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Silicon Valley is making plans to move foreign-born workers to Canada

• sjg007 10y ago
  Smart, can US citizens go too?
  • wdcgu 10y ago
    No. There are plenty of unemployed Canadians. Americans will just steal those jobs and bring down wages.
    • thecolorblue 10y ago
      Interesting opinion. Have you thought about moving to a red state in the US? I think you would like it.
      • kaybe 10y ago
        I doubt the grandparent post was serious.
• hedora 10y ago
  Wasn't the previous Canadian prime minister at least as xenophobic as Trump? (e.g., they revoked a bunch of dual citizens' Canadian citizenship) What will prevent Canadians from out-crazying the US in the next major election? (Honest question; Vancouver is a beautiful city, and presumably much less expensive than SF.)
  • battlebot 10y ago
    The whole "this is crazy" bit is a matter of opinion only, you understand that, yes? What tech companies are so upset about is being cut off from their cheap source of exploitable labor. The rest of the huffing and puffing is just a smokescreen to make you forget what they are guilty of.
    • nickthemagicman 10y ago
      Its crazy on a practical level because those tech companies aren't going to lose their cheap source of exploitable Labor..they'll figure a way around it. it's crazy because the country is going to be losing out on so much tax money from these countries Outsourcing and moving their operations overseas or to Canada.
      • throwanem 10y ago
        > those tech companies aren't going to lose their cheap source of exploitable Labor..they'll figure a way around it That's pretty much what we're looking at right here, don't you think?
        • nickthemagicman 10y ago
          It seems unavoidable. Am I wrong?
    • cronjobber 10y ago
      Yes, it's funny how the wage slaves cheer along with their billionaire idols. Mixture of the lottery player's hope of also winning the jackpot, and fear of losing the job they realistically must expect to be chained to instead (at least until they hit 39, that is.)
    • mercurysmessage 10y ago
      Are they actually paying foreign nationals less? As far as I can tell, it's just a talking point about H1B, compared to "expensive" US talent. Google, Apple and the like seem to pay very high wages to all employees.
  • conistonwater 10y ago
    WRT citizenship, if I googled it correctly, C-24 requires a terrorism-related conviction, or having obtained the citizenship by misrepresentation or fraud, in order to strip a dual citizen of their Canadian passport. It doesn't seem to be in the same category of things as the sorts of things Trump's doing. I'd say compared with Tories, the Republicans really are in a class of their own.
    • hedora 10y ago
      Hmm. I know Canadians that have dual US and Canadian citizenship, and they had to jump through all sorts of hoops ~ 6 years ago. They live in the US. Not sure about the details.
    • throwanem 10y ago
      > It doesn't seem to be in the same category of things as the sorts of things Trump's doing. Indeed. While we have similar laws regarding denaturalization, Trump did not make them. But you're probably right about the rest; I doubt a Tory PM would demonstrate the same level of sloppy, slapdash, incompetent jackassery we're seeing from the new occupant of the Oval Office. Tangentially: I get there's a lot of fear going around on the subject of authoritarianism, dictatorship, Nazis, et al. I don't buy it, not least because we had the same with Bush, and the only difference of note in today's rhetoric is that it's as much hotter and faster as the Internet that powers it - remember that Facebook and Twitter weren't a thing back then. (So far we've come!) Trump is no Hitler, though, any more than Bush was. He's not even a Mussolini. He might be some fraction of a Berlusconi, but most of all, at least to judge his performance so far, he's an utter boob, and not the first we've had in the office. I suppose an appeal for moderation in rhetoric, and awareness of history in one's analysis, is foredoomed to mockery and oblivion in this age of hot takes and clickbait. But it might ease the mind a bit to take, where you can, a somewhat longer view.
      • mercurysmessage 10y ago
        I think a problem with this administration is the ties to Bannon and Breitbart. There is a lot of white nationalism (alt-right) going on in those ranks.
  • WestCoastJustin 10y ago
    House price is about on par with San Fran. You can check it out via mls.ca and look around the Vancouver area. There is and has been a massive amount of money coming into the Vancouver housing market driving things a little crazy.
  • cldellow 10y ago
    The previous government was nowhere near the same. Where Trump is openly xenophobic, the Harper Conservatives were more dog whistle stuff, e.g. stripping citizenship from duals who were guilty of terrorist charges and proposing the creation of a hotline to report "barbaric cultural practices". IMO, the unchanging thing about Canadians is we want to be able to look down our noses at Americans. This is a stupid way to govern, but it runs deep in the Canadian psyche. Trump has caused many people here to realize that our self-righteousness is at risk if we permit such a candidate to run, let alone win, here. Consequently, the more moderate candidates in the ongoing Conservative leadership race are reaping windfalls from every mean-spirited or xenophobic thing that Trump does. After the shooting at a mosque in Quebec, Michael Chong (a front-runner in the leadership race) denounced demagogues like Trump and Leitch (she of "barbaric cultural practices" fame, also a leadership candidate)--and it was well-received by conservatives and liberals alike. And, for additional context, the last time my hometown elected a non-conservative was 49 years ago, so if they're rejecting such leaders, I'm reasonably confident the broader country will, too.
