Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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?
It seems to me that a lifestyle that includes warm weather would be reason enough.
Having done alot of travel to the US, both for business and pleasure, let me assure you Canada's lifestyle is far different. We live in a much more secure, comfortable and friendly environment than most places in the United States. We have very little crime (Toronto, our largest city, has about 70 murders a year), we have the best health care system in the world, we have tonnes of green land, and are well respected by most of the World.
Given that I travel up to B.C. about twice a year, and that I'm going to be looking for employment up north after I graduate (two years down the road), I say 'Hell, yes!'
No worries about healthcare, low crime, fantastic local beers, hockey in the winter, Tim Hortons...er, what am I not supposed to like, again?
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
For those unaware of Canadian politics, the government faces a non-confidence vote Monday or Tuesday. It is expected to fall and call a December election.
For campaign reasons, the government has announced a flurry of new spending over the last week, most of which is expected to never materialise, whether the governing party wins again or not.
If the US is such a hell hole, why does it have to go to such lengths to keep people out?
Well respected? Maybe but I keep sensing that other countries find us about as annoying as a nat flying around your head.
Saying that, I love this country and would never move.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
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.
If American citizens are frustrated and annoyed with their government's behavior, can someone please explain how expatriating will do anything but make the problem worse?
If they have any interest in achieving their goal, shouldn't they be sending a loud message to the rest of the world, inviting like-minded individuals to come live there instead? Or perhaps convince their neighbors to read a newspaper?
Oh, wait. That would involve effort. Never mind - I forgot who I was talking about.
--
As an American I am in a better position to fix the problems than anyone. If I move to Canada (and even if I become a Canadian subject, or whatever) I have given up on influencing the course of events because I don't want to deal with some sort of guilt over my failure to do so recently?
We don't know how much worse things might have been, either. We say, and it's true, that the domestic opposition didn't prevent the administration from invading Iraq. Well, that was a failure. There is literally no way of knowing what else they might have done if given free reign - Miers on the SCOTUS is only the start of it.
In case you haven't been paying attention - the two last US elections have been very close, and their outcomes (especially in 2000) have had a tremendous impact on the rest of human history. In spite of those election results, public opinion here in the US still plays a big role in determining what the administration can and cannot get away with. If you're really concerned with human civilization, and not with melodrama, you move to a purple state, not to Canada.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
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.
>>Canada Moves to Keep Skilled Workers
No one can move an entire country, not even Superman!
The upper class seem to do well with the people currently in control in the govt. The lower class does fairly well with the hand-outs. This leaves the middle class to support all three. Immigration is mainly by people in the lower class, where they stand to benefit by moving to the USA. Meanwhile, the middle class that are already IN the usa find their situation going downhill. So you see people that want in, and people that want out.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I've already uprooted and left the US for another country.
Japan in this case.
I just couldn't get past America re-electing the failed
ideologues in the White House. Pity the people have seen the err of
their ways all too late. (ref: Bush's declining approval rating)
Barring stumbling into marriage over here, I can't see myself
staying forever though. A place like Canada is *extremely* attractive
to me on a number of levels - it's similarity to America being just one.
Having spent a bit of time in Toronto and Vancouver, they're both places
I can easily see myself living in. They're not New York or Tokyo, mind
you... but they do seem to be everything America believes itself to be -
with Jesus wonderfully absent.
The only problem I can see being an issue is that I don't particularly
care for hockey... Is that a deal-breaker on naturalization?
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.
Pick a season then. In the summer it's about 25-30c (77-86f), in the winter I've been as low as -40c/f, but generally we're in the -10 to -20 (14 to -4) range or milder. Right now it's about 4c (39.2f)
Better economy?? The Toronto Stock Exchange index is up 20% so far this year - the Dow Jones is down. The past few years have had similar results - and that is without taking into account the changes in the currencies. The Canadian federal government has posted a surplus each of the past seven years. The US government, uh, has not. Canadian unemployment levels are nearing record low levels....
What's your feeling about people immigrating TO the United States? If one applies your position equally to all countries of the world, nobody should ever leave their native land. Are you advocating that? This country is largely populated by immigrants and those descended from immigrants. I don't know the details of your family background, but chances are they were immigrants at some point. Should they have stayed in their home country? Should you have instead been born and grown up there instead of here?
