This article reminds me why I cancelled my Economist subscription years ago. But gotta love the obligatory shout out to Richard Florida that pops up whenever the media covers the tech sector in Canada!
Question: If there will supposedly be 200,000 tech vacancies in Canada by 2020, why are tech salaries in Canada so low compared to the US?
From my understanding, jobs in Canada are scarce, at least for new immigrants, it seems most of them can only start off of menial jobs.
Since Canada is relatively easy to immigrate to, newcomers have to stay within the country to compete for scarce and low pay jobs, while citizens of Canada can pursue high salaries abroad.
I work as a programmer in Canada, get descent pay, can afford to buy a house and take my family to vacation. Yup, it's far from money I got at Bay Area, but I can afford more, and live in neighbourhood where I don't have to lock doors or really worry about being mugged, which happened in Cali several times.
What action do you believe the Canadian government should take in order to reform telecoms? There could be multiple plausible explanations for their high prices, and since I'm not sufficiently familiarized with Canadian laws and regulations, it's not obvious to me that their services are severely overpriced given the ecosystem in which they operate. I'd ask why it costs so much for native customers, while foreign visitors can consume data at much more competitive rates. For example, I'm using Google Fi and they charge $10/GB, regardless of your location. Maybe if you're Canadian you should try signing up for a Google Fi account and using it for mobile data.
> What action do you believe the Canadian government should take in order to reform telecoms?
Easy, allow in foreign competitors like we have here in Australia such as Vodafone (UK) and Optus (Singapore) that compete fiercely w/ the former domestic monopoly Telstra.
> There could be multiple plausible explanations for their high prices...
The industry justification for high prices is that Canada is a large, sparsely populated country. But that's also true of Australia and Russia which have much lower telecoms pricing (and the US to some extent). Personally I believe the real reason prices are so high in Canada is that the CRTC (the Canadian regulator) has been captured by the industry. Which is a polite way of saying plain old corruption.
I am an Indian, living in US for the last 8 years, my I-140 was approved 7 years ago and I am at least another 10 years away from my green card. I don't to be working on H1B for the next 10 years worrying about my immigration status.
I want to start my own company, I thought H4EAD would work out for me to do my startup. But for the last 2 years I could not risk move into H4EAD because the administration keeps saying they will cancel it "soon".
I am looking to move to Canada in 2019 (scheduled my IELTS and getting educational credentials evaluated for applying for Canadian PR). I love living in the bay area, but unfortunately things are not working out for us.
Thanks to the economic boom, the money I saved up over these years should help our family settle down in Canada when we move.
Another Indian with a similar mindset (not wanting to be on the h1b leash until I may or may not get the green card in another 10-20-30 years).
Lived in US for 6 years. Had my i140 approved a few months ago and got H1B approved for 3 more years. Was finally in the middle of getting a promotion to an architect role after 6-7 years working for the team. Literally threw away all of it and came back to India 2 months ago. Haven't even started looking for a job.
They gave me RFE for my H1B extension. I saw the RFE document and it was just a copy paste from some template. They didn't even have my employer name correct. And since I was in a state where they give driving license based on h1b, I couldn't drive for 3 months because of the RFE delay.
I am finally at peace after spending the last 6 years on the h1b leash, always living in uncertainty. There is no way I would have lasted while I wait for the green card. On some days, I used to cry while driving to work. I used to feel really strong emotional pain on most of the days. I haven't experienced any of that since I came back.
I think quality of life is not just a higher salary or a clean environment or better job opportunities. Part of my brain must have been seeing all this uncertainty as life threatening and pushed me away. I don't know how else to explain it. Sometimes I wonder if this is one way US is filtering out people because they want only the most mentally strong to be part of their society.
I welcome both of you to Canada. The technology company I worked for in Toronto had an incredible number of immigrants that were well on their way to getting full citizenship (I think it takes just 5 years?). It was a great work environment with an eclectic mix of east asians, eastern europeans, etc.
I can understand your situation and going through the RFE phase. Would like to have a conversation with you. Can't find your email since it is a throwaway account. My email is in the profile. Can you please reach out to me?
