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Canada Moves to Keep Skilled Workers
ashitaka writes "Just in time for all those who have vowed to leave the United States in response to government policies and mainstream cultural malaise, the Canadian government is announcing a C$700 million initiative to help skilled workers stay in Canada and become citizens. If you had the choice, would you really uproot to a new country especially one where the lifestyle isn't that much different than your own?"
The question, however, is what is then going to happen to the immigration laws. Presumably they are going to have to do something to prevent just anyone jumping in and claiming. Will this preclude the majority of people? Will they lower the immigration requirements? Who can say?
~HTP~ Hug that tux
The US is a large country. The "lifestyle of the US" does differ from region to region. To travel to "most places in the US" and get a good appreciation of each would take years. I'm sure Canada is similar.
I moved from 1 state to another and life is very different for me. Turns out I like where I live now, I don't ever want to move back. And if I travel to different parts of my state, life is quite different.
As a Canadian living and working in the States, I wish the Canadian government would have done more to keep skilled citizens rather than attracting skilled immigrants. Unfortunately it is really just too easy to max out in the Canadian market place and the only option is to move south.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
After over three quarters of my state voted with the fucking Klan to write discrimination into our motherfucking state constitution, I'm quite ready to leave this state.
:P
Any takers for a drug-design oriented chemist with high-level systems administration and Unix development skills? Texas sure doesn't seem to want to hold onto its 21st century workforce, favoring 12th century social mores instead.
Just as I am researching what it takes to immigrate to Canada, job opportunities, quality of life, housing prices, etc.
I come from Europe and, no offense to our American friends, find Canada a much more appealing choice than the USA - exactly because I perceive Canada and Canadian mentality to be much closer to a European mindset.
I admit this may just be a whim, but coming from a country where everybody under 40 years of age is suffering from financial rape from the older generation, Canada sure does look appealing.
I think it depends on what part of the industry you're looking at. The games industry, for example, is very big here in Vancouver -- my boyfriend works for EA, and I'm going to be doing a co-op job (that's an internship, for you American types) in January at a small startup game company. To my knowledge, a lot of American companies, particularly those of the video game persuasion, are actually outsourcing to Canada because thanks to public healthcare and other perks, we're cheaper to employ.
Also, it probably doesn't mean much, but all of my friends who are recent computer science grads managed to find jobs very soon after graduation. I don't know how their wages were, but I haven't heard any complaints.
These days, Canadians aren't too interested in wars, but they still tend to cooperate and help each other out. The army mostly does peacekeeping these days.
Americans, alas, have distinctly moved towards regarding the world as a dog-eat-dog one, with wars and militias as standard features.
I, for one, think this is a bad thing, and harmful to my American cousins.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
I can see this initiative as targeting the citizenry of the United States. It makes perfect sense to target them, and here's why:
US citizens already speak english, work with dollars and cents, drive cars on the right, etc. At the core, they're basically the same (less some cultural differences) as Canadians. Less government money spent on teaching them english or how to drive.
Right now the Canadian dollar is at $0.85USD. The minimum wage in Ontario is at $7.45CDN/hour for an adult (slightly less for people who serve food/beverages and are subject to gratuities), which is more than $6.25USD/hour. Bear in mind too, that minimum wage is typically only paid to entry level jobs, and most other jobs pay more. I've heard horror stories of US Wal-Mart workers making maybe $5/hour - come up here and get a pay raise!
Come on up boys, We've got plenty of room!
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
For those who are curious, the above is not an exaggeration, as shown by this film.
As partially summarized by a Canadian blogger, "When you have finished watching this film several images will remain with you for some time to come. A woman who spent two years waiting for knee surgery and innocently asks the American filmmakers whether the waiting lists are as long there as they are here. The moment when she begins to grasp that a health care waiting list is a concept alien to most sick Americans, though sadly not health care compelled bankruptcy, is something that cannot be explained. More stories follow of addiction to pain killers brought on by wait times, of the suffering families go through, of men and women calmly contemplating death for ailments which medical science long ago conquered, but which government control has placed out of reach."
