- 30-50% pay cut
- points and lottery based immigration system that penalizes them for each year you age after 30
- frequent unfavorable rule changes
- fear of being trapped forever on a temporary visa and eventually sent back to the USA, poorer than their peers who stayed stateside.
Canadian citizen moves to us on equivalent CUSMA visa:
- huge pay raise
- retire back home wealthier than their peers and still enjoy socialized healthcare.
Canada's immigration system is just structurally tilted toward brain drain. It's all stick and no carrot.
I don't know what a CUSMA visa is - I thought CUSMA was a trade deal?, but it seems very convenient to compare the standard Express Entry points-based immigration track versus (nothing) on the US side. Convenient is an euphemism, reality basically the opposite of what you're saying:
Moving to Canada:
- Rational points-based immigration system with transparent rules which you can actually look up and prepare for, start your life as a Permanent Resident with all but voting rights compared with a citizen, become a citizen in a few years.
Moving to US:
- Wait years for an H1B with a yearly lottery with 15% chance
- Wait another 10 years for a Green Card, equivalent to a PR card
- Wait another ? years for full citizenship
CUSMA goes both ways, it allows Canadian and US Citizens to obtain 3 year temporary work permits for many skilled occupations with low friction, across both countries.
It's another contributing factor to the "brain drain" effect. In that it's a worse deal for a US Citizen to move to Canada on a CUSMA visa than for the opposite.
>US citizen moves to Canada on a CUSMA visa:
- 30-50% pay cut
But what about "free healthcare". Don't americans want socialized healthcare over their despised privatized system?
> - points and lottery based immigration system that penalizes them for each year you age after 30
Many countries with socialized healthcare do this. They only want young people and don't want older people who are a risk at becoming a burden to the state before they paid a lot into the system. After a certain age or health status, many workers, even locals not just immigrants, start to become a net negative to the welfare state, consuming more resources in care than they contribute back, so you need a constant stream of young healthy workers to keep the ponzi scheme going.
US being private healthcare doesn't give a damn since your health conditions are your own problem.
>Canada's immigration system is just structurally tilted toward brain drain. It's all stick and no carrot.
And yet they have record immigration rates, mostly from india. So it seems there's plenty of desperate people on the planet that don't even need a carrot, they prefer the Canadian stick because the situation back in their home is so much worse than the canadian stick.
However, I do think that if you're relying on a stream of desperate people from all over the world to replenish your own brain drain because you manage to push away your most valuable people, then you're doing it wrong and it's not gonna be sustainable, you're just putting band aids on major structural issues to cover the rot, and eventuall y the piper will have to be paid.
>Don't americans want socialized healthcare over their despised privatized system?
I haven't lived in either country but as someone who lives in a country with socialised healthcare, it mainly benefits the older generations, as health issues begin to crop up nearer retirement.
If a Canadian spends most of their working life in the U.S. then returns to Canada to raise their kids or to retire then they're getting the best of both worlds.
> But what about "free healthcare". Don't americans want socialized healthcare over their despised privatized system?
Not really. The internet bubble might make you think that, but actually ordinary people aren't interested.
People with good jobs have health insurance, people without get government subsidized insurance. Either way most people are fine with what they have.
And the issues with healthcare in the US will not be solved by the government being the one to pay. Billing is too complex (i.e. costly), and Dr salaries are too high (compare them to other countries). Neither of those issues are solved by the government paying.
And don't forget how Americans hear stories from other countries about huge waits for care, and they want none of that.
There are zero proposals to make all Dr's employees of the government, on salary, who just take care of whoever shows up. But that might actually work to reduce costs.
>People with good jobs have health insurance, people without get government subsidized insurance. Either way most people are fine with what they have.
Clearly, all those people who lost everything or even became homeless from some health issue despite paying insurance all their lives must be fictional
How many people per capita become homeless from healthcare in US vs how many people die/suffer from long waiting times in Canada/socialized health systems?
Yes, Canada gets many immigrants from the most populous country in the world (1M Indians in 2024) - should that be surprising?
