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Canada has many issues. First and foremost, their entire economy is basically 3 mineral extraction industries stacked on top of each other in a trench coat. T

by petcat 5mo ago

Canada has many issues. First and foremost, their entire economy is basically 3 mineral extraction industries stacked on top of each other in a trench coat. They are also (unfortunate?) to share a border with USA and be party to NAFTA. This makes it trivial for educated, professional Canadians to work in the US on a TN visa indefinitely. We know that the doctor and nurse brain-drain from Canada to the US has been ongoing for decades. But it's actually every industry since US firms pay 2-3x more than equivalent Canadian firms. The reality is that Canadians get very good, tax-payer subsidized educations and then immediately go to the US to work for 10+ years and only return later when they need to start drawing on the Canadian social services for things like healthcare and family care. And Canada itself got none of the benefits of that workforce in between. I saw a figure recently that the US issued an all-time-high 800,000 TN admissions to Canadians in 2016. And then in 2023 it surged to nearly 1.3 million.

turtlesdown11 5mo ago
> I saw a figure recently that the US issued an all-time-high 800,000 TN visas to Canadians in 2016. And then in 2023 it surged to nearly 1.3 million. This citation is an order of magnitude off. The US doesn't really track/release visa numbers well, what you're citing might be the number of individual entries using a TN visa - visaholders go back and forth, it's not the total number of visa holders. DHS estimates 130k Canadian visaholders in country in 2024. https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/nonimmigrant/population-estimates/fy24-nonimmigrant-pop-est https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/nonimmigrant/populat... Canada has 22m workers, so 130k working in the States is nothing like what you're claiming. >their entire economy Resource extraction is about ~10% of GDP, compared to 3-5% in the US and 1-2% in mainland Europe. Scandanvian countries have comparable resource extraction % of GDP. It's hardly the entire economy. It's also diversified resource extraction, it's not dependent on oil, etc. Your claim is overblown.
llm_nerd 5mo ago
[flagged]
- petcat 5mo ago
  You can look here [0] for "North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) professional workers (TN)" [0] https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/yearbook/2023/table25 https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/yearbook/2023/table2...
  - llm_nerd 5mo ago
    Do you know what an admission is? A Windsor nurse working in Detroit would count as 300+ admissions over a year. That does not remotely show what you think it does.
    - petcat 5mo ago
      Ah, okay. So the problem is not that bad. It's way overblown! Meanwhile, the US continues to siphon off every Waterloo and U Toronto STEM grad to the US and American companies.
      - llm_nerd 5mo ago
        >So the problem is not that bad. It's way overblown! You were a magnitude off. And after your stealth edit to be admissions, you still ascribe it all to Canada. Did you know that 56% of TN visa holders are Mexican? Something like 0.2% of Canada's working-age population holds a TN visa. It's actually kind of hilarious to compare this to your ridiculous take on this.
- lambdasquirrel 5mo ago
  I used to have aspirations to move to Canada and I know folks who have tried to hire SREs in Toronto. While that post may sound hyperbolic, it is for all intents and purposes accurate. You can’t build an SRE team in Toronto because the talent pool is too shallow. It really is that bad. The story repeats over and over. The degree to which the US captured the Western countries through its dollar system is actually quite astounding and should terrify people.
  - 5mo ago
kashunstva 5mo ago
> The reality is that Canadians get very good, tax-payer subsidized educations and then immediately go to the US to work for 10+ years and only return later when they need to start drawing on the Canadian social services for things like healthcare and family care. You write this declaratively as if it describes a typical or representative case. In the 11 years I’ve lived in Canada, this isn’t representative of what I see. The direction of migration of medical doctors likewise shows signs of reversal. I’m a physician and my wife is a surgeon. We left the U.S. over a decade ago and are constantly receiving inquiries from US physicians about immigration.
- petcat 5mo ago
  > We left the U.S. over a decade ago I'm assuming you were educated in Canada, and then you worked in the US (but now you don't)?
- cmrdporcupine 5mo ago
  Thank you for your contributions.
lbrito 5mo ago
>We know that the doctor and nurse brain-drain from Canada to the US has been ongoing for decades. Its actually the opposite: it had been going on for some time, but has reversed for decades, and in recent years Canada has had _increasing gains_ of medical professionals from the US. >The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) reports annually on the number of physicians moving abroad and returning to active practice in Canada (CIHI 1996–2005). In the early to mid-1990s, net losses averaged 400 per year. More recently, the number of physicians leaving Canada has decreased significantly, resulting in net gains of between 30 to 60 per year. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2645159/#:~:text=The%20Canadian%20Institute%20for%20Health,losses%20averaged%20400%20per%20year. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2645159/#:~:text=Th...
dboreham 5mo ago
Canada also supplies the US with most of its comedians.

