It depends where you start. Now, I typically don't see $200k salary differences but there might be some.
If you browse Amazon, Google or Facebook in h1b databases for San Francisco or Seattle you see a range of roughly $130k to $160k. With outliers of course.
If you peg that against $100k - $130 in Toronto you're going to ask yourself what portion of that increase is eaten by rent? Car? Commute time? Overtime"work culture"? Health Care? How far do I want to be from my parents? Do I want my children to grow up American? Am I a visible minority? Is the job in a region which is accepting of visible minorities ... or is it like Kansas where an Indian engineer was shot while being told to "go home"? http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/27/us/kansas-olathe-bar-shooting-...
I'm not sure how many tech workers are really worth $200k MORE in the US but I'm certain that some of them went to try it on. If someone was worth $200k more in the states might they be able to say "how about $100k more and I do it from here?"
I also suspect some of the big names are looking at coming back. Recent rumbling about Toronto becoming an AI center of excellence might hint at a certain UofT professor that we lost a few years back getting an itch to come home?
You make much more than $130k-$160k as an engineer at Amazon, Google, and Facebook in San Francisco or Seattle. H1B salary data is salary only, but stock and cash bonus are significant on top of that. At senior level, $240k-$300k for a dev is common for any of those companies. Growth beyond "senior" level to make $100k+ more than that is also not uncommon if you're ambitious, because the large tech companies have career ladders which supports the progression.
Re: your other points.
Health care is likely on par or better in the US for engineers working at Amazon/Google/Facebook (granted, you're SOL if you lose your job, so this has value; in the USA you're entitled to buying your last job's insurance for a period of time after leaving and getting the same coverage, which is probably enough to tide you over in a hot labor market like we see now, but this may not always be the case).
Commute time varies. A software engineer in Toronto can afford to rent somewhere with a good commute, and rent is reasonable for how good of a city Toronto is (the new rent control rules seems likely to privilege current renters by having future renters subsidize artificially below market rent, so it's very possible Toronto rent will climb significantly in the future).
But even if you're paying double the rent in SF (or similar rent in Seattle), the pay still puts you ahead. If you want to buy in Toronto on a software engineer's salary somewhere with a good commute, you're already priced out unless you're looking at condos (you're on the verge of being priced out in SF too, it's Seattle which is the standout here). Hopefully that'll change with years of continued wage growth and a decline in the value of Toronto property.
That doesn't negate your very valid points re: work/life balance, inclusion, and culture (though I think the American west coast is closer to Canada than you give credit). But IMO, if you're able/willing to get one of those sorts of jobs in the US, you have more/better options than in Canada.
So then it comes down to what sort of financial/lifestyle sacrifices you're willing to make to be in Toronto and what sort of familial/cultural gains you get in the process. It's completely valid to prioritize that over money, but arguing the pay is close after factoring in cost of living is disingenuous and problematic. I hear a lot of Canadian tech employers (and, amazingly, employees) use this reasoning to justify lower salaries.
But the salaries they publish in h1b are done so to prove that they are not doing a job cheaper than a comparable American citizen could. The expectation is that h1b's statistically represent the normal curve. (Or are higher)
I think it should have a good representation of expected salary.
If you browse Amazon, Google or Facebook in h1b databases for San Francisco or Seattle you see a range of roughly $130k to $160k. With outliers of course.
If you peg that against $100k - $130 in Toronto you're going to ask yourself what portion of that increase is eaten by rent? Car? Commute time? Overtime"work culture"? Health Care? How far do I want to be from my parents? Do I want my children to grow up American? Am I a visible minority? Is the job in a region which is accepting of visible minorities ... or is it like Kansas where an Indian engineer was shot while being told to "go home"? http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/27/us/kansas-olathe-bar-shooting-...
I'm not sure how many tech workers are really worth $200k MORE in the US but I'm certain that some of them went to try it on. If someone was worth $200k more in the states might they be able to say "how about $100k more and I do it from here?"
I also suspect some of the big names are looking at coming back. Recent rumbling about Toronto becoming an AI center of excellence might hint at a certain UofT professor that we lost a few years back getting an itch to come home?