Program To Attract Tech Workers From the US Hits Capacity On Opening Day (www.cbc.ca) 117
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: A government program meant to attract highly skilled tech workers from the U.S. closed for applications the day after it launched when it hit its maximum number of applicants. Last month, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser announced a new work permit for H-1B visa holders in the U.S. -- part of a larger federal government strategy to poach talent from abroad. H-1B visas allow foreign nationals to work temporarily in the U.S. in certain specialized occupations, including some in the technology sector. Tech companies went on a hiring binge during the pandemic but have since starting laying people off in large numbers. That has left a lot of H-1B visa holders scrambling to find new jobs before they're forced to leave the U.S.
Applications for the work permits opened on Sunday. By Monday the program had reached capacity, with 10,000 applicants bidding for a permit. "This temporary policy will last for 1 year or until we get 10,000 applications (whichever comes first)," the program's website says. The program is a response to massive layoffs in the U.S. tech industry. Since last summer, hundreds of thousands of workers have been laid off from such major firms as Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Fraser said he was watching the situation in the U.S. and saw it as an "opportunity" for Canada when he first announced the program.
Nick Schiavo, director of federal affairs for the Council of Canadian Innovators, said he's not surprised that applications filled up so quickly. He said the government should now consider expanding the program to more applicants. "The more that we can pull from these highly qualified individuals that we know have the work experience, the skill set the better," Schiavo said. "As this program develops, it would be great to see it expanded."
Applications for the work permits opened on Sunday. By Monday the program had reached capacity, with 10,000 applicants bidding for a permit. "This temporary policy will last for 1 year or until we get 10,000 applications (whichever comes first)," the program's website says. The program is a response to massive layoffs in the U.S. tech industry. Since last summer, hundreds of thousands of workers have been laid off from such major firms as Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Fraser said he was watching the situation in the U.S. and saw it as an "opportunity" for Canada when he first announced the program.
Nick Schiavo, director of federal affairs for the Council of Canadian Innovators, said he's not surprised that applications filled up so quickly. He said the government should now consider expanding the program to more applicants. "The more that we can pull from these highly qualified individuals that we know have the work experience, the skill set the better," Schiavo said. "As this program develops, it would be great to see it expanded."
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Canada has a decent education system. We should be growing domestic talent rather than flooding the market from the outside - we're not suffering for a lack of CS students.
This is a program to depress wages further in a market where we've recently been told you have to make $40/hr minimum to afford rent anywhere near a city with reasonable employment opportunities.
The last thing we need right now is to put downward pressure on wages. Canada has no need to concentrate more wealth in the hands of its billionaire class.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know that 10K workers is enough to make that much of a difference. There are about 1.2 million Canadians employed in tech positions, so 10K is less than 1% of the total.
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1. This is just the start of the program
2. These 10,000 will replace/fill existing positions not create new ones. This is the supply side of the equation, thank you.
3. The implication is obvious, they're trying to lower wages. Having a FAANG job doesn't mean you were skilled. It means you can do the job at best.
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I'd be more concerned that they're getting what somebody else simply didn't want. Bottom of the barrel, not the cream of the crop.
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More likely, these were people who were filtered out because [businessinsider.com] companies are using software to review resumes before a person even gets a chance to look.
And can we stop with the "cream of the crop" bullshit. Considering the abysmal state of software being put out by multi-billion, and even trillion, dollar companies, they're using spoiled cream. It might be time for the
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No, these are people who already had a job and were let go. It's written in TFS. If somebody thought they were valuable, they would have kept them. The only exceptions would be those who just weren't the best fit for the position but are skilled anyways, which happens but is uncommon.
And you can stop pretending that you're some kind of code connoisseur. People like you tend to be the worst at it in my experience, particularly when you don't even read and then proceed jump to your own conclusions.
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This program is for H1-B Visa holders, who, by definition, have jobs, otherwise they wouldn't have an H1-B Visa.
A government program meant to attract highly skilled tech workers from the U.S. closed for applications the day after it launched when it hit its maximum number of applicants.
That has left a lot of H-1B visa holders scrambling to find new jobs before they're forced to leave the U.S.