An explanation of my choices for friends
Some parts of Ontario are on the same latitude as northern California ... in fact they have several wineries in that area.
The Ezine Directory
Consider Alberta as a place to look for work. Our two major cities (Edmonton and Calgary) are the fastest growing in Canada. There's lots of IT employment available if you have the skills, heck there's lots of most kinds of employment. We currently have a shortage of skilled workers, and a jobless rate of less than 5%. It's not quite as beautiful or warm as BC, but it's still nice. I'm a Calgarian myself. When I compare the quality of life in Calgary to most other places, the results are enough to motivate me to tough out the weather. Course, sometimes I've got to take holidays to somewhere warm.
It takes time to see specialists here in America too. Three months would be rare, but it happens. A lot of it just has to do with the supply and demand for people with specialized medical knowledge. Canada is a little bit worse off because lower wages for doctors->lower # of people willing to be doctors.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
The question of living in Canada vs USA depends a lot on your skill set (job qualifications), home language, tolerance of bad weather, politics, and intoxicational preference.
Let's say you have a good job skill set and can get a job more or less either north or south of the 49th parallel. If you speak French as a native language, you'll most likely feel more comfortable in Quebec. If you speak Spanish as a home language, Miami, Los Angeles, or New York would be more confortable. This issue is neutral for native English or other language speakers, eh?
If you don't really like the cold, but don't mind dark gloomy rainy days (say you're a goth programmer or gamer), Vancouver BC would definitely beat the rest of Canada, New England, California, or Florida (too much sunshine).
Fascists, either Christian or racial, will definitely feel more at home in the USA. It's your kind of place.
Cannibus lovers, ('Stoners' to everyone else) will be more comfortable in British Columbia than anywhere in the USA, except possibly Maui. Not even the Humboldt Thunderbolt beats the BC bud. And you're less likely to have a Hummerload of psycho Iraqi vets kicking in your door and sticking machine guns or tasers in your kid's faces at 3am if you smoke in British Columbia instead of the USA. That's important to some people, less to others.
In general, everything that you buy in a store is cheaper in the USA. Canada has insane sales taxes on top of high prices. This is the big issue for most people deciding USA vs. Canada. Big income taxes too. However the money collected in taxes mostly gets back to the Canadian people in some form, whereas in the US taxes paid go mostly to giant corporations with fat government contracts.
However if you're gonna get sick, try to get sick in Canada instead. With the new bankruptcy laws in the USA, along with a corrupt and insanely expensive health care system there, you'll be in debt forever if you need medical care in the USA. Like if you get shot. The US has more guns than people, Canada doesn't.
So why am I not yet living there myself? I am just too lazy to leave for now. Also, I wonder if enough Americans moved there, would we eventually mess the place up and make it an extention of our own country? Ohwell, to fully grasp the reality of this subject, I think you would need the experiance of being a resident both in the United States and in Canada. Even then, keep in mind that not all of the United States is alike, certainly different places in Canada must have some sort of social/economical distinctions from other places. Okay, I think this post is long enough now, I will stop here.
And in case anyone wants to cry about how fast food people deserve health coverage too - don't worry. They get it. My mom works in fast food and has health coverage. My brother works at Radio Shack and has health coverage. Fuck, my girlfriend is a stripper and even SHE has health coverage.
So where are all these full-time employed adults without any health coverage that I keep hearing about? I mean, everyone makes it sound like there are more people driving Escalades than have health coverage, so . . . I want to know. And of those who aren't full-time employed adults with employee health coverage - how many aren't getting health coverage from the state?
Turns out, income taxes for median incomes (roughly CAD$52k in the US per household, roughly CAD$56k in Canada per household) are more or less equivalent dependant on province vs. state. You'd be better off anywhere in Canada than, say, Texas. If you make 60k or less, you'll probably pay less tax in Canada. If you make 60k or more, you'll pay more. Particularly if you're a landowner... Canada doesn't give big tax breaks for land ownership, which is unfortunate... but you can get a significant portion of dividend income tax free, so if you're getting started in the investor class, you've got some advantages.
GST does make things more expensive, but cost of living varies so widely based on region both in Canada and the US that it's essentially useless to make comparisons.
