The stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Since it's 9:37am the morning after I'm guessing many people are at anger moving into bargaining right now. "I'm mad and if I move to Canada it will show everyone and solve my problems". We should be moving into acceptance by the weekend. No need to DDOS this poor site.
The problem I see in this case is a lot of genuine uncertainty. Particularly if you are IT in a global reaching business, of whom would be affected by talk on clamping down on free trade and immigration.
Trump could end up being an old style Republican in disguise after all, for all we know, and the campaign bluster is just bluster. That's not bad for the career path. Trump could also be a genuine raging fascist. That's not really good for the career path at all. Or Trump could end up being in that "most likely" middle, aka a Berlusconi type figure. For the career path there, that's a solid "meh" (although I did hear there was a bit of a brain drain in the Berlusconi days).
Remember that Hillary Clinton was "most likely" to win. You can't take "most likely" for granted these days. So one needs to evaluate all options (without being so ridiculously alarmist and realize that the worst case doesn't always happen). In the worst case scenario, I can't imagine global-reaching companies being gun-ho about maintaining a strong presence here. And I "go where the jobs go", to be honest.
Some of the Canada querying I'm sure is OMG PANIC but maybe some of it is also hedging your bets...
We all have much less control over our career paths than we realize. Do your best work everyday, try to be pleasant to the people you manage/work with/work for. Throw a few percent of every check into a decent index fund, put down the smart phone when your kids want your attention, and if your career ends as a Walmart door greeter or replaceable corporate cog, all the "coulda's" in the world won't change anything.
My co-founder in my last startup was in the first round of startup visas. It worked out and is a great program but be careful not to exit too quickly without reading the fine print. They weren't prepared for us exiting to a big public US company so quickly. Aside from that. Great program! Ping me if you want to do it, I'm looking for a new cofounder for next one!
slajax, would love to learn more. Wish HN had a private messaging service.
You could email this handle at Marissa Mayer's company. (Trying to avoid spammy screen scrapers).
Having helped a company that went through our accelerator to get a start-up visa for the three founders, the deal isn't great, but it is a more direct path to citizenship. You do need to go through not just an accredited investor, but a "chosen" one. One of the main issues is that the list of investors from which you can take money is pretty small (mostly those who helped design the program) and there is no gatekeeper, so they are overwhelmed with applications from companies of all sorts and as a result largely don't respond at all . As with all things investment, you need to know someone who knows someone to help you secure and complete the application. Even then the process is long.
The idea itself is great, but the execution on the program since its inception has been weak. It needs more resources and better support for the firms and investors who can assist. All of that aside, I have seen the program work, but you can expect to put in the same amount of work as raising a small round and then some to make it happen.
Could not agree more. I'm a Canadian living in the US right now so I've effectively contributed to Canada's brain drain, but this is a unique opportunity for them to make some moves to try to turn it around a bit.
I'm on a TN, as are many of my co-workers. Trump's campaign website did not say anything about Canadian NAFTA work permit holders. We aren't too worried, but we also need know that a Canadian subsidiary + J-1 isn't hard to get if we really have to go that way.
I'm not on TN but I have used it in the past. If Trump ends NAFTA I would imagine the TN visa would go with it since it's part of NAFTA. I'm sure it would disrupt a lot of lives.
If you disagree with me how about you talk about it like an adult instead of degrading this conversation into shitposting?
Trump is not Mitt Romney. If Romney had have won in 2012, not much would be different in all likelihood. In the case of Trump the guy is so unpredictable that it's difficult to know what - if anything - he's going to do. I don't see why other countries shouldn't take advantage of that unpredictability.
Europe is having a lot of issues integrating their own intra-continental migration (Poles, Hungary, Romania, etc.), let alone American immigration. This is a privileged position that poor immigrants don't have. It's a bit ironic.
I got in touch with an incubator and a prominent immigration law firm last week. The incubator told me they are no longer associated with the Startup Visa program, and the law firm told me that most VC and incubators have withdrawn.
Very few visas have been issued, but I don't know if that is owing to high rejections, or just low applications.
Yes, if you're sick of divisive in your face politics, and understand that that a social contract (higher taxes and broad access to healthcare) are important to society, please come to Canada.
I am a US expat, and have been in Canada for about 12 years. While no place is perfect I feel like it was a good move.
If you do decide to come, and end up in Southern Ontario, drop me a note!
Income taxes are about even with California in Ontario & BC, except you're not paying $500/employee/month for a healthcare plan, so in the end you might call it cheaper as far as tax load goes.
The costs of everything although is higher. You also do not have a mortgage interest deduction and sales tax is higher and unescapable. You cant do the 'order something from another state and not pay use taxes' thing that you can in the USA.
The IRA / Roth IRA equivalents (RRSP / TFSA) can be arguably called better. You don't have early withdrawal penalties as far as I can recall.
Property tax tends to be lower in BC, and so are mortgage rates. The cost to purchase a house in Toronto/Vancouver is significantly higher than most of the USA although and has horrible affordability ratios.
More info here if you're considering a move to (or back to) Canada to work in tech: http://gonorthcanada.ca/
Also, the Canadian government recently announced it will bring in a fast-track visa/work permit system for highly skilled foreign workers (two-week turnaround for qualified candidates). http://betakit.com/government-unveils-global-skills-strategy...
okay i don't mean to be rude, but i'm actually a startup founder looking to score this exact visa for myself soon. i was under the impression you couldn't just "create a company and receive a visa", but rather you need the endorsement of some kind of incubator or accredited investor. is that not true?