Let me get this straight, they are "scrambling to find new jobs before they're forced to leave the U.S." so they are applying to leave the U.S. and go to Canada?
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I'd be more concerned that they're getting what somebody else simply didn't want. Bottom of the barrel, not the cream of the crop.
So, why can't Canada do what the US refuses to do? Simply order the applicants based on compensation. Don't accept workers that depress wages. Instead, get these new workers to raise the average. Furthermore, these highly compensated workers are the experts with skills that you want. As a rough approximation, simply refuse to consider any consulting companies, since those jobs are intrinsically considered lower wage and less important (which is why they are outsourced and not done in-house).
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Do you understand how supply/demand works? Increasing the supply of workers depresses wages. Why would any employer be interested in doing something that will drive wages up? They can raise wages anytime they want, but they curiously choose not to...
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Some of them will just want to leave wherever they are right now, be it due to unaffordable housing, or oppressive new laws etc.
For example, many women lost their bodily autonomy rights recently. Many LGBT people are being criminalized and their marriages and parenthood are under threat. WFH helped somewhat with property prices, but now companies are trying to reverse it.
Re: Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Itâ(TM)s enough for the 10K workers it displaced. The tech market is overflowing with job seekers. I posted a tech job and had over a hundred applicants in 1 day, many out of a job for months or entry level applicants have been jobless since COVID.
What I do see is a big mismatch due to inflation and minimum wage hikes causing wage compression across the board. My local McD has a billboard for $25/h managers, pretty much every restaurant now pays upwards of $20/h, whereas you could just a few years ago
Not new (Score:3)
>>This wage compression is a real issue as I can hire someone with 5y experience at a rate the entry levels want, so the market is saturated with graduates that are looking for a job, but most would rather work at McD at the same rates for a career that involves relocating.
This is not a new thing, nor is it a problem in my opinion. 25 years ago when I started working as an electronics technologist my first job paid less per hour than the unskilled labour I was doing to put myself through school. I t
No (Score:1)
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So you didn't understand what the parent post was about at all? They weren't complaining about low entry level wages, quite the opposite, he was complaining about low journeyman level wages compared to entry level.
Who will hire a new grad at 70k when they can get an experienced person for the same price?
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because Canada's ageing population [statcan.gc.ca] can't wait that long.
On July 1, 2021, a record number of 7,081,792 Canadians -- 18.5% of the population -- were at least 65 years of age.
In comparison, there were 6,018,084 children aged 0 to 14 (15.7%) in Canada, the first decline in the last 13 years.
That ageing population, which is growing faster than the younger one, draws ever heavier on the social support systems. Those same support systems need workers, preferably high income workers, to sustain it [globalnews.ca].
Strong, well educated and middle-income immigration is all that stands between Canada as a nation and Canada as a bunch of future northern U.S. States.
Simple solution (Score:1)
Raise the retirement age and/or make working in your 60s much more attractive. You don't need to import thousands of workers from outside. In the IT world it would need a change of mindset of Tech Bros however who seem to think that anyone over 40 is past it and can barely switch on a computer never mind do anything useful with it.
people over 40 don't do 996 and the Tech Bros want (Score:3)
people over 40 don't do 996 and the Tech Bros want that.
Raise the retirement age??? what about fix unpaid OT? force time off that workers can take with out getting an black mark on there file / etc.
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people over 40 don't do 996
Who in their right mind would?
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Many Americans, apparently.
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I didn't work for decades honing my skill set so that I could sacrifice my family life to meet some arbitrary schedule by someone that doesn't understand project management and can't properly estimate the work involved in a project.
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What is "996"? (Asking for an over 40 year-old friend)
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
That isn't a solution, that just kicks the can down the road a few years. People in their 60s aren't having more kids, which is what you'd need to reduce immigration. To do that, you have to make it so the younger crowd can afford to have kids -- and your housing cost issues have nixed that idea.
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" People in their 60s aren't having more kids"
Most people in their 60s now will be dead in 20 years which solves the demographic issue. There's nothing bad about population shrinkage and in fact for the enviroment its a good thing.
Anyway, japan have had this problem for 2 decades now and managed to solve it without resorting to mass immigration.
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By no stretch of imagination has Japan solved this problem. They're much worse off than Canada in demographics, they're just starting with a lot more people. Do your homework.
