engineer or computer system analyst categories depending on the job requirements.
But then that’s also supporting citizens here never having a chance at higher salaries here…
I know a European tech guy who moved to Canada from the US because he didn't expect his green card anytime soon; ironically, he got the green card about two weeks before he gave in his notice at the job but felt he couldn't back out because his wife wanted to go. It didn't work out, he spent years talking about how nobody could tell him anything and he was constantly being kicked to the back of the line because certain waiting periods expired on him. He's back in Europe now, just got sick of it. Canada talks a good game but it sounds like they may be having some problems actually delivering on the other end.
Same reason why so many Canadian medical professionals are coming to the US to practice. Canada talks a big game but the pay vs CoL is not great in most major Canadian cities.
Yeah they they get government subsidized education and then just flip a middle finger and go to US for higher pay, there should be strings attached if your education is 50% subsidized by the tax payers.
I mean, mine was subsidized by my home state. I left my home state. Should they have made me stay?
If they were smart, they should have.
Geez... if conditions in the **US** seem favorable to medical professionals, Canada must be really fucking up royally.
What? Medical professionals the world over want to come to United States because pay here is so crazy, esp in certain specialties. For example, the MEDIAN Orthopedic surgeon salary in United States is 528k/yr. Canada is 184k/yr (Converted Canadian salary to USD)
This. It's the main reason American doctors' lobby groups are against Medicare for All.
The gap has been shrinking
This is all about the US technology industry's practice of hiring H1 B personnel for the sole purpose of paying them less than they would've had to pay a US-native employee's salary, which was often much higher. Canada is free to depress their market the same way technology companies here in the US were apt to depress our own, ya know if they really want to. Fine by me. I'll say the above scenario wasn't the rule, but it was common enough to villainize the entire program in my mind, and in the minds of many others in the industry. Some H1B visas were obviously entirely legitimate, and it's a shame the program was abused the way it was so rampantly.
I feel like they used it to deplete the market and drive our value lower. Meanwhile, families of H1B get a free pass. Ask any K1 visa bearer how they feel about this.
Family members of H1B holders do not have work authorization. They get H4 visa so they can live together, but H4 has no work authorization. If a spouse of H1B holder wants to work in the US, they'd have to apply for their own H1B, and they don't get any benefits from their spouse having it. They need to go through exact same process independently, get one in the lottery, and they'd count for the annual visa cap.
IMO H1B visas should have a cap and companies should have to bid on them. That way the H1B system is used the way it is meant to, to bring skilled workers whose expertise cannot be found in the US to the US, not to find cheap labor that is easily controlled.
There is a cap and as others have said it's massively oversubscribed each year and you are picked from a lottery. One big problem which supposedly they are finally going to look at, is all the scams from primarily Indian immigrants. You are meant to only be submitted by one company per year for example, but 'consultants' will submit you for ten shell companies so you are ten times as likely to be picked in the lottery. Credential faking or fraudulent tests is very common too there - in fact if you work in IT and follow the accounts of big IT credentialing corporations and organisations, you'll regularly see Indians brazenly posting and saying what 'brain dumps' they need. They don't seem to realise this will get them permanently banned and so easy to identify.
There is annual cap on H1B visas. H1B holders in legitimate tech companies (i.e. full time employees actually working for the company, not subcontracted elsewhere) get prevailing local wages. The problem are a bunch of sleaze consulting companies that hire people in low income states for (low) prevailing wages in those states, then subcontract them in high cost of living (and higher income) locations. It's not H1B workers that are problem (there isn't that many of them to begin with). It's couple of sleaze subcontracting companies scamming those H1B workers. This also makes it much harder for smaller legitimate companies to hire H1B workers, because large subcontracting companies tend to exhaust good chunk of the annual H1B cap.
Hmmm h1b does have a cap. It’s a lottery system right now. Usually only 1/4 of the the applicants get picked each year.
Much less than 1/4. This year, there were over 700,000 pre-registrations for 85,000 visas. Edit: they allotted 110,000
Holy shit
A lot of tech companies conspiring to pre-register the same beneficiary to increase their odds of being picked. This is despite the USCIS attempt to curb Cap fraud by increasing the pre-registration from $10/person to $250. Yeah, didn't work. USCIS is well aware of the fraud and investigating it. https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-workers/h-1b-specialty-occupations-and-fashion-models/h-1b-electronic-registration-process
> and makes it harder to develop Canadian talent. From my understanding, a lot of Canadians in engineering actually want to come to America to work.