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
Yes. It's good to find a Canadian who agrees that if the so-called Loyalists had stayed at home and tried to make their state better instead of fleeing to Canada, everybody would be better off.
Of course, it's not too late. As the grandparent stated, more can be done from within the US than from outside. Surely twenty new US senators, and a corresponding shift in the House of Representatives, from north what is now the Canada-US border would make a tremendous difference. You seem to be one of those rare Canadians who recognizes this.
Write Only Memory: Another pointless blog.
America is just as socialist as Canada or any European country.
...). In Canada and most European countries, the socialism is more towards things like a health care system, welfare state, etc ...
...
Only difference is that most of the American style "socialism" is more towards the military and defense sector (ie. Halliburton, Bechtel, etc
America has all kinds of socialistic institutions like:
The Federal Reserve Bank,
Fannie Mae,
Freddie Mac,
Social Security,
The US Postal Service,
Pension Benefit Guarnaty Corporation,
Medicare,
Medicaid,
Amtrak,
etc
We're doing fine at keeping skilled doctors etc. in, working the NHS etc., the problem is the non-workers. I was waiting at a bus stand a few months back and i started talking to this guy there. He told me he was a South African and that he was only here to get his family transported over so his son could have an operation free on the NHS. I don't exactly call that a good reason to be over here, given that the goverment are already EXTREMELY generous to immigrants, what with giving them a house and car for free, more than pensioners or disabled people get.
~HTP~ Hug that tux
And your "record low level" is 6.6%. During our "recession," we hit a high of 6.3
Only because people dropped off unemployment completely and thus disappeared from the statistics. Had we been counting actual bodies and not just checks we'd still be in the hole right now.
"Bah!" - Dogbert
Also as an American currently living in Canada, I must disagree. Canadian healthcare is FAR superior.
Canadian healthcare does the job -- everyone has a basic level of care. For specialized services that are not life threatening, you wait. In the US, if you are fortunate enough to have good insurance, you can fight your way through the system and get care...once. After that, you're hosed unless you manage to keep insurance through your work, because you'll never get insurance personally again.
My wife waited 3 months for a gynecological procedure in Bellingham, WA before we moved. She's been waiting for 5 months or more here in Vancouver for a possible knee procedure.
Emergency medicine is exactly the same here except that you don't get a multithousand dollar bill at the end of the experience.
Our last complete year in the US, we paid over $14,000 US for medical insurance. In BC, we pay about $1300 CDN. The $5K CDN or so in extra taxes we paid saved us a bunch of money.
And BTW, only 2% or so of Canadians ever avail themselves of US healthcare, despite claims that Canadians flock to the US to get care they can't get on time in Canada. Just ain't so.
If you want warmer weather both Australia and New Zealand have skilled immigrant classifications. I haven't looked into it but Belize is also a warm english speaking country where you might be able to relocate to. IN the pacific there is also saipan, guam (yuck) and fiji. There are also many countries where english is widely spoken even if it's not the primary language. The nice thing about canada is that it's easy to visit the US if you miss your friends and family.
evil is as evil does
It's more about not staying where you are not wanted. Bush sr said that atheists are not real americans and should be allowed to vote for example. The exact quote was " I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
This is the president of the USA telling atheist citizens that they don't belong in the country. Other members of this administration have made similar remarks about atheists, collage professors, environmentalists, femminists, homosexuals and other people they hate.
Why stay in a country that you are not wanted in? Why not move to a place where people don't hate you?
evil is as evil does
You know, I keep hearing about this, but none of my Canadian friends have ever mentioned it; I mean, I'm not saying it doesn't ever happen, but I don't think it's the big problem that a bunch of Americans make it out to be. Hell, last time my friend Sarah got sick with a nasty cold (!), the local hospital offered to send out an AMBULANCE to pick her up.
On the flip side, if you're a student in the US, you can shell out $100 a month for CRAP healthcare -- as in, if the Student Heath Center is open and you don't go there first, you can pay your own bills, and unless it's an emergency (life-threatening), you had better not even think of going to see a doctor, because the student insurance won't cover it. Oh, and it won't cover anything out-of-network, so I owe my dentist $150 because the student insurance I forked out about won't cover cleanings with my regular dentist.