I assume you wanted to know about the RFE. Please see me other comments on what type of questions where in the RFE and what happened to other colleagues who got RFE. As for time line, my h1b was in premium. Got RFE within 10 days. They gave about 3 months to respond. My employer for some reason (seems to be the standard practice with my employer) waited till the last moment and filed it 5 days before the last date. Got it approved within 2 days of it reaching USCIS. This was in August 2018. Even though they asked why do I need 3 year extension, they still gave me 3 years, which is surprising and sad at the same time because I had already made up my mind to return and it made it even harder to leave.
Please feel free to ask me anything else though I am not sure I can answer. I don't really know the internals of the visa process. Everything is handled by the immigration team of my employer and their attorney, and we rarely have any idea or control over what's going on. I got to to see the RFE only because the delivery head of my unit escalated my case.
I have been thinking about our conversation here and wanted to add something more in case that's what you were wondering about.
Do I regret coming back?
Yes, I do on some days, especially when I go to Indian stores similar to BestBuy. I see all the big screen TVs and see them priced at 150k, 200k and above, and I suddenly feel poor. When I was in US, I couldn't buy them because of the uncertainty of being in US. Now, I cannot buy because I don't have a job. That makes me wish I shouldn't have come back. May be, my thinking would be different if I had a job in India.
Another issue is place of stay. I am staying at my in laws house, and I have to "act" to keep them happy. If they ask me to leave, I would be jobless and homeless also.
So, if all these RFEs are making you want to come back, I would say keep going. Things will most likely get better. If they deny your visa, come back. Otherwise stay. Save some money and retire early.
Its been about 2 months since I came back. I haven't started looking for a job yet. I haven't even started preparing for interviews. Feeling very lazy. Weirdly, I am not even that worried.
As for money, I have a good savings in bank thanks to the 6 years in US. And my wife has a government job. We were in a dilemma on whether she should give up her job and come to US. All these talks about revoking h4 ead made that decision easier. Wife and I are staying at her parents house (they gave part of their house for us to stay). So, I dont have any immediate financial constraints. We don't have any kids either.
Other than driving in Indian traffic and the oocassional family drama involving my parents and in laws, things are going smooth so far.
As deanmoriarty mentioned, this "request for evidence" is issued by USCIS when we (employer) apply for a visa or an extension. In the last 1 year, RFE was more or less certain if one is working for an Indian employer. I had never even heard of that term before 2017.
RFEs are usually issued by USCIS (government) after sending some request in. In this case, likely the parent poster employer filed for an H1B extension, and got the RFE as a reply instead of an extension approval.
The RFE had the below questions (don't remember exact wording):
Q1: H1B is for speciality occupation, for which a bachelors degree is a minimum requirement. Justify how your current position require a bachelors degree.
My comment: I asked the end customer manager. Bachelors degree was the minimum requirement for my position.
Q2. List out your daily roles at work. Justify how a bachelors degree is needed for each.
My comment: How many of us are actually doing anything that we learned in college?
Q3. The project duration is only for 1 year. Why did you ask for a 3 year extension?
My comment: We have been working with this customer for more than 8 years. They issue yearly project orders for that financial year. They don't issue PO for more than a year.
There were 2 more questions that were similar in nature to Q2. Even though my employer had a team of attorneys, they asked me prepare a response to these questions. I sent it to my employer, not sure if they modified it.
Got my visa approved 2 days after the RFE response reached USCIS (according to USCIS case status website).
Almost all my colleagues (I worked for an Indian company) received the same set of questions during their extension.
I was __very__ lucky to get to the end of the immigration journey successfully (got a green card after many years of H1B, I’m not Indian so my wait time was slightly less brutal), but those long years of uncertainty gave me PTSD and still to this day I live in fear of my permanent resident status being revoked for some irrelevant reason, even if I obviously legally followed the entire process, handheld by skilled attorneys. I have weekly/monthly nightmares in my sleep where I am abruptly sent back to my home country without recourse, which after so many years of living in the US is anything but home.
In perspective, these are very much first world problems, I constantly remind myself of that.