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Japan have had this problem for 2 decades now and managed to solve it without resorting to mass immigration.
That depends on what you mean by "solved". In practical terms, Japanese wages buy now 30% less than they did 20 years ago, and this is attributed to population shrinkage. The reason is simple: money is a stand-in for real stuff, that is, for goods and services. If there's less stuff available, and the amount of money remains the same, then each unit of money has less stuff to buy, which is perceived as stuff becoming more expensive, aka stable demand with lower offer, aka inflation.
Stuff, in turn, is made/p
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Japan hasn't solved anything. The government is looking at further ways to make it easier for people to immigrate, having recently relaxed the rules a little.
Efforts to encourage people to have more children haven't been very successful, because in the end it comes down to cost, and a little subsidy for childcare isn't going to make the difference. It needs a massive social change, reduced property prices, and employers willing to facilitate it.
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Raise the retirement age
Fuck that noise.
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They tried that in France, it didn't go over so well - people there really want to retire at age 62, they refuse to "wait" until they are 64...
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They tried that in France, it didn't go over so well
That may be a bit of an understatement, lol. I don't approve of their methods, but I appreciate their message. People should be required to work until they die.
Re: Why? (Score:3)
Automation is a perfectly viable solution to a declining working age population, as it increases the efficiency of a given worker to compensate for the declining number of workers.
Canada should be more concerned about what the existing workers are doing, if age demographics are driving this. I'd think an Eastern European or Phillipino nurse would be more valuable than an Indian app developer, if an aging population is the issue.
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How is bringing in more people the solution to people getting old and needing more money from the system? The "more people" are going to get old too. You advocate for infinite growth in a finite world. It isn't going to happen. New systems need to be worked up that are sustainable and the populations need to be trained to live in them. The alternative is that this system will eventually fail and a catastrophe will befall the nations that haven't addressed this issue in the form of famine, inhumane treatment
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The "more people" are, most likely, mid-life (35-45 years old), have children, and will soon become a drag on the retirement, healthcare system - but no worries, Canada has lots of doctors sitting around looking for patients, and I'm certain all the extended family members the former H1-B workers (like their parents) are very healthy and require minimal healthcare.
Wanna bet Canada won't take the H1-B worker's extended families? They want workers, not more kids in schools, more elderly healthcare patients in
Re: Why? (Score:2)
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It is a Ponzi Scheme, and it has been described as such for decades.
Taking young worker's money to pay benefits to the elderly/disabled is the very definition of a Ponzi Scheme, but since the government is doing it, it's all good.
Will be fun to watch when SS burns though all it's reserves and relies on increased contributions from ever-fewer workers to fund the benefits for an ever-growing number of retirees...
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That ageing population, which is growing faster than the younger one, draws ever heavier on the social support systems.
Those people already paid for those services with their taxes. Where did the money go? Pleading economic necessity is utter bullshit. "Fuck you, pay me".
Don't try to wiggle out of your debts.
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That ageing population, which is growing faster than the younger one, draws ever heavier on the social support systems.
Those people already paid for those services with their taxes. Where did the money go? Pleading economic necessity is utter bullshit. "Fuck you, pay me".
Don't try to wiggle out of your debts.
Your SS contributions today fund today's retirees, you haven't been paying towards your own retirement, you are paying for everyone else's current retirement. I think SS is projected to be running out of it's "reserves" in 2034 or something like that, that when SS "contributions" will have to increase, and the government will have to start borrowing money to meet it's SS obligations. Expect benefits to be cut once the math becomes painfully obvious to our elected officials.
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I was 11 years old when I saw a story on the news. I did not normally pay attention at that age, but for some reason I did. They were discussing turning the insane (for the time) hundreds of billions of dollars in the Social Security fund into government bonds; converting all of that surplus into debt.
11 year olds are not typically smart, but I did indeed see you talking to me today saying EXACTLY what you are saying.
Unless you are older than me, they are stealing from you just as egregiously as they have s
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Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
I figure it's the same general rule as investigating a crime (at least on television): follow the money.
In Canada, there are more likely to be entrenched interests looking to make more money with a less costly labour pool in IT than in medicine. Money buys politicians here too.
