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ex H1B here. Yes Trump is right.(though I do not like him personally, he is right in this matter) Most of the corporate America is exploiting H1B workers. I hav

• garyfirestorm 10y ago
  That is amazing! However I would like to point out, H1B is not only for Silicon Valley. There are many automotive companies which require foreign talent in specialized fields. Very smart people with multi-disciplinary knowledge are nowhere to be found in auto sector. Signal Processing and vibrations and programming and control systems understanding etc. is required to deal with things like active noise control which is now a need in auto sector. The Canadian Automotive R&D is not as good as in US. Also, there's no way we can work remotely. So our fates are still determined by 'lottery based skilled visa' allotments.
  • t1o5 10y ago
    "lottery based skilled visa" sums it up. I am not assuming that you are in Detroit. I used to work remotely for an Automotive company in Detroit for their telematics unit. Some colleagues I know commute from Windsor.
    • orcdork 10y ago
      Lottery based skilled visa means that there's many more skilled people on the other side, and less spots for them. Unless you have a way of quantifying extremely small differences in skill (and keeping the process balanced), I don't see how you feel a lottery is unfair.
      • t1o5 10y ago
        Points based system is the right way of quantifying skills & it seems to be working well for Canada. for ex: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/express-entry/grid-crs.asp http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/express-entry/grid-crs.asp
        • kmonsen 10y ago
          Anything else than pure salary can be gamed. We are for better or worse a capitalist society so lets use the one currency we have to determine who is most needed instead of making up new currencies.
      • michaelmrose 10y ago
        Why don't we just allow more of them to become Americans?
        • douche 10y ago
          This. We can happily allow millions of illegal immigrants in to work as seasonal farm labor, or import unskilled refugees from war-torn, ideologically questionable areas, that become a drain on social services, but we throw up barriers for well-educated people who will immediately start contributing, if we'd let them. It's nuts.
          • ConceptJunkie 10y ago
            Hear, hear! I am firmly in the camp of the people who are really ticked off about illegal immigration, but in addition to stopping that, I've always thought that we should be increasing _legal_ immigration as much as possible. I'm so sick of people copping out and trying to have it both ways. Bring in the immigrants who want to work, especially if they have skills. Filter out the gangbangers and the terrorists as much as possible. Win-win. Today we have the worst of both worlds.
  • shas3 10y ago
    Yeah this fixation on Silicon Valley is dumb. The worst affected will really be other industries. Small wonder that Lofgren who is a Bay-Area Representative is the one sponsoring the auction system. Many Si valley jobs for which H1Bs are hired are generalist in nature. And it is for generic programmer jobs that you have potential for wage abuse. But outside Si valley, for much lesser wages, companies rely on highly specialized skills. So specialized that often these are jobs-for-life without much transferability. Think about skills in microbiology, materials science, etc. relevant to specific products in specific companies like P&G, Dow, etc. These employers and employees will be majorly shafted if legislation is made with just Silicon Valley in mind. The whole notion of pay big $$s if the specialized skills are worth so much is wrong because these companies have smaller budgets for personnel than plant.
    • omouse 10y ago
      The fixation on Silicon Valley isn't dumb when wages were deliberately suppressed by Google, Apple, Adobe and others. The big tech companies really do want to keep salaries low and H1Bs can help them with that, along with paying for the really smart people that they can bring in too.
      • michel-slm 10y ago
        Except that Google, Facebook, Cisco would gladly sponsor you for green card - if they're gaming the system they would surely try to string you along until you've used up your H1B renewal before doing that?
        • mcguire 10y ago
          If you start out making much less than other candidates, even after many years of CoL raises you will still be making less. Source: drastically underpaid for my experience because I was an idiot.
          • nostrademons 10y ago
            At one of the big Silicon Valley tech companies? Google at least has a policy that promotions & annual raises normalize to level-defined salary bands, i.e. if you have a higher salary coming in relative to your coworkers of equal skill, you will get smaller raises until your salaries equalize.
  • davidf18 10y ago
    Well, the car companies and other companies need to open up offices where tech workers want to live as some firms have already done. Sorry, but a lot of tech people don't necessarily want to live in Detroit or parts of Michigan. They do want to live in SF, Boston, NYC, DC.