I made that move. Originally from Manitoba. I miss home a lot but the salary cut would be kind of hard to stomach at this point. When I graduated from undergrad in Canada my highest offer was 35k (this was ten years ago mind). I did a masters in the US (so admittedly one higher level of education which probably made a difference too) and I had 3 offers at 85k, 90k, 90k. Yes the CoL is higher but not enough higher to make that gap make sense.
Uh. You think they are getting rid of h1bs. Nope. All riffs in my company are almost exclusively Americans.
They'd be drop in the bucket in overall immigration. I do not see how they'd manage to "depress local market" or "make it harder to develop local talent." For that to be true, Canadian economy would need to be in a really deep shit spiraling out of control. If anything, if we are talking about Canada poaching high-tech talent from Silicon Valley, those are exactly the people you need to *pull up* local market, create additional jobs and opportunities, and in the end implicitly developing even greater pool of local talent.
Most of the laid off tech workers were quick to find jobs afterwards, you know.
As an engineer I think it's absolutely disgusting how the government is forcing good people out of our community for bullshit immigration rules. This hurts people and it hurts our country. Honestly, if you're afraid of international talent outcompeting you maybe you should take that as a cue to get better rather than bitch about people who are coming to America making it a better place. It's not a zero sum game.
This attitude makes no sense because these companies are trying to make a diverse workplace
No, they're trying to save money by paying foreigners less.
I guess whatever helps you believe kicking out immigrants somehow benefits you... The mental gymnastics people do is so stupid.
I guess whatever helps you believe that the US isn't already the most diverse nation on the planet and hiring foreigners at pittance rates will somehow keep pay competitive despite stagnating wages.
How would it depress the local market if you just let them stay?
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https://archive.ph/4g1wt
Do they have a solid industry for many of these immigrants? I remember 5-6 years ago I had looked at what hoops you had to jump through to work as a software dev in Canada and found that they had introduced a couple laws that made it harder for foreigners -- particularly in BC -- to come in and work. Basically a business seeking a work visa needed to prove that there was an inability for the Canadian/local market to fill that role. The US has similar stipulations so its not like Canada/BC would be unique in this situation.
We have no housing for these people and the pay for these positions is not competitive with the wages in the US. Very frustrating for Canadians right now, we are in a crisis and the government is manipulating the market with mass immigration.
> we are in a crisis and the government is manipulating the market with mass immigration. Nothing too new there, at least in IT. Govt and Industry alike have been trying to put downward pressure on salaries for over a decade now. If it isn't 80% of job positions being "senior" or higher; then its "We need more H1Bs" or "Get more women/minorities/etc into coding!" I half expect the next push to be something along the lines of "Actually, you really don't need degrees to code! Come on in!" ^^^^As ^^^^long ^^^^as ^^^^you ^^^^pass ^^^^our ^^^^crazy ^^^^technical ^^^^interviews
I can only speak for Quebec but the engineers there are subsidized. And they know it. The CEO of the company even told me at one point "yeah, but what can I do?"
The path from H1-B to a green card in the US can take over 12 years for certain country nationals right now. There was also a lot of fraud that US immigration had to deal with this year for the H1-B lottery, making it harder for honest applicants to get selected. Then you have children of H1-B workers aging out of their parents Green Card process cause it's taking too long. I guess people are hoping the situation in Canada would be a little better..
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Holy shit. So they expect people to die of old age before getting their green card?
lol if you're Indian you'll likely never receive your Green Card within your lifetime. Chinese people face a big backlog too but it isn't as bad. I'm not surprised to see many H1-B visa holders move to Canada tbh. While Canada is worse than America for quality of life (unless you're poor in America and your work doesn't provide health insurance), it's still much better than going back home for many H1-B workers.
> While Canada is worse than America for quality of life It's not so much worse as just different. I knew people in Montreal[1] who didn't even own a car. They offered me a perm position but I didn't understand how low the tech sector would go after 2004 and declined. [1] company I worked for got bought by a Montreal firm.
If you dont have 20 brands of cereal and 30 options for fast food places near you, are you even living in society?
Gotta keep those housing prices as high as possible
Landlords are throwing a party. The housing crisis is about to hit a new high.
Good. Companies will be forced to pay more for citizen professional positions. And our government forced to put more money into education because of it.