  • serge2k 10y ago
    > Wasn't the previous Canadian prime minister at least as xenophobic as Trump? God no. They passed a (bullshit) law saying that they could revoke the Canadian citizenship of someone under specific circumstances. You had to be a dual citizen (or eligible?) and commit one of a few crimes. - obtaining citizenship by fraud (this I think is entirely reasonable) - committing an act of terrorism - treason - taking up arms against Canada The liberals repealed some of this already (IIRC everything but the portions about fraudulently obtaining citizenship). > What will prevent Canadians from out-crazying the US in the next major election? We have a sane electoral system and just generally aren't as crazy.
    • trapperkeeper79 10y ago
      A correction to what you said: Bill C-6 (which undoes the damage done by the conservatives) has been stuck in the senate for many months. I followed it closely, and it was a bit disheartening. Checkout the forums of the website canadavisa.com to see people's frustrations. I'm a Canadian and I am very worried about the future of our country. Due to various factors, new laws affecting large swathes of the population can get effected very quickly. What starts off as reasonable laws can get co-opted into something very crazy (any student of history should know this well). I echo the concern made by a few others that we are one election away from craziness. Not sure how things are going to go at this point. As a visible minority, I am scared.
• samfisher83 10y ago
  Will they pay them us salaries?
  • general_ai 10y ago
    LOL, no. Don't be naive.
    • sctb 10y ago
      Please comment civilly and substantively on HN or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• api_or_ipa 10y ago
  I'll say this everytime Vancouver comes up in HN. It's a stunning city, full of modern amenities (including a public transit system that's actually awesome and very well used) and incredible access to nature. None of this is remotely enticing to young engineers when they make 2x-3x as much in SF and only pay ~30-50% more for housing. Until wages rise in Vancouver, there will be much fanfare about tech companies moving north, but very little actual movement.
  • mc32 10y ago
    Why doesn't silicon valley throw Mexico a bone? I'm sure Mexico would be up to taking advantage of the new congress's policies as a means to irk Trump. Why not contribute to the economic growth of the underachieving neighbor rather than the overachiever? People talk about sympathizing illegal immigrants from Mexico, but when they have a real opportunity to help develop the place, they kind of forget about them altogether, as if it's just an opinion to have.
    • avatar345 10y ago
      I have no insight into the decision process used by these companies, however there are several issues that would be less appealing to workers. I can only imagine that retaining talent and productivity is their number one concern. The most obvious is the language barrier. Many of these immigrant workers have invested a large amount of their time throughout their lives to learn English, and move their families to an English speaking country. It's a disruption to move, but at least the transition process can eased if the country speaks English. The primary goal of these companies is to profit. I get the sense that many of the companies doing this are smaller venture backed companies that don't have enormous resources to spare. If they go under, then they won't be helping anyone. That said, Google has offices in Mexico. I say this as an American born Latino who can speak Spanish.
    • shostack 10y ago
      Many people don't want to live somewhere where the cartels rule and disappearings ending in brutal murder are a thing.
• supercanuck 10y ago
  Canada, where you make less and pay more
  • 3pt14159 10y ago
    You don't pay more in Toronto. You don't even pay more in tax let alone healthcare and housing. Vancouver is really the only place it could reasonably be argued that you pay more while earning less, and it's one of the warmest areas in Canada, with awesome giant mountains, and a beautiful coastline. Live in Halifax[1], earn $80k a year as a decent, but unremarkable, software developer and buy a house downtown or on the water for $250k. Don't worry about your girlfriend or brother asking for help to pay their $20k medical bill. Don't worry about getting thrown in prison for simple cannabis possession or other small crimes. Don't worry about getting shot, while still being able to buy guns if you're responsible. [1] Or Ottawa, or Montreal, or Quebec City, or Kingston, or Waterloo. I choose Toronto because it's more fun, but even here my rent right downtown for my own place is only $1525.
    • kogepathic 10y ago
      > Live in Halifax Yeah but that Atlantic Canada winter. Brrrh. Nope! > Or Ottawa, or Montreal, or Quebec City, or Kingston, or Waterloo These all experience winter. Although skiing does make up for some of that, and in Ottawa you've got the Rideau canal.
      • infinite8s 10y ago
        Yeah, Ottawa is great. It's so cold for so long that the Rideau canal freezes and hundreds of people can skate on it at a time (in fact there's a whole festival that occurs on the frozen canal!)
