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Comment by mustpax | Hacker News Reader

As a foreigner who has been successfully ousted from the U. S. by the H1-B quota, let me tell you that life is better in Canada.

The permanent residence program for skilled labor in Canada is infinitely less cumbersome and convoluted than the green card track in the U.S. More importantly, it only takes about a year or so, regardless of your nationality (hi Indians).

As for taxes, I was paying taxes in California, so the difference in total taxes is really not that much. Plus you get free healthcare. The healthcare benefits I get from my employer on top of government healthcare really goes above and beyond what I've seen in the U.S.

So, yeah folks, please do as I did, vote with your feet. No one deserves to have their hard work viewed as parasitic.

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Just to be clear, Canadian Health Care is not "free". It is publicly-funded and privately-delivered through a single-payer insurance system. For example, my MSP payments are $250 or so for each quarter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Health_Act

I think we should be extra clear about how the Canadian system actually works especially given the debate currently in the US.

Good point, but the point still stands: "free" in this case doesn't mean not paying for it, but rather that it's a flat-fee service with no exhaustible upper bound on usage (e.g. if you get hospitalized 5 times in a year the insurance company won't bail).

In the Canadian system there is no chance that the insurance company will weasel out of a payment using a litany of the common excuses that are used in the USA. If you are covered, you are covered, and that's peace of mind you can't even buy with money in America.

Thanks for the clarification. I did not mean to disregard the considerable costs of providing universal healthcare.

For what it's worth, given my tax bracket and that I'm in my twenties, financially speaking, I am most likely a net win for the system.

How do you find the salary difference? I'm a Canadian currently in the USA because American companies were offering me nearly double what any Canadian company was willing to offer...

I'd be interested to know if this trend only applies to new grads, or if Canadians simply earn consistently and significantly less than Americans when it comes to engineering.

I do make less (around 10% less) in Canada than I did in the states. But then I pay almost half of what I paid for rent in San Francisco. Food was better and cheaper in San Francisco, but that's not my biggest expense. So I end up saving more overall.

I'm working for the same company that I was working for in the U.S. So that might explain why my income is pretty consistent.

That is still a problem, especially in BC. Everybody wants to live in Vancouver, so they can pay peanuts

'Tis true. Nobody in Vancouver would break $60K, and most were leaning towards lower $50's.

Meanwhile I'm working for a little over $100K just a few hours south in Seattle.

Where are people needed the most in Canada?

I am Canadian. I find the culture towards imigrants is much better than what I see on the news in the USA. We welcome most imigrants.

However, there are still lots of problems with the system in Canada - mostly that we only take in university educated people, but we really need tradespeople as well.

There are 2 parallel systems. Permanent Resient takes a few years to process, requires higher education but has very few limits. Then each province has a fast track for needed skills, you must have a job offer and have some specific trade/qualification but it takes < year. IFAIK you can change jobs once you get there.

Just a year? that is awesome.

What about other restrictions? Do you need to be 'tied' to a employer, like in US? Can you start companies? (not possible on H1-B)

The only restrictions are you can't vote in federal elections and can't join the army. To keep PR you have to be resident for 3 out of every 5 years, but after 3 years you can get Canadian citizenship.

You can work for anyone or no-one, start your own business or continue working for a foreign company.

You are subject to intensive interogation by Canadian immigration every time you enter the country. You will be grilled for several seconds on topics such as 'how are you?' and 'did you have a good flight?' - other than that it's the same as entering America.

LOL. That's awesome :D

As an immigrant / entrepreneur trying every thing I can to legally work for my startup full time in the US, I'll seriously consider Canada if I fail.

But remember you will be subject to their socialist universal free healthcare system.

Wonderful! :)

I still don't get why the word "socialist" has such a negative connotation in the USA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

The United States still suffers from the legacy of the witch hunts of the 1940s and 50s.

Because Americans react to some words in a Pavlovian manner. It's a way of turning their independent thinking capabilities off.

For instance, white collar criminals who engage in predatory activities always use the words "free market" as a shield. If you keep attacking them of wrongdoing, you are automatically labeled "anti-American", "socialist", "communist", "liberal" or whatever. What is more interesting is to see people who are exploited and raped on a daily basis by the so-called "free market" to defend it so passionately as though they benefitted from it. Reminds me of a homeless bum I once saw in NYC... some girls wearing Obama stickers walked by and the dude started shouting "he's a fucking commie!!!!" I didn't know whether to laugh or weep. BTW, the dude was black and a Vietnam veteran.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for free market, but we don't have one in the U.S. and we never had one. The country is run by the cartels, for the cartels. Whoever points a finger is bashed, sometimes even invited to move to France. It's quite hilarious, really... and also sad.