At least I have healthcare; half of the people I go to school with don't, because $100 a month is more than they can afford.
Now that I'm working 'full time' again, things are better (back to real healthcare), but having experienced 'cheap healthcare' for a year, I'd rather see us Americans with a better system.
I hate to say it, but I think the Japanese have something going with the way they run things -- even without being on the 'National Insurance', I was able to go to a Japanese clinic and have my cough diagnosed as a really nasty case of pneumonia -- and was out the door after a total of an hour, with a small bag filled with about five different kinds of medication, and all for about $200 (IIRC). I shudder to think of what two sets of chest X-rays and about two weeks of meds would have cost in the U.S. without insurance.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
The fact that some Americans, like myself, do not have healthcare coverage is too broad a statement to act as a condemnation. There are multiple reasons why some people do not have coverage and not all are automatically immoral. Personally, without coverage, I'm not tied to any particular doctor or healthplan. If I don't like the service I'm getting, I walk along with my money.
An explanation of my choices for friends
Vancouver's great, and it's on my list of cities I'd move to if I really wanted to get out of San Francisco Bay Area or out of the US. Weather's like Seattle, culture's interesting, coffee's good, and you can get out of town easily. And as far as "would I move to a different country with similar culture", I moved from New Jersey to San Francisco; moving to Vancouver wouldn't be as big a change. Moving to Toronto would be, because it'd be moving back to a culture with winter.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Ah yes, I forgot the slashdot rules. A Brit with a gentle poke at Americans is all in good fun, but an American doing it is xeonphobic ;)
In all seriousness though, I agree with you that the American and British laws and/or their enforcement tend to be favorable to immigrants and are prone to abuse. It doesn't particularly bother me though, I'd certainly rather that then the inverse elitist anti-immigrant mentality (anyone heard of the hoops one has to jump through to earn Swiss or Japanese citizenship?). I'm not sure if say that because of the old American give-us-your-wretched mentality, or because the population density of the US still allows it, or because the US economy benifits from it (IMHO anyways, I'm sure someone would argue it).
This is kind of an aside, but I've kind of always wondered this about the English. You're example an abuse of NHS was that of a South African man... but do you feel any obligation towards South Africa? I mean, the British rape of India & Sub-Saharan Africa only ended ~60 years ago, and has yet to recover. Not that the US (or any other nation) doesn't have skeletons in its closet, of course - but do you think such relativley recent disadvantages should factor into said immigration laws, college admissions, job applications, tax breaks, et cetra? The US has decided "yes" (hotly debated though), and I was wondering the take on it over in the UK.
I moved from Arizona to Hamburg, Germany just over a year ago. The best move I've ever made. I make a little more money than the US national average for a Unix Admin but the cost of living here is much lower than Phoenix or my other recent home San Diego, CA.
The health care system here is also socialized but with an option for private health care (either exclusive or in addition to) your basic health care.
Naturally there is the language problem. You can live here if you don't speak German but it would be very very difficult. For me, that's not a problem though.
The immigration laws are extremely strict for most nationalities but not nearly as bad for Americans. They do kindof use a Catch22 system though. You can't get residence permission without employment and a registered address here. You can't rent an apartment or get a job without residence permission though. There are loopholes but it's tough.
Of course, if anyone in your family tree, has or had, even the slightest percentage of German blood you can get citizenship pretty easily.
If you're married to a German, you don't have to change your citizenship to live here. Of course you can if you want to but it's not required which is my case.
Crime is extremely low everywhere and the weather is similar to the Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York region.
The IT market is somewhat thin, similar to the US, but there are plenty of jobs out there.
...there'd just be no-one to pump your gas.
So who was pumping all the gas before there were 10 million illegals in the country? Industrial robots?
Maybe if you stopped to think a second you would realize that the reason such menial jobs pay so little is because of the labor market distortions introduced by unchecked immigration. If that distortion were corrected, wages would rise until those jobs were filled by legal workers. It's as simple as that.