You can come to Canada with $1m and get a visa, with the promise that you'll invest $1m in business. This was used by rich people from HongKong. The window of opportunity has closed but still possible in provinces like Québec. When people say "create a company and receive a visa", they refer to this program.
Another kind of visa is the start-up visa. You create a startup and get investment through selected incubators and VCs. You can then get a visa.
What's also interesting and easy are work visas. You apply for a job requiring good talent. It's then straightforward to get a work visa. Usually the startup takes care of the paperwork. When you come and stay for a few months, you then decide if you want to apply for permanent residentship.
> What's also interesting and easy are work visas. You apply for a job requiring good talent. It's then straightforward to get a work visa. Usually the startup takes care of the paperwork. When you come and stay for a few months, you then decide if you want to apply for permanent residentship.
This is very far from my experience. Even large companies (AMD in my case) dread the 8month process of getting a work permit in Canada.
Calling it straight forward is not entirely accurate:
- Apply for jobs with the handicap of a 8 month hiring wait and the associated lawyer costs (no you can't realistically do this yourself).
- Have your employer to be initiate work permit application process (you can't initiate this process), which is actually two separate (and serial) applications.
- Traverse the layer cake of incompetence and bureaucracy that is the CIC (Citizenship and Immigration).
- Maybe come out with a work permit on the other side.
- Your new work permit is bound to your current employer.
- Stick around and renew your work permit for 3 years.
Still more accessible than applying for permanent residentship. Immigration is lengthy, you never know how much time it takes, requires you to have a big sum of money in your bank account, and there's the stress of even not knowing if you will find a job when moving.
Going with a work visa can be a pain, but still a more viable plan for a programmer than going through the permanent immigration route.
I have/had a Canadian work permit from decades ago when I worked in Vancouver. Dunno what it means now, if anything. I'll have to dig that out. Options.
Trump marched forward despite so much negativity against him. He worked really hard to overcome his limitations and at the end won people over. Nothing could stop him.
Why are you guys throwing in the towel at the slightest discomfort?.
Slightest discomfort? Not only has he abused races (Mexican rapists), religions (ban on Muslims) and genders (women to be grabbed by the pussy), he's also entirely and totally unqualified for office, has no idea how the Presidency works, and is a walking international relations liability.
He now represents a political party that controls the Presidency, the House and Senate. That will nominate a number of Supreme Court nominees who will most likely overturn judgements on gay marriage and abortion rights.
So, gee, I guess I can see why some people might feel slight discomfort at any or all of that.
Why wouldn't I? I want the best standard of living for myself and my family, with the best opportunities. Why would I stay somewhere that acts counter to that?
US is built on the brain drain from Europe(post ww2), India, Eastern Europe and other countries. Making it hostile for minorities and immigrants will cause the reversal of this.
>Because good ol' USA literally just elected a fascist.
As of right now the counts are showing a plurality of voters selected Clinton. What chose Trump is our antiquated election system that weighs rural voters more per capita.
I'm no Clinton supporter--I despise the woman--but if I didn't live in NYC I'd have voted for her. I didn't bother because the system is set up so any extra votes in NY don't matter.
If I were a Trump supporter I'd stay home for similar reasons.
There are a lot of objective parallels between the rise of Hitler and Trump. When people are comparing him with a facist it's not because they think that tomorrow he will build concentration camps but that he uses the same rhetoric.
Hell in big lines you can compare the arguments that a Hitler used to get in power against that of a Trump and see the same stuff popping up again and again.
Against the elite, the fault of a specific group, talking about deportations, bringing jobs back lost also by foreigners, inward views, derogatory views against foreign countries,... . The list goes on.
We should respect the choice Americans make but when the world is reacting anxious it's about more than simple cliches.
I'm getting slightly tired of the gaslighting on HN. Trump is not a fascist because of a difference of opinion. He's a fascist because he's a fascist. Sexual assault is also not a difference of opinion, it's a crime.
So far as I know there isn't any outstanding warrant for him and he's not sequestered in an embassy --so I'm a bit surprised by this since I didn't see the same reaction. You see when someone in the community is accused it's easy to defend them, and it's also easy to accuse someone when we dislike them.
The word 'fascist' is not the same as 'Hitler'. They're not the same thing. Fascism is an ideology that mixes corporatism with authoritarianism.
From wikipedia:
"Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete, and they regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties.[7] Such a state is led by a strong leader—such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party—to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society.[7] Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature, and views political violence, war, and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation.[8][9][10][11] Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky through protectionist and interventionist economic policies.[12]"
Being a fascist doesn't mean there will automatically be warrant out for you, or that you have committed some sort of genocide.
While I am not a trump supporter OP's comment really makes sense.
And the funniest thing here is people should be celebrating this win becuase the way I see it, this is a win for democracy. The DNC took away the win from someone who the people wanted, they worked against the people and put someone up who the people did not trust or agree with. And at the end of the day the person the people trusted more won.
I might not agree with trump on everything especially his racist comments, but I do agree with an underdog powered by the people.
Bernie lost the primary fair and square. It wasn't a few thousand vote difference it was millions. Bernie was himself flawed since he had nothing to offer other than his tired 'banks are bad' speech. That's why he lost.
Blaming the DNC is just being intellectually lazy. The real issue is that there are a large group of the community who aren't benefiting from prosperity. And they turned out in droves. Democrats need to have an answer to their concerns.
Bernie lost the primary fair and square. He was basically an unknown when he started. More Dems voted for Hillary. I voted for Bernie. He did a lot better than I ever thought he would. He was a progressive in a center left party.
Or Trump won because he used the old populist/xenophobic playbook promising simplistic solutions, that right-wing populist politicians have been peddling for decades.