It also gets immigrants from the China (772k), UK (427k), Germany, France (100k each). Saying its all stick and all those people are desperate is an insane take.
Believe it or not, not every person in this planet wants to move to the US.
>Believe it or not, not every person in this planet wants to move to the US.
No, but if emigrating to the US was just as easy as to Canada, very few would go there over the US. Similar with EU. Ambitious people don't like being lowballed.
Those figures I cited were a snapshot from 2024 (https://ourworldindata.org/migration) Data is cumulative of course. I couldn't find a yearly breakdown on statcan. Doesn't change my argument though.
>if emigrating to the US was just as easy as to Canada, very few would go there over the US.
Immigrating to the US, not emigrating. People emigrate from a place and immigrate to another.
And the thing about hypotheticals is you can't prove them. That's just your opinion.
The free healthcare only matters if you get permanent residency.. Otherwise, it's just like the world's most expensive insurance plan thanks to the pay cut.
In terms of people in the tech industry I know of who moved to Canada from countries where they get a legitimate pay boost there.. Yes, it makes sense for them. If they never attain permanent residency, at least they made more money than they would have back home for a few years.
However, I've rarely seen one of them turn down a chance to get an additional huge pay boost by moving to the United States afterwards. In fact, it's common for top tier companies to just use Canada as of sort of waiting room or fallback option for folks who are ultimately dreaming of moving to the US to make those higher salaries.
I don't think Canada can compete on pay, but there are certainly people who could get that top pay but would trade it for a chance to live permanently in Canada. I'm guessing those are the sorts of people who have already taken pay cuts to work in highly specialized or speculative areas of science and technology. These are great people to have because they are low risk and high reward in terms of impact on the economy.
Sadly, if you look at any forum for Canadian immigrants you'll find a huge amount of depressing stories about never attaining permanent residency or of grinding for years to game the point system in a way that is soul crushing. It is a broken system on both sides. Let me try to explain what I mean by that.
The European Union does not have a points and lottery based system as it's sole mechanism of entry the way Canada does. If you make above a certain salary, you can get a blue card. You can accumulate time on the blue card in any country in the EU (except for Ireland, which has their own similar system if I recall). After 5 years you can typically apply for permanent residency, in Germany just 2 years so long as you attain B1 German (very practical for usage in daily life and doable in the timeframe without cramming or cutting corners).
The implicit reasoning seems to be that if you can stay out of trouble and earn a good living for 5 years. You're probably worth keeping around. I think a heuristic like that beats a point system which simply encourages gaming behavior anyway.
Check out all of the people cramming French to try to increase their odds in the Canadian lottery for example. Canada probably doesn't get the sorts of genuine francophones they seem to be looking for--cramming for an exam with a verbal component is not the same as fluency--and the people entering the country are doing so by playing arbitrary games instead of living a real life.
And of course the French is just one example, there are also all of the useless courses and degree programs. The points-based lottery encourages and rewards the accumulation of arbitrary points, or in other words, a sort of dissimulation.
I suppose you could argue that Canada is selecting for people who are willing to diligently jump through hoops. If so, that does nothing to address brain drain.
> companies to just use Canada as of sort of waiting room or fallback option for folks who are ultimately dreaming of moving to the US to make those higher salaries.
Nobody would mind the lower Canadian salaries if they also came with a matched lower CoL, but that's not what's happening IRL. Similar issues across the EU where some very expensive to live areas don't pay proportionally high so the issue isn't necessarily pay but CoL. However as a worker your only option is demanding more money from your employer as you can't lower the CoL of the area. So there we are.
>The European Union does not have a points and lottery based system as it's sole mechanism of entry the way Canada does.
That's not a pro for the EU citizens as they get lower quality immigrants than Canada or anglophone countries with a stricter points system.
>I think a heuristic like that beats a point system which simply encourages gaming behavior anyway.
Blue card system is also heavily gamed thanks to unscrupulous EU employers wanting to wage dump the local workforce, and much more easily because there's no multiple points criteria.