Between June 2017 and July 2018, 5 of my colleagues got RFE for extension. They all got approved. The denial stories I heard were all for people who had more than one employer under them (some people end up in situations like this where they have one employer who sub contracts them to another company who in turn has contract with the end customer). I heard 2 stories where these people went to stamping in India and were asked to wait until the consulate confirms that they are actually employed (one was asked to give end customer manager's contact details, another was asked to sent a photo of their office). I am not sure what happened to them.
Now is really not the time. The Home Office will have an extra ~3m permanent resident applicants over the next year, as all EU nationals are made to go through the process.
Most (but not all) will go through the expedited "settled status" process. Those not eligible or rejected for dumb Home Office reasons will have to apply for ILR. https://www.gov.uk/settled-status-eu-citizens-families
Speaking to my immigrant colleagues it sounds like it's all fine unless you hit Home Office bureaucracy, in which case it can rapidly turn into an expensive nightmare.
I don't think the UK is the best place for immigrants these days. The government has adopted a "hostile environment" policy for immigrants and the number of crimes related to race is skyrocketing.
In other words, you came in on an H1B in 2010, right as the recession was peaking and there was lots of tech talent unemployed and underemployed (scrambling for contract role after contract role)... which exemplifies the problem.
Even in the teeth of the recession, the entire quota of new H1B visas was consumed every year.
2010 was the only year that the number of new applications provably didn't hit the cap - i.e. the entire quota was definitely not consumed. There were ~76k applications approved. The annual cap is 65k + 20k Masters + 5k (Singapore & Chile) + unlimited for non-profits[1]
I know people whose applications from the 2011 quota were made and approved well into 2012 - so 2011 almost certainly did not hit the 85k (65k + 20K Masters) quota either. I assume 2009 was similar.
The general/discretionary cap of 65K is the relevant one, and according to Rep. Zoe Lofgren's office (sponsor of the H1B bill), it hit 65K that year also.
I think he's saying that H1B visa program is bad because it hires immigrants at the expense of local workers.
Even tho supply of local labor was high during recession, it should not have been possible for emmigrant to come to US during that time. There was no need to bring labor from outside, it demonstrates problem with this program.
I agree, that's the point he was trying to make. I don't agree it's a correct conclusion.
Have you read any of the almost-weekly tech interview threads here? Or been in a high growth startup where you are interviewing a lot?
Just because there are lots of people in the internal labor pool, doesn't mean there are lots of qualified people. When you can reach out to the ROW for your highly skilled talent, why would you limit yourself to less qualified local talent?
As an employer, it's [rhetorically] my job to hire the best talent I can find at the best price I can get. (Assuming that is maximally efficient; in some cases less good labor for better prices may be a better calculus. But let's ignore that.) It's the government's job to strike the balance between native employment and immigrant employment. If the H1B pool is consumed each year, I'd say they are doing a reasonably good job at it. If it's consumed, that means there are plenty of folks denied, for lack of quota. Those are jobs that end up filled by less qualified native talent.
"The problem" being that lots of tech talent would rather stay unemployed or underemployed than compete for the positions that H1Bs would otherwise fill? I don't think the average business would willingly choose to hire H1Bs if they could employ a US national as a realistic alternative...
>I don't think the average business would willingly choose to hire H1Bs if they could employ a US national as a realistic alternative...
The end of that sentence would be "...at the same low price and leash that an immigrant subject to an extremely opaque and unpredictable government agency (USCIS) who you don't have to worry about jumping ship so you can treat them worse.
I respect your experience, but mine has been very different. My immigrant Indian colleagues have been competent and pleasant in general, and I'm talking of dozens of people.
Customs vary around the world, even within a nation, and we must all make an effort to communicate our expectations and boundaries.
Plural of anecdote is not data, and certainly not when you are insinuating "indian managers" in particular to be worse than others and "indians" in particular creating toxic work environment.
Having worked for a 99% Indian/Pakistani company in tech myself, I can confirm that 'it's really different'. We were treated well, but when we were not ... it was in odd ways. And can confirm salaries were generally lower as so many people were in visa-limbo or migration situations, the company used it to it's advantage. It was a slide on the deck to investors. Which is maybe not so nice, but the logic makes sense: company of largely newcomers, lead by newcomers, uses cultural aspect of migration sensitivity to their advantage.