  • chrishacken 10y ago
    I believe the proposed solution to the H1B issue was to simply increase the minimum wage for H1B's to $140k. If a company is bringing over top-talent that is irreplaceable; surely that salary is justified. Otherwise, they probably don't need you as bad as they say they do.
    • mywittyname 10y ago
      Raising wages combats the symptoms (wage depression) but not the cause (lack of mobility). The only way to truly solve the issue is to tie the H1B to the person and let them work freely in the US after a short time.
      • chrishacken 10y ago
        How would that solve the symptoms? And why is that the cause? I think the actual issue is that there aren't enough top-talent individuals in the country already; meaning the real cause is actually our broken education system. Opening the flood gates might solve the issues of select individuals and some companies, but it doesn't solve wage depression.
        • mywittyname 10y ago
          Most people in the industry believe that the best way to increase your income is to change jobs. How often would you change jobs if failing to secure a position resulted in your near-immediate ejection from the country? Probably not often, and that's the situation that many H1B workers are in. The general belief is that H1B workers are underpaid because they have less flexibility in the labor market. While they can move jobs, it's somewhat tedious and requires both companies to work together to make the transition. It's not impossible, but it's certainly not easy. If there were less friction involved with moving jobs, people on H1B could shop around for a better positions without worrying about their residency should things go wrong.
    • garyfirestorm 10y ago
      140k might sound great in silicon valley. its enormous amount of money for a place like detroit. i am sure they will pay some of the people that sort of money to keep them here. but think about all others who will go back to their own countries and create new startups that will compete with the US industry.[1] [1]http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/02/news/india/snapdeal-india-kunal-bahl-h1b-visa/ http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/02/news/india/snapdeal-india-ku...
• geodel 10y ago
  Thanks, Do you know how long it might take to get that approved?
  • t1o5 10y ago
    If you satisfy the points under this grid - http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/express-entry/grid-crs.asp http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/express-entry/grid-crs.asp and your documentations are correct, 6 months is the SLA.
    • jsmthrowaway 10y ago
      For anyone considering this who has an American criminal record, even a misdemeanor (!), understand that it is extraordinarily easy to become permanently barred from Canada if you don't perform the immigration steps correctly. There is an official bribe of up to $1,000 that must be paid before you can even be considered, and unless you are exactly truthful to a fault the Canadians can find cause to permanently and irrevocably bar entry. They have access to American criminal databases and you will be checked, and turned back, at the border for even a day trip. (This bugs me by itself. I didn't harm your sovereign state.) I know of one person who will never in her life see Canada because she got the paperwork about a twenty-year-old misdemeanor wrong, even after the $1,000 appeal to the Minister. Definitely get a lawyer. The fetish for American criminality is one thing about Canadian immigration that I would hope to see reformed. Canada is very welcoming unless you've had a taste of American justice, then they make you work very hard to enter. Caring about criminal records is common, of course; having direct access to neighboring criminal records is not, among most world countries. Given that a number of American states are law-and-order criminal record factories, and given that a criminal record is not necessarily indicative of someone's life (if it were, I'd be selling heroin instead of debugging right now), it seems time for Canadians to revisit this policy. I'm guessing there was a flood of cons to Canada at some point that made them skittish and enshrine a bunch of hoops in legislation. With a lot of Americans now looking for possibilities such as these in the current environment, there is a huge reform opportunity here to make Canada even more welcoming.
      • 10y ago
• bayer_rggb 10y ago
  Did you hire a lawyer to do the paperwork or did you do it yourself ?
  • t1o5 10y ago
    No lawyers needed. Its a simple online system. If you have the skills and you can prove it( IELTS,work experience,your degrees), the system awards you the points. No employers needed, no lawyers needed, you are totally in control of your visa. This is the beauty of this system. There is no place for bad apples like the H1B in this skills based system. You cannot fake it. "May the skilled ones win"
    • mcguire 10y ago
      Out of curiosity, which language test did you take?
      • t1o5 10y ago
        IELTS (Non academic stream)
• pkaye 10y ago
  Interesting that age figures so heavily into this scoring system...
  • RestlessMind 10y ago
    But pretty logical, no? You don't want someone to migrate to your country in his late 50's / early 60's, contribute to your economy for a few token years and then piggyback on your medical welfare system for rest of 15-20 years. Whats the incentive for local citizens to welcome immigrants in that case? (And no, I don't want to consider rare examples of superstars in their 60's. I am just talking about average Joe's).