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.
Have you looked at Canada's criteria for admitting skilled professionals? It's remarkably egalitarian and open - much better than the US. You basically fill out a checklist based on things like degrees held, languages spoken ... the higher you score, the easier/faster it is to get in. Canada has a form of 'open' visa, where if you qualify (say, if you have a degree and know a bit of French) you can enter Canada to look for work without actually having a job offer.
Compare that to the US and the H1-B system, where if you're outside the US you must have an offer letter and apply for the visa from outside the country (3-6 month wait for the visa to be granted, if you're lucky) and your degree has to be directly related to the job you've got the offer for.
So yeah, the basic criteria to be able to go to Canada and look for a job 'on spec' are; hold an Advanced Degree, speak either English or French fluently, and have a passing familiarity with the other.
-EvilMagnus
I'm a Canadian. You Merkans would hate it here. This place sucks. Don't come here. We regularly eat children and stab puppies for sport. It's cold and everyone has a dog-sled. This is a horrible purgatory. I beg of you, please don't come here.
Well i'm not in the US, i'm in the UK...That said, we haven't exactly done a grand job of keeping anyone out anyway...
;)
More precisley, you haven't exactly figured out who to keep in. I guess the Americans and Australians weren't the rejects that you suspected they were
How about giving up the Socialism, eh?
People leave Canada for a country with a better economy, and the government's solution is to spend more tax money! Brilliant move, eh?
I presume you're talking about the US - one of the most socialist countries on the planet (or have you opted out of the endless socialist pork projects, massive socialist war machine, and corporate welfare? Is that a checkbox on your income tax return?). Of course it isn't to benefit the poor, so Americans lift their chins up and talk about their great "capitalism" versus the evil "socialism" (of the REST OF THE 1ST WORLD), strangely imagining some moral high road.
Absolutely amazing that any American, with the enormous pork and tax-grabbing bloat of its government, can bleat the word socialist in any manner other than humor or self-deprecation.
What's even more remarkable is the fact that the all-in tax load in the US is, in many cases, similar to or greater than a comparable person in Canada. Don't tell Americans this, though - it might upset their imaginary world.
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
I left Arizona for Vancouver BC in Jan 2003. I've been telecommuting with the little web services outfit (still in AZ) ever since. I married a local last June, and she's sponsoring me for Perm Residency soon.
It was a great relief. My first coherent thought after 9/11 was "This is how tyrants are made". I seem to have been right.
I have absolutely no regrets. Answer your question?
At just about any income level, a family with a single income, filing jointly, and owning their home will be much better off just about anywhere in the U.S. compared to Canada: there is no deduction for morgtage interest for non-investment property in Canada, and couples with a single income can't file jointly (and the spousal credit is mediocre, about CA$7-8k at the *lowest* marginal tax rate taken off your gross tax burden).
I once figured out that for marrieds, taxes in the U.S., in a no-income tax state, are generally lower once income goes above $US15k.
It's the main reason we left Canada for the U.S. -- we could not afford to live in Canada anymore with the high taxes, and mediocre health care (free, perhaps, but non-existent for the most part).
You could've hired me.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Canada is not a socialist country and it has a pretty damn good economy. Here is a graph of the Toronto Stock Exchange vs. the S&P500. By your metric, if Canada is Socialist then almost every western country other than the US must be too. Checkout The Economist's factsheet for Canada. Also, Canada has the second largest oil reserves in the world.
(Actually, in America, you might get turfed out in critical situations anyway. Many hospitals don't have an emergency room, as they cost more than they make and US hospitals are there for profit not care. Those ER rooms that do exist are hopelessly overcrowded, overworked and are considered by the CDC to be extremely high risk areas in the event of an outbreak of a contageous disease. If bird flu ever goes critical, it will likely do so in a US emergency room.)
The American situation, unlike the British and Canadian counterparts, is not fixable. Because hospitals in the US are profit ventures, not health-care centers, they have no interest in doing anything that will cost more than it will earn. Proper emergency care is expensive and earns little, as most accident and crime victims are uninsured and/or flat broke. They have no interest in lowering prices, because the bulk of "paying" customers have health insurance and so never see the real price tag and therefore have no reason to care what it is.