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In Canada, there are more likely to be entrenched interests looking to make more money with a less costly labour pool in IT than in medicine. Money buys politicians here too.
Or... there are more strict requirements for being a doctor than gluing java libraries together so you can't just trust some piece of paper and send them to the operating room.
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In Canada, there are more likely to be entrenched interests looking to make more money with a less costly labour pool in IT than in medicine. Money buys politicians here too.
Or... there are more strict requirements for being a doctor than gluing java libraries together so you can't just trust some piece of paper and send them to the operating room.
Or... the supply of new doctors is at least partially controlled by the existing pool of Doctors. Maybe if we create the "College of IT Professionals" to match the medical, dental, and engineering organizations we decrease supply and raise wages in the IT field too by doing stuff like requiring everyone to do an internship and limiting the numbers we offer to immigrants (or anyone for that matter.) We can argue that training provided elsewhere, experience provided elsewhere, and certification provided elsew
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On a related note, I believe Ontario's solution to the lack of nurses - after abusing the hell out of them through peak COVID and burning a bunch of them out of the system - is to lower the standards for immigrants with nursing backgrounds to re-fill the ranks faster. Not improved staffing levels to reduce OT, not improved pay so nurses can enjoy their down time more. Just flood the market with low-skilled people willing to work for less to get back up to previous staffing levels. That's the plan.
Doesn't
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Doctors are a slightly different story - I'm not sure what is going on there because even though you're front loaded with debt, being a doctor is a pretty secure ticket to the upper-middle class by middle age. And plenty of doctors throw in massive amounts of self-imposed overtime to get there faster. You'd think we'd have more people entering the profession.
I don't think you appreciate how hard it is to become a doctor, or how poor our public school systems have become at preparing students for challenging careers. They can describe all the current genders, they can tell you about some great Drag Queen Story Hours they attended, and they can tell you about their 8th grade teacher's polyamorous relationship, but actual critical thinking, reading comprehension, and math skills are declining.
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Why would anyone that went through the expense, the long hours of study, LONG hours of internship and specialization...sacrifice to become a Doctor, want to come up there, for not only the COLD climate, but to work for a government run medical system that won't pay them shit in compensation?
I'd rather work in the US where I can hang my shingle out and charge what I want.
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Well there you admitted it. It’s a wage problem brought on by the conservative party cutting healthcare funding. Pay people more and applicants suddenly appear.
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It's a wage problem, due to wages being set by the government, rather than the market.
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It's a wage problem, due to wages being set by the government, rather than the market.
governments tend to be the ones that set wages for government departments.
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That's the problem...being a doctor should NOT be a govt. job!!!
Who the fuck goes through that much schooling, and expense and time sacrifice to work a fucking govt job that won't let them bill to their potential?
No wonder these countries are having problems getting and keeping good doctors.
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Youve got private healthcare in America right? You can get personal private doctors, maybe doctors for sports teams etc... theres a whole bunch of jobs affecting the market rate. Agreed, the main employer of Doctors in any country is normally the government, and because of that, they have a large effect on the salaries.
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"The Government" is not the "main employer of doctors" in America, though with the military it may be the largest single employer of doctors.
When Healthcare is provided by the government, it's funding and operation is dependent on the whims of elected officials, not the need of the patients who fund their own healthcare (thru their employers).
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Why would anyone that went through the expense, the long hours of study, LONG hours of internship and specialization...sacrifice to become a Doctor, want to come up there, for not only the COLD climate, but to work for a government run medical system that won't pay them shit in compensation?
Because not everyone is a psycho obsessed with money, many doctors want to help people and will happily rather live in a functional society
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
We do import doctors by the thousands. Most of them end up driving for Uber and Door Dash. There is a disconnect between the immigration department and the medical certification boards who won't recognize doctors from overseas, and don't make it easy to re-certify.
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Currently, a lot of the best Canadian talent emigrates to the US, so improving education in Canada is not likely to help as long as the big action is in the US. I guess Canadian "leaders" hope to at least get some of the crumbs that the US drops -- since it's likely that the applicants to this program are not the best and brightest US visa holders.