Also, curiously, though the notion of Indians and Pakistanis coming together to form a successful enterprise is amazing and progressive ... a lot of the 'class based' issues were imported as well. The execs were all from elite Indian Subcontinent families.
Ok, I can agree to the fact that companies may take advantage of immigrants like others have suggested. However, what the original comment said was specifically against Indians which sounds more like a racial bias (and for some reason it sounds more so, if there isn't any salary discrimination happening in company for immigrants).
Yes, large portions of tech immigrants are Indians, but not all immigrants are Indians. This is typical correlation doesn't imply causation mistake. Considering, a huge majority of Indians in tech it shouldn't be less common than otherwise. Doesn't mean Indians managers are mostly bad. The ones I had in US were great, and includes the best I've had.
Not sure why you would expect a "company of largely newcomers, lead by newcomers" to pay higher than newcomer-salary. At the end of the day, everyone gets what they pay for.
Not ethnicity, the slide would say more or less "we have a deep network of foreigners who are thrilled to come here and work for very competitive salaries, so our burning rate will be lower than the competition".
I've seen this happen also in Silicon Valley, I've personally participated in conversations with startup founders quoting their ability to tap into cheap labor under the form of "talented, naive and visa-handcuffed immigrants" a major competitive advantage.
Oh, it absolutely is everywhere. (FYI labour arbitrage has been going on for thousands of years, it's a thing).
Not so much 'ethnicity' but 'visa leverage'.
Sun Microsystems and others faced scrutiny during layoffs for protecting H1Bs over American workers.
Given the leverage that companies have, they often pay less. Also - foreign workers will generally have a lower salary requirement if they come from poorer countries.
This is also the case in Alberta Oil fields where investors try to get temp permit visas for foreign workers (China, Philipines) because hiring Canadians is brutally expensive. It becomes de-facto ethnic because the workers tend to come from specific regions.
The H-1B is a specialty occupation visa that spans more occupations than most people are aware.
Most people associate it with IT workers, but many accountants, research scientists, engineers, and other professionals also hold H-1Bs. Where I work, it is the latter categories of professionals that dominate. Many of them have degrees from schools (e.g. MIT, CMU, etc.) much better than schools most of us went to.
And yes, some of them work at startups. They usually start out with an OPT after graduating and then convert to an H-1B.
IT worker and H-1B are not synonymous -- the former is a subset of the latter. It's unfortunate that the latter is used as shorthand for the former, and the two categories are conflated.
> Many of them have degrees from schools (e.g. MIT, CMU, etc.) much better than schools most of us went to.
Explain to me how a degree from schools "much better than schools most of us went to" indicates the person is more competent or intelligent than anyone else? "better" should be subbed out for "prestigious".
Well, one of the main reasons that they don't work at startups is that they need stability because of the broken immigration process. Similar to Indians, most Chinese tech workers here choose to join big companies, but Chinese tech workers in China are creating tons of startups.
I worked almost exclusively at startups under an H1B in SV and know many many others. A company pays something like $5K for the legal services and fees to hire an H1B, and under normal political circumstances they receive the initial docs that lets the employee start working in 2-4 weeks. There is really no reason H1Bs wouldn't work at startups (and they do)
I have hired plenty of h1bs at various startups I’ve worked on. It’s a lot more expensive and time considering than hiring someone local but sometimes you have no choice, either because they have some special skill or because you’ve exhausted all alternatives.
Not OP, but hiring manager at a SV startup. For all positions we interview for, we get applications from citizens, GC holders, and H-1Bs. We hire the best candidate from among the applicants applied for that position.
Two engineers started this Monday - an iOS specialist, and an Operations engineer. One is a citizen, and one is on H-1B. We pay both engineers according to the firm's salary bands for those respective positions.
> Or because you dont have the budget to pay the required salary demanded by native workers with that skillset.
So what you insinuate is possible, but not always the case.
You have to demonstrate that you’re paying the foreigner at least as much as you’d pay a us person and file it with the government. And advertisenthe job and interview anyone who responds (wenof course have been interviewing already and have considered the horrible hassles ofnthe h1 only because that’s been unsuccessful). And wait for the paperwork to go through.
