Engineers Are Leaving America For Canada (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via Bloomberg: The H-1B was created in 1990, part of an immigration overhaul signed into law by President George H.W. Bush that also created the EB-5 investor visa -- the subject of a fracas involving Kushner Cos. seeking Chinese investment -- and the diversity lottery, which Trump has attacked. Today, an estimated half a million H-1B holders live in the U.S. No one tracks exactly how many ditch their skilled visas for the permanent residency Canada offers, but during the first year of Trump's presidency, the number of tech professionals globally who got permanent residency in Canada ticked up almost 40 percent from 2016, to more than 11,000.

In 1967, Canada became the first country to adopt a points-based immigration system. The country regularly tweaks how it rates applicants based on national goals and research into what makes for successful integration: A job offer used to come with 600 points, but now it's worth just 200. Other factors like speaking fluent English or French -- or, even better, both -- have been given more weight over the years. Country of origin is irrelevant. In 2016, Canada increased national immigration levels to 300,000 new permanent residents annually. Last year, in consultation with trade groups, it created a program called the Global Skills Strategy to issue temporary work permits to people with job offers in certain categories, including senior software engineers, in as little as two weeks. Since the program started in June, more than 5,600 people have been granted permits, from the U.S., India, Pakistan, Brazil, and elsewhere.

Comments

And I thank them

[DeplorableCodeMonkey]

For doing their little part to tell my country to stop exploiting people so someone can make a quick buck. Seriously, this is America's original sin. Farming too hard in the colonies? Trap a bunch of Africans and bring them over as slaves. Couldn't possibly expect you to pick your own vegetables and cotton using your kids as the labor. Didn't want to pay a living wage? Encourage people from Europe to flood our borders. Now H1Bs. It's all the same thing.

I hope for their sake, they just aren't trading old shit for new shit.

Re:And I thank them

[sexconker]

Seriously, this is America's original sin. Farming too hard in the colonies? Trap a bunch of Africans and bring them over as slaves.

Not quite.
Africans enslaved and sold other Africans.
The Portuguese, Spanish, French and English bought those slaves then stuffed them in boats and sent them to work in their colonies (the ones that survived, anyway).

When the US was founded as an independent nation, slavery became a hot topic not because the north thought it was bad and the south was racist, but because the governing structure of the country involved indirect representation of people, and slaves were people. Well, three fifths of a person each, after haggling with the north who thought they should be zero fifths of a person.

The 3/5s compromise was fine enough until the south saw their economic and legal power was being stripped away as population and industry in the north grew and as the north kept adding states. Westward expansion saw continual fights over whether new territory / states should have slavery or not. The industrial revolution wasn't exactly kind to plantations.

The north wanted to abolish slavery and send slaves back to Africa, or at least to end the slave trade and grant protection and state citizenship to any slaves who made it north to a free state. The south, of course, wanted to keep their slaves, have them count for representation, keep the slave trade and keep expanding westward with new slave states.

Eventually, we had a civil war over the issue. The north (union) won - barely. But let's not pretend they were fighting for noble reasons. The fight over slavery was about money and power for most people of the time, not what was morally right. Even Lincoln didn't start with the Emancipation Proclamation. He was fine keeping the status quo. So much so that we engaged in the bloodiest war in US history (true to this day) when another option was available - just let the south secede.

I find it odd that people love to point to the US as being the poster boy for racism, slavery, etc. The US was not alone in that shit, and in fact inherited that shit from their British masters.

Re:But...

[UnknownSoldier]

Yes, and so is Mexico.

But (some) Americans are so damn arrogant that they think they own the bloody (northern) continent.

I'll probably be modded down into oblivion for having a contrary opinion but I wish the USA would just get it over and annex Canada and Mexico already. Once people get over the knee-jerk reaction and actually think about what this would mean -- having a unified currency, logistics, roads, units, language, military, border, etc. would provide numerous long term benefits -- albeit it would need several transition phases. Sadly the cult of nationalism / pride of patriotism keeps people focused on bullshit short-term "issues." i.e. (Some) Americans are pretty hypocritical about immigration considering they hijacked the land from the native Americans -- Go Figure.

--
Main St. built America,
Wall St. robbed it.