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The last thing we need right now is to put downward pressure on wages. Canada has no need to concentrate more wealth in the hands of its billionaire class.
I keep getting the impression that Canadian tech wages are already depressed enough, which is why anyone who can tends to flee Canada to come work in the US. At least for people originally from Canada.
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The idea that H1-Bs "depress wages" is horribly antiquated.
The Canadian tech sector suffers from an extreme lack of talent. As a result companies like Shopify have to expand OUTSIDE Canada because the people don't exist here. By the way, they pay them way more - compensation is not the issue, access to talent is the *single most important factor* in where tech companies grow...
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I used to be a programmer in Canada. Wages are *far* lower than in the USA. Many of my friends also made the move, and many more every year.
Back in the 90s, the big game was to replace Canadian programmers with Chinese (back in the BNR / Nortel days, which is how they stole Nortel's secrets and set up Huawei), and these days its with Indians.
Same game, different players..
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they're lower because we're all forced to pay to mitigate the risk of having health or other problems that prevent employment .. it's an apples or oranges comparison. the tax structures and social safety net is totally different, and the reality is that most people (ideally) won't have to interact with those safety nets at least until much later in life.
living in the US is a lottery that many people win - and you're far more likely to win if you have a decent job such as programming - but it's not at all un
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That's about 2 Canadian median wages.
A little under 2 Canadian tech worker median wages.
US H1Bs aren't depressing your wages. They taking the jobs that Canadians haven't been able to fill.
Still a problem, but a problem you aren't going to fix with your fearmongering.
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I dunno about you but in my field they can't find enough of my kind. The ones coming from the US get paid what I get paid. They're not depressing my salary. There may not be a lack of CS students, but there's certainly a lack of tech workers who are ready to work right now.
And frankly, taking smart people from the US and putting them in Canada is good for us, bad for them, so that's ... good.
Mostly, your comment just sounds like typical suburb dweller "waarhgbargh muh jobs"
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Canada has a decent education system. We should be growing domestic talent rather than flooding the market from the outside - we're not suffering for a lack of CS students.
Because you won't get many CS students if there isn't a CS industry to go into.
Attracting skilled migrants is a means of kick-starting an industry that ordinarily would never have been established. This pays dividends in 5+ years when the local CS grads have a decent industry to enter.
I suspect that Canada is a lot like Australia where 20 years ago the politicians said "why do we need a tech sector, we've got so many natural resources we don't know what to do with them and our manufacturing sector wi
What Canada really needs (Score:5, Insightful)
What we really need are entrepreneurs to start new businesses, improve productivity and employ more Canadians. Unfortunately, Canada has terrible competition regulations and what few it has are rarely enforced, so our tech landscape consists mostly of large incumbents that actively quash startups that might trod on their turf. Lack of competition also makes companies complacent and risk-averse, so our productivity is very low compared to the US.
Unfortunately, the large tech companies, especially telcos like Bell, Rogers and Telus, have lots of influence with the government and have been very successful at maintaining a cozy oligopoly for themselves.
Re: What Canada really needs (Score:2)
Because Bell, Rogers and Telus ARE practically speaking government entities, thatâ(TM)s how they started, they inherited and continue to inherit taxpayer funded infrastructure and broad corporate welfare programs and handouts make it so they donâ(TM)t have to worry about competition, the government will make sure there is none.
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Corporate taxes in Canada are competitive. When I ran my business from 1999 to 2018, my business taxes were lower than most places in the USA.
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What we really need are entrepreneurs to start new businesses, improve productivity and employ more Canadians. Unfortunately, Canada has terrible competition regulations and what few it has are rarely enforced, so our tech landscape consists mostly of large incumbents that actively quash startups that might trod on their turf...
Oh, so it's the incumbents fault?
And here I thought the onus just might be more on the citizens who help select, elect, and support the leaders who rarely enforce the very laws meant to support and bolster competition. Gosh if we could only find a root cause here...
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You're assuming that powerful lobby groups have no influence over elected officials and that everything can be solved if only we'd elect the right people.
It's not that simple. It will take political will across the political spectrum to create change, and that political will is unfortunately lacking in all of Canada's political parties.
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Not like the US at all
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Your 100% covered procedure will be available in 2 years, 4 months, and 6 days.
