Hacker News Reader

Comment by emk133 | Hacker News Reader

Peter - are you seeing a shift or a trend where individuals with immigration need are possibly heading to other countries (e.g Canada) given the toughening stance on immigration here in USA recently?

Also what would be your 2 cents for citizens from oversubscribed countries such as China/India who practically have to wait for ever now to get work based GC? Head over to Canada?

View on HN

Absolutely. A lot of our corporate clients are deciding to set up shop elsewhere, such as Canada, and a lot of our individual clients from China and India are moving elsewhere as well, such as Canada - or pursuing an EB1A green card, although the standard is tough and getting tougher.

I moved from SF to Toronto last year with a Canadian PR. Absolutely love Toronto and miss Cali. My motivation was to get out of a work visa and explore some startup ideas. I have a blog https://movnorth.com to help others who are considering Canada. From traffic to the site and the forums I can tell that a lots of people are going this route.

Unfortunately with the new provincial government (elected to a majority with a strong 37% of the vote...) Ontario is starting to look a lot more like the US in its attitude toward immigrants, among other things. I would suggest Vancouver instead, if not for the astronomical cost of living (although I guess not compared to San Francisco).

Edit: Fortunately the provincial government doesn't really have any say over immigration, but I am disappointed to see these attitudes spreading.

You're making a very broad assumption and making a very specific suggestion based on it. Even though you corrected yourself later saying that immigration is not controlled provincially, this type of thinking is pretty backwards.

I think it's caused by people reading too much into sensationalist news articles and headlines which exaggerate or hyper-focus on useless details to get attention and views. While in reality, nothing has really changed (or will likely change) that would cause someone to move to another city.

It reminds me of the people who talked about moving to Canada after the last American election. I'm curious to know if the people that moved were actually impacted directly by the election or whether they were just trying to make a political statement.

I'm not suggesting that someone would leave Toronto to move to Vancouver because of the change in government. Just that if you were thinking about moving to Canada and evaluating possible destinations, the more immigrant-friendly attitude in BC compared to Ontario might be considered. Mostly I'm just lamenting the negative attitude in general though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com