I think he was being sarcastic. At least, I hope so. I hope the educated on Hacker News know that socialism is actually an established word with an established definition (equivalent to Communism) from Karl Marx..

I am wondering:

Did you just create an account to leave a stupid comment like that?

that is frickin awesome :-)

I guess USA's loss is Canada's gain. Something needs to be done here in US, at the minimum they should at least streamline the process. And get rid of this 'chaining' people to their employers. Once they are in the country, they should be allowed to work for anyone.

It is easy in the UK too, their HSMP program is fast, and you can work for anyone.

Check out the Canadian Gov't website on skilled employment: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/index.asp

You don't have to be in Canada, or work for a Canadian company, to apply. There are multiple criteria for determining who is eligible, if you have an employer sponsor it makes it easier to qualify. But if you have decent amount of personal savings, a Bachelors degree, a couple years of experience you can qualify without one.

The temporary work permit, the Canadian equivalent of the H1-B, is more restrictive. You are tied to your employer, probably can't start your own company. But this is completely orthogonal to your permanent residence application. You can do your thing, work outside Canada until your permanent residence is granted, then fly over and start up.

I do not like to quench the excitement about Canadian immigration opportunities for skilled workers, but you guys really need to check the recent "improvements" in that process. Namely, the list of skilled workers has been recently (Feb, 2008) reduced to a couple dozens professions (http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/apply-who-ins...). In particular, you really need to be a Cook or a Woodcutter with one year experience, to qualify now. Just my $0.02.

Thanks for digging that up.

But being someone who recently went through this process, let me clarify some things to the best of my ability (in other words IANAL). This list of occupations only matters if you are applying for residency without securing employment in Canada beforehand. Not altogether unusual, but remember this is a prerequisite to H1-B too.

There is (was?) a program in Alberta to fast track PR for any H1B holder - so if any highly skilled foreigners in the US just made it to the border they were welcome. Of course you end up working in Alberta !

Canada is far more restrictive about non-skilled immigration than the U.S. It's the political decision to turn America half-hispanic by the next century -- despite what anybody here actually wants -- that has killed enthusiasm for skilled immigration in America.

If we want more and better skilled immigrants, we need more xenophobes, not less. Limit unskilled immigration, and Americans will be happy about skilled immigration.

> It's the political decision to turn America half-hispanic by the next century

Part of the reason I dislike seeing political articles here is that they invariably draw out some seriously uninformed, inane, hand-waving types of comments that would be completely unacceptable when attached to technical articles.

Do you have any evidence that there has been a "political decision to turn America half hispanic"? Not 60%? Not 40%? Who took it - the Obama Death Panels?

> If we want more and better skilled immigrants, we need more xenophobes, not less.

"More xenophobes" would not like the "brown people" from India, "slanty eyed" eastern Asians, or most Europeans either for that matter (they're probably communists), even if they're qualified. After all, they are xenophobes, right?

Shouldn't there be a decent English word for hating foreigners instead of having to use some damn greek term!

I agree the political articles bring out some screwy ideas. Is your "solution" that you want a situation where you won't to experience what other peopl, even other hackers, think about these issues.

I mean, if this is a community, then we should respectfully debunk racist ideas rather than just shutting them. Otherwise, the same discussion happens in more screwy venue.

(Agreed, there should be limit to how much of this discussion happens here BUT the limit should not be zero).

respectfully debunk racist ideas

The problem, of course, is that not every idea can be debunked, because some of them are true. And when you start with the conviction that you're bound to "debunk" everything, and can't, it gets ugly. Here's a racist comment:

  Africans are, on average, less intelligent than Japanese.

Now, you're just not going to want to get into that argument, because it's unwinnable. The only way to win it is to avoid it, or to start throwing imprecations around. This is a serious dilemma for the anti-racist side of the argument, because they are believers in equality--and when you believe in something that doesn't exist, it's religion.

hmm... I could understand how you could defend something like Africans are, on average, less educated than Japanese or something like Africans have less opportunity from their environment to educate themselves and thus have less knowledge and intelligence (but then which type of intelligence?) than Japanese...

But defending your original quote, you would have to prove me that african kids raised in the same conditions as japanese kids are less intelligent than the japanese kids... And I don't believe there is any studies proving this...

In our world there is no equality of circumstances and we are pretty much a product of our environment so how could the produce of wildly varying environment be equal? So I don't think you can single out a 'race' as being more or less intelligent, you have to consider the political environment, the culture, the natural environment... and so on

Well. It's pretty clear that your ignorance is fundamental. I can't possibly explain the world to you in a comment here. I recommend starting with this,

http://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/06...