Insurance companies in the US are also money-grubbers and they know how to rake the money in. By charging the companies a "reduced rate" for bulk purchases, they can absolutely guarantee that customers never see the real cost to their paychecks. The victim - errr, employee - only sees a given deduction for their deduction. What they don't see is what the company is really paying and therefore what the company is really calculating payscales on. In the end, you pay the full cost but you only see a fraction of it on the pay stub.
By these accounting tricks and other fraud, the US employees are bilked billions of dollars and somehow consider themselves better off because they don't have the wait. Trust me, if you threw billions of dollars out the window in England, you'd get prompt healthcare too. Well, just as soon as anyone realized that was real money and not something from a Monopoly game.
(For that matter, there's always BUPA, if you insist on the insurance thing in more civilized lands.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
wait, you recognise the problem, but you still want to move to "almost as socialist as europe" Canada?
As a Canadian who has worked for years both in Canada and the United States, and having taken the plunge 18 months ago to come back to Canada to work, I can say that it has been an unpleasant experience.
/.ers think that Canada is some magical place of freedom. It's not. Freedom of speech is curtailed as we have laws against "hate speech" that the US would consider violations of the First Amendment. Freedom of the press is a joke, since several times reporters were spied on, wiretapped or just simply had their personal files confiscated without a warrant by corrupt police who feel that due process is an inconvenience. Our Senate isn't elected nor provides regional representation, but is an expensive rubber stamp with no real power. Heck, we didn't even have our full independence from the United Kingdom until April 19, 1982! We have sexist and racist government departments that purposely exclude white males from positions supposedly in the name of diversity. There are 36,000 deportation orders on illegal immigrants that can't be executed because the government doesn't know where they are. They let the families of Somali warlords and Sikh terrorists stay in this country. And, in general, the majority of people here have been lulled into utter stupidity by the clever social engineering of Pierre Trudeau's liberal party over the last 35 years that has their party about to be voted back into power that has stolen billions of dollars from taxpayers (Adscam, HRDC et al). Not to mention that Canada is the only major industrialized nation in the world to
Healthcare up here is abysmal. Trying to find a family doctor is nearly impossible, and there are long wait times for elective procedures and medical imaging. One of our family friends died of a heart attack after waiting nearly a year for bypass surgery. I'm paying more for health care up here than I ever did in the US due to my premiums.
Education is a joke up here too. Ontario, for example, passes ALL children unless they basically hand in nothing or choose to do nothing throughout the year. My neighbor's son got straight "R" grades ("F" is no longer politically correct), yet somehow passed to Grade 5 last year. That'll keep happening until he graduates high school, even though this kid still can't read a basic "See Jane Run" type book.
Daily life is ok, but there are some things you have to be aware of. Although the overall murder rate is lower in Canada, per-capita rates of rape and property crime are all higher than in the United States. I feel less safe here than I did in the San Francisco Bay area and much less safe than in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. Try rolling through Toronto and see what it's like these days. Forget about the unbelievably bitter cold, excessive snow if you live in Eastern Canada, and generally longer winters. Weather counts for a lot.
Then there's the financial aspect of it. Sure, people don't get bankrupted here, but if you're not chronically or seriously ill you are better off in the US. I've paid more for health care here since my employer doesn't cover my premiums (yes, we pay premiums, $60/month/person). Auto insurance is 50% more expensive than what I paid for in California, plus I can't remove tickets from my record with traffic school. House prices are insane; I can't buy a fully-detached house with two car garage for under $400k, and I can't deduct my mortgage interest or property taxes from my federal taxes. I get paid less in equivalent dollars than any job in the US, and all of my Canadian friends who have worked both places want to go back south unless they have significant family obligations north of the 49th. I pay more in taxes, especially at the till (15% sales tax on a car is insane!). The government's overly-liberal immigration policies make unemployment consistently 2% higher at a minimum than in the United States so I'm always looking over my shoulder thinking when my time might be next.