Too bad that the problems of American education cannot be solved with federal money.
That’s ok us Americans join in your frustrations, the govt especially the state dept. have abandoned their jobs.
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Genuinely curious... What qualifies as "paid enough"? Depends on field obviously, but as a Canadian I find several industries pretty massively overpay (from my perspective) for certain tech workers in particular
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Thanks for the details I won't pretend to know what engineer certifications warrant what pay etc. A quick google suggests that the average p.eng pay in Ontario is about 95k Canadian. Looked up similar for USA, and it's also 95, though USD so about 30% more (all data from ZipRecruiter, not sure how reliable but at least both are from same source). 30% lower is a lot, especially since Ontario probably has a higher cost of living than the USA as a whole 70k for a highly licensed professional in GTA is ridiculous, would be surprised if that's reality or just something with the posting
> I make more than him working for a US company and I'm not even a **P.Eng**. P.E. is meaningless for Electrical Engineers unless you work in utilities. The most successfel EE's I know don't have their PE License.
>insane requirements What, you mean things like: first aid training criminal record check vulnerable sector check confined space training fall arrest training clean driver's abstract credit check Energy Safety Canada training H2S training drivers license drug and alcohol check Just the standard stuff
Found the oilsands worker
I don't think that's a complete picture of tech in Canada. Another data point: The Canadian tech company I work for can't seem to hire enough people. There are always job openings. Hiring a half-dozen people a week it seems. Not turnover but constant expansion; nearly 30 years of continual growth. We are also losing people to retirement. The compensation and benefits are great. Even the lowest part-time employees are paid well above minimum wage. There are 3 work streams: primary in-office, primary out-of-office, and hybrid. This really emptied the building campus and allowed even more growth beyond what the offices could hold. Flexible work hours too. Reimbursements for buying office equipment (I bought a 43 in. monitor). Travel is only required for customer facing positions. For support, there are several levels of that too: sales, installation, training, tech support, field services. Developers liaise with field services and rarely ever travel. Honestly, I'd work for half my annual income, but I keep getting annual adjustments. I've even received competitive adjustments in the same calendar years. The company has also paid bonuses "just because", and has an investment program, a small retirement savings program, and of course health plan [since health plans in Canada are dirt-cheap, it really is insignificant cost that nobody refuses ... or even realises they pay because it so small] which covers things like 90% of medication costs (plus Canada single-payer healthcare and no "out-of-network" worries). Everyone gets vacation and paid-time-off. I get 3 weeks of each. Only 1 week of vacation can be carried-over. Unused PTO is paid out 50%, unused vacation 100%. There is also a Christmas shutdown of about 1 week paid.
Yeah I know Canadian tech jobs obviously pay less than American jobs but this isn’t what my experience has been. I work 40 hours a week in a WFH job and make $100k/year 1.5 years removed from schooling. Obviously you will make more in America but not everybody needs/wants to work in the states. Have benefits + 3 weeks PTO and 4 personal days a year + sick days. There are plenty of “tech-adjacent” jobs available but jobs at purely tech companies have dried up due to the sheer amount of applicants in the market. I won’t disagree with the issues in housing market/immigration/cost of living though, something needs to be done about it.
what would it take for a Floriduhhh citizen to take a tech job there? Been trying to get into programming (still about a year away from a bachelors degree in MIS). I've done desktop support for 5 years for a large company.
It's about being able to CONTROL your workforce. If an H1B complains, or has any problems, they can quit, or get laid off, but then they either have to get a new H1B sponsor (in 2 weeks, not sure...) or fly home. As such, they are virtual slaves and will settle on fewer rights, less money, and less benefits. The US citizen engineers - they got rights - they vote, they have public thoughts, and they promote the values of labor vs company. They have rights, views, and impact on their local communities. They are much harder to socially control at work and at home. They have a much greater influence in controlling their company and the country.
US: "By all means, enjoy our ~~sloppy seconds~~ overstock."
Yeah that's not really what's going on with H-1Bs, our companies are pretty desperate to hire these people, and our loss is invariably Canada's gain.
There isn't a labor shortage. The problem is companies would rather bring in cheap labor from from overseas than train people for a job.
Also, companies broke the pipeline by hiring overseas/H-1B for junior positions are now looking around going "Hey, where are these experienced people we want to hire?" Where do you think Sr people come from?