Pinker is a liberal but he's also a scientist, and so it's a good intro into reality.

Yes, that is a racist idea

Yes, I would not want to get into that argument.

No, that doesn't prove you should never address ideas with racist overtones...

Thank you...

> I agree the political articles bring out some screwy ideas. Is your "solution" that you want a situation where you won't to experience what other peopl, even other hackers, think about these issues.

Yes, that's my solution. There are way too many issues that even reasonable people will simply agree to disagree on. And these discussions often tend to attract plenty of people who aren't reasonable.

...they invariably draw out some seriously uninformed, inane, hand-waving types of comments that would be completely unacceptable when attached to technical articles...

And I dislike seeing these articles because they brings out the kooks who believe that it's more important to think happy thoughts than look at the numbers.

The U.S. Census estimates are always the first place to go: http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/index.html

You'll find the 1990 projections for 2100 there, which suggest a 1/3rd Hispanic population. The 2004 revisions only published projections for 2050, but I saw information at the time that suggested similar revisions to the 2100 projections would lead to a U.S. that is about 1/2 Hispanic by 2100.

Who took the decision to do this to America? Well, the most important piece of legislation in this regard was the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. So I blame Ted Kennedy :).

I won't cheapen the debate by replying to your last paragraph.

And I'd appreciate an apology for the suggestion that I was the one uniformed about population projections here.

> I dislike seeing these arguments because it brings out the kooks who believe that it's more important to think happy thoughts than look at the numbers.

What is "unhappy" about Hispanics? Nothing, in my book. The US managed to absorb plenty of poor immigrants from places like Ireland and Italy and you know what? We've done just fine.

If you look that piece of legislation up, it was about liberalizing immigration quotas, not a "political decision to turn American half Hispanic". That's conspiracy talk.

Also, projections include births, deaths and migrations, and if you look at the methodology document, Hispanic birth rates are far higher than the other categories (Ted Kennedy connection: he's a Catholic, they're mostly Catholics. Coincidence, or all part of the master plan?). Enough to account for those numbers without immigration? Not sure. Still, I'm not worried about it. People blend in, in the US, if they want to go anywhere. It has happened before, and it will happen with immigrants now.

http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/methodstate...

> I won't cheapen the debate by replying to your last paragraph.

You brought up xenophobes, who are pretty much by definition people who dislike foreigners or people who are 'different'. Xenophobia isn't "people who dislike foreigners except for the ones in PhD engineering and science programs".

What's wrong with us turning half-Hispanic? Hell, I'm a white male -- we've had our... thousand or so years; let someone else have their day. I'd be far more worried about the education level of the future generations than the racial make-up.

we've had our... thousand or so years; let someone else have their day.

I'm sure you formulated that opinion of an independent mind, and you're certainly entitled to it, but...can you imagine that it is not your place (or anybody's place) to advocate the ethnic cleansing of any group, even your own?

Nothing in his post came anywhere close to talking about 'ethnic cleansing'. He was only talking about letting some other group be the majority, and letting caucasians become a minority in the country.

Of course, that projection is for 90+ years from now, so if it happens at all, it won't be happening to most of us.

Nothing in his post came anywhere close to talking about 'ethnic cleansing'.

Umm, except the part that involved replacing one ethnicity with another, viz, ethnic cleansing.

I don't know where you're getting your numbers from, but the census bureau projects the total population to be 405m in 2040 http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/files/natio...

And the nhw population to be half that at the time,

http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/files/natio...

...so, I'd say 30 years, but it's probably less than that because illegals generally avoid census workers, and a lot of people are counted as "white" when they and no one else typically do in practice.

Anyway, the actual replacement of one group with another is not an overnight thing. Rather, neighborhoods, then cities, then regions, then states, one by one by one are overrun. Only then, when reversal is impossible is the actual country gone.

What the hell are you talking about? Did I just step into some kind of apartheid racist agenda? "Only then, when reversal is impossible is the actual country gone." Who says the country is gone? First, I generally don't like to use terms like "overrun" when I speak about humans from different ethnicities moving into various geographical regions because I don't think of it as an "invasion." Secondly, the United States is not defined by its whiteness. Being white is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition to being an American. As I said in my parent post, I see no problem with the growing number of Hispanics in the population. I feel that it doesn't matter which ethnic group has a plurality or majority in the United States and it certainly doesn't make the country any less the United States.

Ethnic cleansing would, by definition, imply the killing of the group being replaced, rather than one group simply outgrowing the other.

Indeed.

http://www.answers.com/ethnic%20cleansing

I have a feeling that he was just using an inflammatory term in order to preclude rational discussion and win the argument.

Does intelligence have a genetic component though? And how big is that genetic component?

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