Finally, there's the government. Lots of
So, just live across the border in Washington State and commute every morning on your wife.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
There's also no taxes owing for capital gains when you sell that non-investment property. My house in Vancouver, BC has gone up in value by more than $125,000 in the last 3 years. Given a choice between a 17% deduction on the interest portion of my mortgage versus $125,000 in tax-free cash I think I'll take the latter....
Funny you should say that health care is non-existent in Canada. Because Canadians pay less per capita for health care then the people in the US. Americans pay 14% of GDP and don't cover everyone. Just the rich and those with corporate health plans can afford it. While in Canada we pay 12% GDP and everyone is covered on our health plan. Regardless of who you are and what you do for a living.
Non-Existent is an exageration. Thats what the ultra right wing fasists will have you believe so that they can consider installing a two tierd health care system.
As for affording to live in Canada. I don't believe its the taxes that are difficult to live with. Its the lack of work. Lets face it there are more opportunities in the US. Canadian companies are pansies and won't take a chance on someone if they have no experience. Have you looked at what the requirements are in Canada for working in the computer science field. I can safeley say that most job postings are unrealistic when it comes to the job requirements. But thats what Free trade got us companies moving down to the US because they don't want to pay into a public health care system even though they pay less.
Free trade is the problem not the high taxes. Since free trade came in Corporate Canada has been completely gutted. Even the Hudsons Bay Company is subject to an American take over bid. A 300 Year old company. Its been around longer then when IBM was selling Cheese Slicers. Yet its subject to a takeover bid. Thats just not right.
I remember when Free trade first came in to Canada. I personally witnessed a 20 year old company go out of business within a few months of an American big box store come in to the market in Vancouver. That big box store was Home Depot. They drove out a smaller company that served the Greater Vancouver area well for more then 20 years. And the list doesn't stop there. Eatons was purchased by Sears, Woodwards went out of business all together, and McMillan Blodel was bought up by Wearhouser. McMillan Blodel was the biggest logging company in Canada and one of the biggest in the world. That gives you an Idea of the negative impact free trade has had on Canada. The taxes are manageable. They'd be manageable if it wasn't for outside presures. Personally I hope our prime minister follows up on his threats and dumps the North American Free Trade Agreement. That would be the best thing that has ever happened to Canada.
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.
"Also, Canada has the second largest oil reserves in the world." Yes, sir, Mister President, I do believe Canada is intending to use weapons of mass destruction against us.
Except this is unlikely to be the case in the situation the parent described.
Nope. 80% of Americans get their health insurance paid for by their employers. It is in fact very likely.
Most people employed in the only area of job expansion in the US - the burger flipping.
Nope. Here are the fastest growing ocupations in the US over the past 10 years:
Health aides 138%
Human service workers 136%
Personal and home care aids 130%
Computer engineers and scientists 112%
Systems analysts 110%
Physical and corrective therapy assistants and aides 93%
Physical therapists 88%
Paralegals 86%
Teachers, special education 74%
Medical assistants 71%
In general the top categories are in health care. It seems to me that a nation with the terrible health care problems you claim would not be adding health care workers at that rate.
Wal-Mart and other "service" industries do not have any such benefits
Wal-Mart does in fact offer health covereage to it's workers. The problem here is that their pay rate is so low that about half of them decline coverage.
Such benefits are today restricted mostly to the CEO class.
Utter nonsense. My insurance coverage, which I pay $25 a month for includes 100% hospital coverage, free prescriptions and $5 a visit copay to the doctor. Two years ago I needed an MRI for an ankle injury and was able to get an appointment in 3 days. Out of pocket cost was $0. I am definitely NOT a CEO class person.
An economist my ass.
A Nobel Prize winning economicist, actually.
It seems to me that you are living in some sort of weird fantasy world not connected in any way to what the reality is.
There are not many people like you there statistically. You are an elite exception. Also a huge, $1200 a month, tax on an employer is supposedly somehow better then personal taxation how again?
and it's for far better care than I can get in Canada -
And that would be how precisely? Blow jobs by nurses? 1400 square feet bed-rooms with French maids? What?
much of what it covers is not covered by provincial health care programs.
Ouija boards or Chinese Astrological Brick To The Head Therapy I presume?
Even then, it's still cheaper
$1200 a month is cheaper? Does it cover whatever that thing is you are smoking right now too?