{UAH} Is it better to move to Canada as a Permanent Resident instead of staying in US on H1B?

Nik Najin

I moved to Canada last year after working in the US for many years on L1B and H1B visas. Finally ditched my EB-2 GC processing and took the most difficult decision of my life. (In my case, it worked "almost" perfectly, as God was kind to us, primarily !!)

If you've lived and worked in the US with a decent salary, it might take a long time for you to gulp down the drastic down-slide in terms of salary and the competitiveness of the overall IT job scenario in Canada. Moreover, if you DO NOT have a US or Canadian education, then getting a good job in Canada would be really tough unless you have experience in a skill that is hot in (Canadian) IT market right now.

1. Forget about getting a similar remuneration (converting USD to CAD). For example, if you are earning 125k in the US that is pretty common in the Silicon valley, absolutely overlook getting CAD 170k equivalent in Canada.
2. Health care is free but not best and elective as you would see in the US. You pay through your nose in taxes. You could be easily paying almost 60k in taxes but expect to receive the same treatment and attention as compared to a person paying absolutely no taxes like Mulindwa.
3. The more you earn the more you pay taxes. Canadian Fed tax brackets are not liberal as you see in the US.
4. There is no government crackdown on people robbing the Fed coffers, for example accepting payments in cash and not declaring their incomes. You will be surprised to know the amount of money these culprits are extracting from the pockets of hard working Canadians, plus getting child support for almost 3–4 kids. Canada being a welfare state, people making full use of it. This is resulting in lot of needy people actually not getting enough govt support.
5. Quality of life is better than in the US, surroundings are clean, more open spaces, lesser pollution, clean water, excellent scenic locations, mountains, rivers, lakes.. you name it.
6. Roads are no match to the US, the road structure in the US simply blows the 400 series out of the water.
7. Getting a Canadian PR is much easier right now than the US green card.
8. Everything is BIG in the United States. and it is both good and bad. you will get big discounts, more variety of things, big houses, big malls, big parking lots, big roads, large portions in restaurants, better car and house deals, big schools, big parks, play areas and the list goes on. However, that comes with the flip side of more crime, more gun violence, NSA snooping, more Police scrutiny, more intolerance and so on.
9. If you believe the tabloids that there is no racism in Canada, then you are mistaken. Racism in Canada is very much there and most people see that every other day in one form or the other. Many Canadian "white" people are more snobby than their US counterparts. They will never start a discussion with a non-white or Asian origin guy and, are, neither interested.
10. If the US formulates something like a Canadian Express entry system and an easy way to the Green card, there will be a humongous amount of brain-drain that will happen from Canada to the south of the border and the country will lose many brilliant minds. Most of the people in the top 5–10% earning bracket, especially hardworking and smart Indians and Chinese will be rushing to get a spot.

Disclaimer - there are and will be few exceptions to all these points. So please take it with a grain of salt.

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