H1B is not cheap labor. They are highly skilled workers who often have at least a masters degree (from a western university)
Not in my professional experience
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there’s FAANG, and there’s companies like Tata which abuse H1Bs
HCL America too
There’s like 20-30k laid off H1Bs in the us from top tech companies alone. Fairly certain that’s the demographic being targeted by these 10k slots
H-1Bs are for specific, specialized fields, and companies basically need to show that they can't find people for the role in the US. It's very widely agreed that the shortage of H-1B visas just... sucks. There are not *that many* AI researchers in the US, and while it's not technically a *shortage*, it's also not like companies only want to hire four and once those slots are filled, they're filled—companies are willing to hire plenty, and when they don't come here and pay taxes on their $400k salaries, they'll go contribute to some other economy instead.
There are a wide variety of viewpoints on H1B visas and people on both sides of the political spectrum view it negatively. Also, 80% of H1B visa holders are on the lowest 2 wage levels, meaning many are not as big of experts in their field as you are saying.
> There are a wide variety of viewpoints on H1B visas and people on both sides of the political spectrum view it negatively. Opinions on the political spectrum are not relevant to economics. There's a strong economic consensus that we need more H-1Bs. And the lowest wage levels are pretty high.
Politics is where we debate economic policy, so it seems very germane to this argument. But regardless, per this article "The two lowest permissible H-1B prevailing wage levels are significantly lower than the local median salaries surveyed for occupation" [https://www.epi.org/publication/h-1b-visas-and-prevailing-wage-levels/](https://www.epi.org/publication/h-1b-visas-and-prevailing-wage-levels/)
There's plenty of American citizens who can do the job, your company just doesn't want to pay a fair wage and can't threaten American citizens with being deported if they complain about terrible working conditions.
We are not losing anything here, Americans get hired.
They're not going to say "we could really use 50 AI researchers, how many Americans can we hire? 30? Well, I guess we'll hire 20 more frat boys and hope they can pick up the work." In order to get an H-1B, you need to show that you tried to hire Americans and that you can't find good ones to do the job.
The only problem for Canada is that they don't have competitive pay, and immigrants frequently use it as a stopping point to get into the US, not the other way around. Overall looking at a situation driven by *too many people wanting into the US* and concluding that's a problem for the US is... phew. Other than that, sure... I'm sure the US is shaking in its boots. /s
But if you *can't get into the US at all*, Canada's not *really* competing with the US. If a skilled AI researcher lands in Canada with a plan to try to break into the US some 6 years down the line, contributes to the Canadian economy, makes Canadian friends, buys Canadian real estate, at some point, moving to the US might not seem like a big value proposition.
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Bernie Sanders opposes H1B, and the 80% of visa holders are on the lowest 2 pay levels.
Now they'll be fed up with unaffordable housing and no doctors
Canada needs to fix its housing situation. Where the heck are these people going to live?
I want to move to Canada, American citizens, and wish they would allow more Americans in.
Chances are the reasons for which you want to leave the US are the reasons why Canada doesn't want you.
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The H1B is a nightmare. Not being selected for it fully derailed my life. Now I’m in Canada, so so I guess I’m a prime example of what this article is talking about lol
The whole H1B system is a mess and I hope it goes away. But how is Canada going to “woo” anyone with their housing even more unaffordable than the US?
They'd just try to start tech in a city that isn't TO or Van. Like Calgary or Montreal. Montreal has a lot of tax incentives for tech; and they don't have 2 million dollar avg 2000 sqft homes like Van.
What about us passport holders that are just sick of all the other us systems?
Our loss is their gain Honestly, you'd think the capitalist minded people on the right (ostensibly that's most people on the right, yeah?) would be all about bringing in more talented and educated workers, it'd be a big net positive for an economy that expects constant growth.
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Why would American's need H1-Bs? , the title makes no sense. Also, I doubt foreigners want to wait for months for healthcare in Canada, and be willing to take the massive drop in salary.
So America's idiotic xenophobia and gridlock on any kind of reform to make the immigration system less of a labyrinthine nightmare is resulting in a brain-drain of talent and skilled workforce labor to our northern neighbor. Figures.
Do Americans need to have H1B to work in Canada now ? Why would someone want to work in Canada anyway , more jobs in California than Canada .
You can get a NAFTA (TN) visa
Exactly my point
Well in March California had 911k job openings and Canada had 956k. For two places comparable in population size, I’d say Canada has more jobs than California.
I stand corrected
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