For most Americans it's available never, because they will never have the money to pay for it. So how is that better?
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Guess you've never heard of Medicaid, huh?
It covers people who make up to 138% of the Federal poverty line, if the State they live in didn't opt to remain in the stricter, pre-ACA service level, which leaves out a huge chunk of these. Guess what happens if you live in one of the best-case States, but makes 139%?
One core problem of the US welfare system is that it doesn't use smooth curves, preferring to go with layers. With that, if one's formal income rises 1%, that may be enough to cause their total earnings to drop 10% or more, which gives an ex
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it's safe to say that the majority of Americans receive far better medical care than the majority of Canadians.
You made a good point, so I went to look for data. I looked into cancer survival rates, which IMHO is a good proxy for comparing medical systems as it's costly and long term. According Our World in Data [ourworldindata.org], both systems have almost identical outcomes:
Slashdot doesn't make that look
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I think both models have advantages and disadvantages, and personally favor a hybrid one: private medical care networks, arranged however they prefer, plus a standardized free public network. This provides the benefit of access to medical care for those who cannot afford it and don't mind waiting their slot, as well as access to top-notch medical care for those willing to get it right now at whatever it costs. As an extra benefit, the public offering serves as a balancing factor for the price and quality of
I have experience with Canada's H-1B type folks (Score:2)
I worked in what I would call internal support for a product my employer sold in the USA and Canada. We really just support
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Fast forward to
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>The contracting firms would hide the seat fillers behind "leads" who were the ones who could actually get something done.
I worked for a company called Boardvantage over a decade ago. CTO was this guy.
https://www.crunchbase.com/per... [crunchbase.com]
You described Boardvantage to a T. Junaid used his position to import a lot of his relatives using consulting companies as proxies. The contracts would get bought out, and to comply with H1B laws they would get paid higher than the prevailing wage. He had a few relatives th
Where are they going to live? (Score:3)
Artificial problem (Score:2)
Canada's housing market is already red hot due to a lack of inventory. Despite all the talk about creating new housing, that is still years away. This will make an already tight housing market even worse.
Well you could import some blue collar folks to build housing and services? Perhaps a few teachers and healthcare workers to support the additional population. As you are importing young working age people, the tax base will actually grow, rather than this being a burden.
Honestly I never understand why countries like the US and Canada moan about living space. You have a population density of 4 per Km2 in Canada compared to 37 per Km2 in the USA, 118 per Km2 in France and 280 per Km2. Not all of that land i
Re:Artificial problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Canada's housing problem is not so simple to fix. First of all, almost all Canadians live in a little strip within 200km of the US border. So the density of the places where people actually live is much higher than 4/km^2.
Secondly, our cities still have stupid North American-style zoning laws that encourage car-dependent sprawling suburbs, unaffordable infrastructure, and zero incentive to create affordable housing.
Thirdly, making housing affordable of necessity means lowering property values. Many homeowners in Canada look at their homes as investments rather than places to live, and they will howl bloody murder if anything depresses their precious property values. And they are a formidable voting bloc, so politicians will not take them on. (I own a home and would happily take a 25% hit to its value if it means my kids have a shot at affordable housing. I don't plan on selling my house until I'm too old to manage it anyway, so its paper value today is irrelevant to me.)
Frankly, I think it's going to take a massive societal shift to get people out of the mindset that home ownership is the holy grail of investment. Unfortunately, I doubt there's much political will to change this, and we're likely to have enormous social unrest as young people find themselves completely screwed with respect to housing.
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Re: Artificial problem (Score:1)
Ask yourself a question: what is higher number? Number of adults capable of walking 15 minutes or number of adults capable of driving?
Re: Artificial problem (Score:2)
What talent? (Score:2)
The H1Bs I've worked with were consistently bottom 50% of the average state university CS department material. I know good ones exist, but they seem to be a small minority of the people who get H1Bs in the first place since most of those go for plug-and-play slots that can easily be filled with native born graduates from average state universities.
an alternative... (Score:3, Interesting)
Just in time... (Score:2)
good luck (Score:2)
Let them go (Score:2)
leftovers (Score:1)
So, Canada gets american leftovers...