The corollary of this is that with our punishingly high personal income and capital gains taxes and dearth of good exits for startups, the only thing we really have going for us is our sane points-based immigration system. I work at a company with a lot of engineers who were trying to get entry to the US and gave up and decided to work towards PR in Canada instead.

We are essentially arbitraging America's dysfunctional immigration rules. If the Americans ever get smart and pass comprehensive immigration reform (hint - like Obama's Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 which never got a vote in the House and withered on the vine), tech in Canada is even more screwed than it is now.

I lived in Seattle and enjoyed it, but staying in America long term was never an option for me. There's so much more to living in Canada than just our immigration system.

Even with the pay cut for being in Canada, and even with the additional taxes, I still make enough money to not need to worry about money. More money would be nice, but it's not all that motivating.

Meanwhile, those taxes go to things I think are important: a strong public education system; a health care system based on need, not wealth; a safe, gun-free society; a safe haven for refugees in need.

In my office in Toronto, probably 1000+ Amazon devs could transfer to an American office and make more money. But we don't. The same goes for the even larger Vancouver office.

Our immigration rules are just one aspect of why devs live here.

You work at AMZN - I work at a US company in Canada too. Canada is a nation of branch-offices, largely because we have no VC-ecosystem, which is largely because we're a highly redistributive country with high capital gains taxes.

What makes us attractive for branch offices is that smart, hard-working, well-educated immigrants who can't make it into the US can often make it into Canada. Native born Canadians, OTOH, are leaving in droves (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/technology/article-...)

But we're a terrible place to start a company and exit, which is why it doesn't happen very often.

The original poster claimed that Canada could replace Silicon Valley - that's not going to happen without a better ecosystem for funding start-ups and rewarding founders.

As for those devs who choose to stay here when they could leave on a TN-1, make twice the money in the US after taxes and expenses (including health insurance and private schooling for kids), and work on more interesting problems at US companies, I encourage them to do the math. They're not doing themselves any favors living in unliveably-expensive cities earning pennies and not saving for retirement, and retirement will come a lot sooner than they think.

Yet, taxes are still higher in California than in Canada unless you make something like $350k+ (the crossover point used to be a bit lower but then Trump removed the State tax deduction).

And if you ignore things like Canada’s VAT.

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19156756

As I corrected your lies in that thread, I'll correct them here as well.

H-1B visas had nothing to do with Silicon Valley. The H-1B visa was created in 1990. Silicon Valley had already existed for decades by then. How can H-1B visas be the reason that Silicon Valley exists if Silicon Valley predates H-1B visas by decades?

You do realize that H-1B visas aren't confined solely to Silicon Valley right? Zuckerburg could have gotten H-1B visas workers to work in Massachussettes. There are plenty of interviews by zuckerburg stating why he moved to california. It had nothing to do with H-1B visas.

And H-1B visas doesn't prevent zuckerburg from opening offices all over the world.

Canada is a country, not a small region like silicon valley. And if canada becomes the new silicon valley, good for them. Please stop repeating the same lies over and over again.

Nonsense. I am guessing you have never been silicon valley. 90% or more of tech workers there were born outside USA.

Edit: it is 70%, which is still very high. https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/17/h-1b-foreign-citizens...

What exactly is the meat of the criticism above?

Where did you get this stat? You're calling others liars while posting questionable stats yourself.

Ignoring the fact that "90% of tech workers there were born outside the USA" is absolutely false, what does that have to do with H-1B visas?

It could be true that 90% of tech workers were born outside the USA and none of them could be H-1B visa holders. There are plenty of american tech workers who immigrated to the US as a child and became american citizens. Like sergei brin or jerry yang. They may be born outside the US, but none of them are H-1B visa holders. They were all american citizens.

The fact that you are intentionally lying and being sneaky with stats is very worrisome.