    • pkaye 10y ago
      Some studies (search Google) have shown the average age of an entrepreneur is around 40. And I'd like to see the backlash the US would get from the world if they implemented many of these criteria.
      • jdmichal 10y ago
        Canada has a separate visa process for entrepreneurs: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/entrepreneurs.asp http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/entrepre... The program being cited is for workers, similar to the US H1B. And others have addressed why age is a sensible factor.
    • michaelmrose 10y ago
      You can't get social security unless you pay in for a sufficient number of years
      • wmil 10y ago
        But that's not the only program. You can get Supplemental Security Income without even being a citizen or ever having paid in. https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/spotlights/spot-non-citizens.htm https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/spotlights/spot-non-citizens.htm Also you can generally get Medicare if you're old and you've paid in for a few years.
• dleslie 10y ago
  As a Canadian, it is my pleasure to welcome you into our community!
  • cwingrav 10y ago
    Darn it Canada! Can you stop being nice for a second while we in the US figure out what we're doing? /s
  • topraman 10y ago
    Seriously Canada... Seriously! Stop being nice.
  • t1o5 10y ago
    I really feel welcomed here. I should have done this earlier, but better late than never.
• swat535 10y ago
  As another Canadian, we need more people like you here! You guys make a significant contribution to our country :)
  • t1o5 10y ago
    Happy to be at a place where my skills are appreciated. More of my friends will soon be ex H1Bs.
• davidf18 10y ago
  Of all of the political candidates, only Trump and Sanders spoke out against H1-B visa abuse used to depress wages. (Former) Presidential Candidate Senator Marco Rubio of Florida wanted to triple the number of H1-B visas to 250,000 from 85,000 and accepted $2 million donation from Disney. Disney of Florida had recently replaced 250 US IT workers with foreigners on H1-B. Trump especially spoke out against this move. Clinton was silent. Clinton accepted $675,000 from Goldman for 3 talks. Wall Street banks like Goldman hire lots of high tech computer programmers and it is in their interest to depress wages as well as those firms in Silicon Valley. Trump was right that Clinton was bought off (she could have donated the $675,000 for charity as President Obama did with his Nobel Peace Prize Award money). Incidentally, HP head and Republican Meg Whitman came out against Trump and she mentioned other reasons, but her true motivation is that HP would have to start paying market wages for all of its high tech workers if Trump won.
  • valuearb 10y ago
    The "depressing wages" point is dumb. These engineers will still be part of the labor pool, they'll just be doing work for our foreign competitors. And HP can still hire them, do you want them to just open up more space in Bangalore, or would you rather those wages go to US based locations? And it's not a zero sum game. One of my H!B hires had unduplicatable skills and created about 20 high paid jobs in our company. Other H1B hires enabled a contracting firm I worked for to get a large contract that kept 7 other people employed.
    • davidf18 10y ago
      Did you read the article? Many tech jobs can't be done effectively in India or overseas with low quality labor for any number of reasons. The 250 American workers for Disney had their jobs replaced in the US, not by overseas workers. > "These engineers will still be part of the labor pool, they'll just be doing work for our foreign competitors" Well, let them work for Samsung instead of Apple then. > "One of my H!B hires had unduplicatable skills and created about 20 high paid jobs in our company." The point of the H1-B visa is precisely for those cases where there are no Americans that can do the job, so your hire follows the law. But then if it such a hard to find job, then the scarcity implies the person should get a higher salary, especially if he/she created "20 high paid jobs for our company."
• pkaler 10y ago
  Canadian by birth. Indian by ethnicity. Vancouverite by choice. Let me know if you have questions about relocating, personal or professional.
  • vikiomega9 10y ago
    So, dumb question, how easy is it to obtain a Canadian work permit/residency but continue working in the Valley?
    • pkaler 10y ago
      Very hard. You need a US work permit to work in the Valley. Most early stage companies are not gonna have a Canadian subsidiary. I do run a consulting company that consults to US companies. That is possible. But at that point, if you consult with startups, you won't be getting options.
• baby 10y ago
  > the long wait for GreenCard (10 years). Can you explain this? I'm currently waiting for a greencard.
