It was just another day in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains I woke up early to get a jump start on things. But something was different this morning.
“I was not thinking about work as usual. I was thinking about freedom.”
Back in 2016 I was living in beautiful sunny California and working at one of the best top tier tech companies in the world. Life was good and there was little to complain about. And yet at this point in my life, I was looking for something different.
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In 2010 I was offered the chance to move to California and work with Linkedin. This was the beginning of my journey to the US on an H1-B visa to work in Silicon Valley. I moved to a beautiful city in Silicon Valley on the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains and went to work for Linkedin as a software engineer.
Linkedin was still a young company and it was exciting to be working in the heartland of tech, Silicon Valley with some of the smartest people in the world.
The cutting edge work and quality of life that working in tech and living in California provides you with is hard to beat. The natural beauty, weather and abundance of things to do make it an ideal place for families. We were a young family and and we loved our life in in the Golden State.
The quest for a green card
Having spent over six years in California and contributing in every way possible I assumed naively that it would be a few years wait till I was given a green card. I worked with people from almost every part of the world and all of them had gotten their in a year or so.
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The green card was my way out of a highly restrictive H1-B visa and the chance to once again build my own startup. But this was not to be the truth I learned was very different. Green card quotas are based on place of birth and for people born in India the wait times are over 20 years.
At this point in my life I need permanence and the freedom to build a startup. To be free again during the best years of my life was worth its weight in gold. I loved my life in California but the world is a big and interesting place and I was ready for my next play.
“I explored a few options like Singapore and Berlin but none of them felt quite right.”
This was when Canada came into focus, a chance meeting with a friend who runs a successful startup in Toronto got me thinking about the city.
I learned that Toronto has a fast growing tech ecosystem that values my skills and Canada has a smart merit based immigration system that will grant me a Permanent Residency if I had the points. Also Toronto is in North America and an hours flight away from New York city it seems familiar to me.
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We were ready for a new adventure our family was moving to Canada.
It’s been a year now since we’ve moved from Silicon Valley to a Toronto. Having found a great neighbourhood for us and our kids we have quickly made friends and started enjoying the complete freedom that PR grants you. For me the best of which was the chance to start working on my new startup. We miss California and all our friends there but Canada feels like home and we’re excited to go out and explore this beautiful country.
Beyond the US H1-B dream and moving to Canada
A 20% drop in US student visas in 2017. Singapore blocks visas for Indian tech professionals. Australia abolishes visa program popular with Indians. Headlines like this are increasingly common and signal a massive shift underway. A young technologist looking to make his way into the world needs to be increasingly aware of where the path he chooses will take him.
Traditionally the MS to H1-B and finally a Green card path has served countless smart talented Indians who went on to lead some of the top companies in the world and build a life for themselves in the US. Over the last decade, the number of Indians choosing this path has grown significantly and millions of Indians are today living and working in the US.
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“Like them, I also worked in Silicon Valley alongside smart and friendly people from all over the world.”
I moved from Singapore in 2010 to Silicon Valley to join Linkedin when it was still a relatively smaller company. The next 6 years were some of the greatest in terms of living in California and the work I did. But in the end, I choose not to stay and moved to Toronto Canada as a PR.
Over my time in the valley being stuck on the H1-B visa was a common underlying thread that tied Indians together. I had friends who had lived for over 10 years on the restrictive visa and were still waiting with no end in sight.
The timeline to get a Green card for a person born in India was only going up and at this point in time is over 20 years or more. To me spending my entire productive life time on a highly restrictive visa did not make sense. I wanted the freedom to pursue any opportunity, travel and build my next startup.
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We moved to Toronto with a Canadian Permanent Residency which is similar to having a green card in the US. The process to get this was easy and transparent, based on merit and entirely online.
Honestly, we were a little surprised how different and inviting this seemed in comparison to everything I had encountered with other countries. We didn’t need any lawyers or consultants we could just do it on our own. The application itself took less than a couple days to fill up.
“When the world is closing its doors, Canada is opening theirs wider,” a quote by Justin Trudeau the Prime Minister of Canada. He embodies a lot of what Canada stands for a young, friendly and accepting place that is looking to its future and understands that it lies in technology.
We picked Toronto, Canada for multiple reasons, an exciting and fast-growing tech ecosystem, a clear path to immigration, Canadian values, quality of life and the chance to live free of restrictive visas. It’s been a little over a year since we moved and we love our life here.
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Since then Canada has done even more to attract tech talent to the country with the new Global Talent Stream visa a fast work visa that can help companies bring in people for software engineering and AI jobs in as little as two weeks.
And the new Startup Visa that let you move your entire team to Canada and leverage the ecosystem here. Canada is also growing serious local tech talent, the University of Toronto and Waterloo are considered two of the top colleges globally for Computer Science, AI, and Machine Learning research.
I predict Canada is just getting started, over the next 10 years, I see Toronto transforming into a world-class tech center and a destination for global tech talent. Every few days, I meet newcomers to Toronto who have moved here to be part of this new tech wave. And like they say in startupland you’ll get to say you were there early.
Somewhere in Canada // Vikram Rangnekar
About the author: Vikram Rangnekar is a techie, entrepreneur and an author. He writes regularly about life in Toronto and the emerging tech scene there on his blog http://www.movnorth.com