How much is this actually happening? I've heard plenty of anecdotes, but the net migration flows haven't changed much. British Columbia did a big push to bring in American medical staff, and have only had a couple hundred move so far. Compare that to the number of Canadians moving south on TN visas, and I'm not sure it's significant.
I am saying this as someone who pursued Canadian citizenship by descent and moved to New Zealand in the last year, so it's definitely happening some, but my impression so far is that the total number of people who actually make the move is small. Most people who are skilled enough for an overseas employer to jump through hoops to put them on a visa have more lucrative jobs available in the US that are closer to home without all of the downsides of emigration.
I would believe that a lot of dual citizens or skilled immigrants to the US are moving home.
It isn't. At least, not in the way being portrayed. The people going back to China were already from China, and the people returning to Europe are largely from there as well.
The dirty little secret of US academic research is that it became almost entirely dependent on Chinese labor over the past 30 years, and that's reversing a little bit.
Exactly. The US is a leader in technology pretty much exclusively because of immigration. As that reverses, we can expect the US to fall behind, and fall further behind, over time.
60% of all CS researchers in America are not American. 55% of all engineering researchers.
When everyone goes home America loses the majority of it's research output, plus the extra Americans who choose to join them. I suspect a great many Americans will choose to join them, for personal or professional reasons. Why try to get a grant in the US, where the rules change whenever Trump sneezes, vs a stable, consistent system in the rest of the OECD?
For a country that has been a "brain magnet" for a good century, a "brain drain" might just be "talented people from wherever choosing to go somewhere else".
Case in point: an EE I know who is finishing his master's[1] is considering interesting proposals from solid (but not top tier, think Texas not Massachusetts) universities from the US, Germany and China. While he's afraid of the culture gap with China, it's clearly the one that has the more interesting things going on technically and the one he feels more excited about
[1]Engineering by itself is a bachelor's level degree here
HK will give you right of abode which is almost as good as citizenship so long as you stay in HK. I suppose you could still be deported for high crimes or some such but that almost seems like the best case scenario if that happens.
Personally, I would go to Toronto. Decades ago I used to work for a Canadian company headquartered in Toronto and had development offices in the states. There was a project I needed to do with a distinguished engineer that required me to move to Toronto for a few months. I really liked it. TBH, there are very few cities in the US that I would say are on par with Toronto, and none are better. Now the Winters are brutal, but they're brutal where I'm from so that's not a dealbreaker for me.
Higher intangible quality of life, lower spending power.
There are a lot of QOL advantages to living in a less violent, less polarized, less cruelty-driven society that isn't actively trying to dismantle all of its institutions and destroy itself. Especially if you're one of those people who are in the crosshairs of jack-booted thugs and their cheerleaders.
There are a lot of QOL disadvantages to being an immigrant on a visa anywhere. I moved to NZ for the next couple of years recently, and my QOL has dropped in many ways from the move. My much lower income buys a lot less housing here, so I went from a 2 bed apartment to myself to a moldy studio. I'm extremely far from family and friends, and there are weird cultural gaps with most everyone around me because we grew up on different media, sports, and education systems. I'm constantly having to figure out how things are done here, from taxes to bank accounts to renting, and I know I have different worker protections, but I don't really know what exactly they are. My status in the country ends after my visa is up in 2 years, and I don't know if I will even be able to extend it with a sponsor because there are health requirements that I may or may not meet for the visa I would need.
Hell, Canada extended its citizenship by descent law last December, and has been issuing citizenship certificates under it. Just this week many of the people who'd received these certificates had them revoked while there is further investigation into their documentation. Many of them are people who'd been living in Canada on temporary visas, and gave up their visa when they got proof of citizenship. Now they're in limbo with invalid passports and no legal status in the country.
Being an immigrant anywhere, and yes, that includes American "expats" in Canada or western Europe, means that you are at the whims of a capricious and chaotic immigration system that changes at the whims of a government you have no say in.
He said Canada man. If you had other reasonable options when leaving you wouldn't pick it so lets not pretend anyone moving there from the USA didn't fail already.