  • gerbilly 10y ago
    A while back I worked in both Connecticut and in Toronto. Same salary in both places. (Salary was adjusted for exchange rate.) I paid more tax in CT than in Canada on that income.
• serge2k 10y ago
  I'm so sick of the "moving to Canada" talk. You get to come if we say so, not because it's your backup plan. I like living where I am now, and I don't want to leave to go back to Canada and earn drastically less with the same (optimistically) expenses. While working on less interesting stuff.
  • bostand 10y ago
    The idea is that some VC money follows them to Canada, which has always been what you guys lacked in comparison to SV. So this will be good for native (??) Canadians too.
    • throwanem 10y ago
      Will it? I gather not all are fond of what such money has done for San Francisco and the Bay Area in general.
      • oh_teh_meows 10y ago
        Is this about the rising cost of housing? My understanding is that it has more to do with nimbyism and proposition 13 than just engineering wages pricing out locals. That said, I don't know about the situation in Canada, so maybe someone can shed some light.
  • eloisant 10y ago
    Let's be honest, Canada (like any other country in the world) is always happy when a wealthy company comes to invest and open an office, especially if it's to recruit qualified workers. The equation is pretty simple: 1. It will bring jobs to Canadians (the offices won't be made only of expats, for many reasons) 2. Employees will spend their salary in Canada, and pay taxes in Canada 3. Knowledge: interns/employees go work to these companies then may move to Canadians companies or create their own with the knowledge they acquired Basically it's a big win for the receiving country. Just ask Ireland how it worked for them.
    • 10y ago
• rubyfan 10y ago
  This is a reality of technology and remote work. There is no need for most tech workers to have any geographic proximity to an office. I suspect the H1B situation will cause many that currently use the program for low cost staff augment to just move their whole IT operation to managed services. This yields a loss of American jobs since he majority of work is done off shore. I believe this is happening naturally right now in some companies but a $130k per unit cost might drive that much faster.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• BjoernKW 10y ago
  What I probably will never get is why - of all places - Silicon Valley is so obsessed with exclusively hiring locally. You'd think that companies that are so eager to disrupt whole industries would be more susceptive to adapting more modern and efficient ways of organising work.
  • pc86 10y ago
    I think there are a few possible reasons (I don't pretend to know which of these it is, or if it's one I haven't thought of). 1. Remote workers are actually not more productive than co-located workers. (I don't think this is it personally) 2. Investors and/or founders have some financial and/or non-financial incentive to keep everyone in SV. Forcing everyone to be there drives up the demand for VC money as everything is more expensive, and when a CTO leaves to do his own thing, he's already there but probably can't afford to bootstrap, so he turns to VCs. If you had the same CTO working in Omaha for 90% of the pay, he'd be able to bootstrap whatever he wanted and the original company wouldn't have needed as much (or any) VC money in the first place. I'd love to set up VC meetings then say a few days prior that I'm only interested in 100% remote team and see how many of them cancel.
  • Inthenameofmine 10y ago
    It's mostly because of the VC Ponzi scheme. US investors invest in US incorporated companies because it is easier to sell them and to get other later stage institutional investors interested. There's two ways how companies can quickly exit nowadays: 1. Acquihire - and the companies buying normally want colocated teams. Acquihires are predominantly happening because the 10x-ers can leverage their capacities by incorporating and effectively bringing forward their entire future earnings to the present through an acquisition. The companies like it because the can lock-in 10x-ers for 4-10 years, which usually only stay for 6-24 months in one company and jump ship very easily, taking company knowledge with them. They generally have to be incorporated and operating in the US as it is difficult to enforce such contracts internationally. This is also the fastest way for seed investors to get big multiples back without having to wade through all the subsequent rounds. As a seed investor you also don't need to pick a winning product or biz model, rather just a very smart team. The best of these brain-investors have contacts in all the big corps to advertize their investments to them well ahead of time. 2. IP is most often useless without the people and knowhow who can use and implement it. That generally means the people who developed it. Most loss of IP value doesn't come from simply Chinese copying, or even patent wars, rather the people developing and using the IP getting hired away to the competition. By having them all in the US or even State such as California, and keeping them on a 4-10 year contract, you firewall that IP from the competition. Combine the above two with the much larger and more liquid unified financial market of the US, and you can bid your equity up due to demand pressure. The same company, with the same tech, and same users, and same development team, can be 5-20x less valuable in terms of equity if located in the EU. This is also why there are so few large exits in Europe as compared to the US.
• arikrak 10y ago
  Right if they make H1B1 more restrictive, companies can just expand their hiring overseas. Offshoring could also accelerate as technology improves so being in the same office matters even less.