Most engineers - H-1Bs, GC holders and citizens - don't work at startups; they work at BigCo doing Boring Stuff.
If you go to any startup event in the Bay Area, you will see plenty of engineers on H-1Bs. Or browse one of the "Who's Hiring" threads here to notice that many startups provide for H-1B transfers.
Really.. tell me more! Startups don’t hire thousands and do not show up any Radars.. I know at least a few startups founded by folks needing H1B and know many more who work for startups..
Interesting, why USA needs to recruiting foreign IT professionals easier? Why the other countries don't have such concern? The right way shouldn't be improve the STEM education to provide more qualify new graduates?
This is just an anecdotal alternative but a lot of my Australian co-workers are eschewing all the US political turmoil and are still choosing to emigrate to America.
There is always turmoil. Turmoil is not a new thing. What do you think it felt like moving here after the dot com bust or after 9/11 + George Bush or after the 2008 financial meltdown. Whats happening at macro levels are out of your control. Imho people who are driven and persistent succeed no matter where they go.
> Indian IT workers will simply drive down wages in the IT sector, and the quality of work received will not be world-class.
But unlike the US they are not randomly selecting immigrants based on a lottery. They have a point based system which lets decently talented immigrants in.
Also, immigrants are free to move around and switch jobs. Canada is doing a lot of the things which US is doing wrong.
On the surface, the points system is how they do it, yes.
However, the reality is that the system is completely rorted and broken. You can be completely lacklustre, and as long as you study at any Australian college, University or degree mill, then stay in the country long enough by stringing visas together, you can eventually get Permanent Residency.
Most people study in Australia for work purposes, since the student visa allows anyone to work 20 hours a week (and most work beyond that, paid cash). It is for this reason that Australia has 600,000 - 800,000 international students at any one time, the second highest of any country on Earth behind the USA (1 million).
The Australian education system is simply in the business of selling Australian Passports to foreigners.
Read this account from an Economics Professor in Australia:
"12. Halving the number of international students would keep all the good students, boost standards for all, and remove the visa scams.
13. But this would remove $4.5billion per year of revenue to the universities. (7/n)
14. In sum, universities are being degraded so they can be used as a back-door immigration program, and no one at the senior levels of universities or major political parties want to change it."
> They have a point based system which lets decently talented immigrants in
I keep hearing about Indian tech talents but I haven't met one in real life yet. The ones I know are very good at nepotism. They usually exaggerate each other's works and belittle non-Indians' works. At my workplace, many even take credits of others. I understand that they are doing all of these to reinforce the rumor of Indian tech talents and to pressure managers to hire more Indians. However, I must admit that I haven't met one with actual technical skills and decent characters. IMO, many are political talents.
> I keep hearing about Indian tech talents but I haven't met one in real life yet.
Then you need to work at a better place :) Unfortunately, its very easy to form a bad opinion about Indian tech talent by working at places which hire the cheap talent. When companies offshore or hire contractors, they forget a key principle which applies everywhere in life, 'you get what you pay for'.
To be honest, if we can stop the abuse of H1B visas by Indian IT firms, the H1B program will be in a much better shape. A separate visa category for Indian IT firms will fix this problem.
Wouldn't this, as a logical consequence, lead to Canadian technology talent "flocking" to the US due to the wage depression created by the influx of foreign workers? I mean, it's a lot easier for a Canadian to come work here, and they are paid easily twice as much as in Canada. And in the long run, isn't this kind of "native" brain drain counterproductive for Canada?
Question: If there will supposedly be 200,000 tech vacancies in Canada by 2020, why are tech salaries in Canada so low compared to the US?
Another question: If the Canadian government is serious about developing the high tech sector, why doesn't it reform the absurdly overpriced telecoms oligopoly? See e.g. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/low-cost-data-crtc-1.494942... that reports on the imminent introduction of $30/month for 1 GB of wireless data as "low-cost" with a straight face. That's literally 10X what I pay here in Australia (https://www.optus.com.au/shop/broadband/mobile-broadband/dat...) never mind what it costs in Europe!
I think the primary reason Canadian policymakers want to juice immigration to Canada is to delay the real estate bubble from popping on their watch...