by petcat 5mo ago

turtlesdown11 5mo ago

> I saw a figure recently that the US issued an all-time-high 800,000 TN visas to Canadians in 2016. And then in 2023 it surged to nearly 1.3 million. This citation is an order of magnitude off. The US doesn't really track/release visa numbers well, what you're citing might be the number of individual entries using a TN visa - visaholders go back and forth, it's not the total number of visa holders. DHS estimates 130k Canadian visaholders in country in 2024. https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/nonimmigrant/population-estimates/fy24-nonimmigrant-pop-est https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/nonimmigrant/populat... Canada has 22m workers, so 130k working in the States is nothing like what you're claiming. >their entire economy Resource extraction is about ~10% of GDP, compared to 3-5% in the US and 1-2% in mainland Europe. Scandanvian countries have comparable resource extraction % of GDP. It's hardly the entire economy. It's also diversified resource extraction, it's not dependent on oil, etc. Your claim is overblown.

llm_nerd 5mo ago

[flagged]

petcat 5mo ago
You can look here [0] for "North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) professional workers (TN)" [0] https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/yearbook/2023/table25 https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/yearbook/2023/table2...
- llm_nerd 5mo ago
  Do you know what an admission is? A Windsor nurse working in Detroit would count as 300+ admissions over a year. That does not remotely show what you think it does.
  - petcat 5mo ago
    Ah, okay. So the problem is not that bad. It's way overblown! Meanwhile, the US continues to siphon off every Waterloo and U Toronto STEM grad to the US and American companies.
    - llm_nerd 5mo ago
      >So the problem is not that bad. It's way overblown! You were a magnitude off. And after your stealth edit to be admissions, you still ascribe it all to Canada. Did you know that 56% of TN visa holders are Mexican? Something like 0.2% of Canada's working-age population holds a TN visa. It's actually kind of hilarious to compare this to your ridiculous take on this.
lambdasquirrel 5mo ago
I used to have aspirations to move to Canada and I know folks who have tried to hire SREs in Toronto. While that post may sound hyperbolic, it is for all intents and purposes accurate. You can’t build an SRE team in Toronto because the talent pool is too shallow. It really is that bad. The story repeats over and over. The degree to which the US captured the Western countries through its dollar system is actually quite astounding and should terrify people.
- 5mo ago

kashunstva 5mo ago

> The reality is that Canadians get very good, tax-payer subsidized educations and then immediately go to the US to work for 10+ years and only return later when they need to start drawing on the Canadian social services for things like healthcare and family care. You write this declaratively as if it describes a typical or representative case. In the 11 years I’ve lived in Canada, this isn’t representative of what I see. The direction of migration of medical doctors likewise shows signs of reversal. I’m a physician and my wife is a surgeon. We left the U.S. over a decade ago and are constantly receiving inquiries from US physicians about immigration.

petcat 5mo ago
> We left the U.S. over a decade ago I'm assuming you were educated in Canada, and then you worked in the US (but now you don't)?
cmrdporcupine 5mo ago
Thank you for your contributions.

lbrito 5mo ago

>We know that the doctor and nurse brain-drain from Canada to the US has been ongoing for decades. Its actually the opposite: it had been going on for some time, but has reversed for decades, and in recent years Canada has had _increasing gains_ of medical professionals from the US. >The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) reports annually on the number of physicians moving abroad and returning to active practice in Canada (CIHI 1996–2005). In the early to mid-1990s, net losses averaged 400 per year. More recently, the number of physicians leaving Canada has decreased significantly, resulting in net gains of between 30 to 60 per year. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2645159/#:~:text=The%20Canadian%20Institute%20for%20Health,losses%20averaged%20400%20per%20year. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2645159/#:~:text=Th...

dboreham 5mo ago

Canada also supplies the US with most of its comedians.