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by belltaco 2084 days ago
Since remote work has become acceptable and they already know the ins and outs of the job, many of these folks losing their visa will just be allowed to work remotely from India or Canada where it's trivial to get a work visa if you have a job offer.

This means the US economy will lose all the taxes and local expenditure in the economy by the family like rent, food, travel, vacations, utilities, entertainment, cars, home sales, etc. etc. And if that works out, the next hire may just be directly hired in India or Canada itself.

If I were in the Canada govt, I'd immediately create a way around the travel ban for workers who's visas didn't get renewed to be able to move to Canada after following a strict quarantine protocol. If the worker was able to work remotely in the US using Zoom, why can't they do the same job remotely in the same time zone in Canada using the same remote working tools?

There is already a small industry in Canada where a company takes a few % of the billing rate in order to sponsor and hold a Canadian visa for people who lost their H1B visas due to increased and inconsistent rejections over the past few years, but whose employer is willing to allow them to work from Canada. This moves a lot of money to Canada.

Also, some tech companies have been outright moving jobs to Canada because they can hire from a global workforce and Canada has been welcoming them. This is going to intensify.

2 comments

Is it that simple though? Maybe for companies that are incorporated abroad. Otherwise looks like international workers are subject to 30% withholding, unless there's some tax treaty https://www.irs.gov/businesses/international-businesses/us-w... .
That applies only to people physically within the US. A non resident alien is someone on a work visa or student visa or other authorization. A resident alien is someone on a green card. Those rules don't apply to people in Canada who pay Canadian taxes(otherwise there would be double taxation).

E.g of companies handing Canadian compliance and billing their US clients. https://syndesus.com/why-u-s-companies-need-a-peo-to-recruit...

This already happens with companies relocating people to Canada until they can reapply back to the US.