  • garyfirestorm 10y ago
    green cards are equally distributed to all countries. 7%? hence the amount of time you will wait is dependent on where you are from. for india/china, i believe its close to 8-9 years. but if you come from a country where no one applies for green card, chances are this process will be done in 6 months.
    • dragonwriter 10y ago
      > green cards are equally distributed to all countries. Well, no, but there is a cap on the per-country share of the total quota in each eligible category.
    • baby 10y ago
      So you're talking about a sponsored greencard by your company? This is weird as this wasn't mentioned to me. There is a fixed step-by-step process to have a greencard and you have to go through all of them.
• mrskeltal 10y ago
  Did you do the immigration paperwork before looking for a job in Canada? What I'd like to know is if its better to have this paperwork sorted out before applying for jobs in Canada.
• whack 10y ago
  > "We were bound to the employer with no hopes of promotion and the long wait for GreenCard (10 years)." I don't doubt that many immigrants harbor this impression, but it is wrong. A H1B visa holder can switch companies at any time, by having that company apply to have the visa transferred to them. 99.9% of the time, this doesn't impact your GreenCard wait at all, because your Priority Date can also be transferred to your new Green Card application. I have a friend who has been on a H1B for 8 years, is currently at his 4th job, negotiated a 30% pay bump every time he switched, and still has the same Green-Card priority date that he had from his first application. The fact that so many H1B workers harbor this misconception, and are afraid to switch jobs, is what gives employers the confidence to abuse their employees. If enough H1B workers start quitting on bad bosses, we'll see some pretty rapid change.
  • Florin_Andrei 10y ago
    Eh, the truth is somewhere in the middle. I say this as someone who actually went through the process. Sure you can switch employers while on an H1B. I did. But that's an extra moving part added to the process. It's extra effort added to both sides, employer and employee. They need to really want to hire you to go through all that. If it's a tiny startup, the amount of work might just be too much (and you wouldn't want to work for a tiny startup anyway, as an H1B worker). Also, if you somehow lose your job as an H1B holder, you only have a limited time interval to get a new job. There's a lot of pressure to just accept any job that comes along, regardless of all other considerations. Also, typecasting is very real. The whole H1B / greencard process really, really puts the pressure on you to stay in the same job description for a long time. It's not set in stone, and there are exceptions, but as a rule you're basically forced into a straightjacket. Basically, if you're caught in this process, there's the freedom & opportunity Big Carrot dangling ahead at the end of many years of wait. Meanwhile, your hands are tied and your actions are to a large extent dictated by a faceless, remote bureaucracy that has the full power to decide your fate. It's extremely frustrating.
• brilliantcode 10y ago
  I'm so pleased to hear this. Please, fellow American citizen hopefuls and potential American citizens tired of Trump, come on over to Vancouver or Toronto, we desperately need you to raise the decade old stagnation of tech worker's salaries. All is not well. You are going to have to deal with a significant salary cut around 40~50% not factoring in exchange rates. You also have to deal with small supply, high rent and cost of living. Prepare to commute for hours packed into the Skytrain like sardines in a can and bus. that is provided you don't get "renovicted" where landlord kicks you out to accommodate their relatives. You also have to deal with the isolation, cliquey and outwardly friendly but internally unfriendly and flaky citizens and sleepy eyed nature of No Fun City. You also have to deal with the fact that this is essentially a socialist country with socialist values which means lot of your taxes are going to people who have nothing to do with you or care for. But hey, our ruling party thinks that's a small price to pay for Living In the Best Place on Earth™
  • acchow 10y ago
    Unless you make an obscene income (a few 100k) or lower your taxes by holding a mortgage, you'll be paying more taxes (which includes Medicaid, Social Security, etc.) in California than in Ontario or BC. The rest of your post sounds about right.
    • brilliantcode 10y ago
      who is paying 100,000 USD / year in Vancouver vs 30,000 USD / year for a junior developer? It's unbelievable that the average entry level's tech worker in Vancouver makes just as much as a barista in Seattle. You can't compete or create a world class unicorn in Vancouver, period.
  • ConceptJunkie 10y ago
    Dude, we already have that. It's called San Francisco.
    • brilliantcode 10y ago
      Do you have 30,000 USD / year average salaries for junior developers there too? I think not.