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Canada has open arms but Québec has closed its doors. This is not a deterrent for skilled immigrants as they can immigrate elsewhere in Canada which follows Express Entry system.

Québec is not really a destination for skilled immigrants anyway because its immigration system is bloated and delayed. It takes 4 years to immigrate to Québec while 6 months elsewhere in Canada. Probably the CAQ government is adhering to its voter base by this.

It doesn't. No intelligence or English/French language tests needed for QIIP.

Canada (except Québec) has a merit based immigration system called Express Entry for skilled individuals.

Québec's called Québec skilled worker programme. Despite its name, Quebec's system is not based on merit but first come first serve, paper based, slow (4+ years) and unpredictable.

Sources and exact numbers from the immigration dept of Quebec as per Access to Information. ( In French )

http://www.midi.gouv.qc.ca/publications/fr/ministere/acces-i...

http://www.midi.gouv.qc.ca/publications/fr/ministere/acces-i...

According to the Canadian charter of mobility rights, once you are granted a permanent residency, you can live in any province of your choice. So this intend to settle in Québec doesn't hold. That's why many of them have never even set foot in Québec though they had to sign an agreement to settle in Québec.

Not surprising at all. Canada had "money for citizenship scheme" and these are the side effects. Québec has and is still playing a major role in this scheme with their provincial scheme called QIIP. Once the rich "investor" gets a permanent residence through QIIP, they move to BC for the better climate. Some QIIP PR holders has never even set foot in Québec according to the immigration dept of Québec . Condos in downtown Montreal are paid for in cash by foreign students who drive expensive cars.

CBC News reported this sometime back :

https://youtu.be/NIq1nMWRIG4

Because Québec has full autonomy in cherry picking its immigrants, the QIIP money for citizenship scheme is alive and kicking. The federal govt. cannot do anything to stop this according to the Canada Québec Accord.

https://www.immigration-quebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/immigrate-settl...

Thanks to Québec's "money for citizenship scheme" called QIIP which has a part in this BC housing bubble.

I have been through LCA some years back before I called bullshit on H1B and immigrated to Canada for good. For LCA, the advertisement was done on a local newspaper which no one reads and the job was posted on the company pantry notice board with a broad confusing salary range 65K - 130K. It was also posted on the company's career page where no one could find it easily. The employer that I worked for was a top 10. They were just playing the system to bring in cheap H1B workers on chains.

LMIA on the other hand, has advertisement requirements like LCA and a transition plan as well. They are particularly strict on the transition plan including one of which is assisting the worker for permanent residence !

https://meurrensonimmigration.com/service-canada-transition-...

Slight exception in Quebec though. Quebec has its own immigration rules & policies. Quebec do not follow rest of Canada's Express Entry or provincial nomination. In regards to obtaining a skilled work permit in Quebec, its a longer process with Federal + Provincial involvement. ie: LMIA (Federal) + CAQ (Quebec).

In Quebec there are no BOWP. So if you lost your job, you have to move out of Quebec province and get another LMIA work permit. Getting a permanent residency while working and residing in Quebec is not easy as Quebec's immigration system and policies are archaic and downright broken with more importance given to French language than any other employable skills. Recently 18,000 Quebec applications were downright rejected by Quebec in the name of bringing in a new skill based immigration system.

I would suggest anyone looking to move to Quebec in a skilled work permit or applying for residency while residing in Quebec to refrain from it as it will take at least 4 years (CSQ - 2 years + Federal - 2 years ) instead of 6 months in comparison with the rest of Canada. This applies to foreign students who come to study in Quebec too.

Permanent Residency Processing time:

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

Quebec skilled worker applicants face uncertain future in light of immigration overhaul:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-immigration-a...

Hiring in the province of Quebec:

https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/servi...

LMIA seems like a balance. In LMIA, the employer is made to test the local labour market before applying for a visa, rather than an LCA in which the USCIS trusts the employer's word.

Re: Number 2: This is a common pattern in all big American companies. Hire an H1B, make the employee an indentured slave forever. H1B employées born in India and China have to wait 10+ years for a green card to break free from indentured servitude. While you can switch jobs on an H1B, it's risky and if it screws up, your queue position gets reset.

Canada too have similar system called LMIA based Temporary closed work permit for skilled professionals. But the employee's permanent residency is not at the mercy of the employer in this case and it's fast too, in some cases within 4 months !

If there was no market for Master degree H1Bs who fake their experiences on their resume, how do you explain all those thriving body shops in the US ? Just how many of them are in New Jersey alone. See the LCA filings data from DOL.

Source: https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm

Goto Disclosure Tab & Download the H-1B_FY2018.xlsx excel. Filter NJ state and Employer City as Edison.

See the LCA filings data from DOL.

Source: https://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm

Goto Disclosure Tab & Download the H-1B_FY2018.xlsx excel. Filter NJ state and Employer City as Edison.

If there was no market for Masters H1B with fake experiences on their resumes, these thriving bodyshops wont exist.

Are you sure ? Increasing the masters quota for H1B will worsen things. Here is why. A majority of Masters degree holders in the US are those students who couldn't crack the basic campus recruitment in India for software companies during their Bachelors.

So they take a stab at it once more by investing in a masters degree in US which increases their H1B lottery chances. I am not generalizing all the masters degree holders but a major chunk of them.

A sizable chunk of users awake at this time of the day are descendants of the very same colonialists. What did you expect ?

An excellent speech by Dr Shashi Tharoor - "Britain Does Owe Reparations to India"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shashi_Tharoor

SAAQ,SAQ and Revenue Quebec too, but not all govt sites.

The immigration site of Quebec govt. sucks with huge down times, bad UX and even data loss of many aspiring skilled economic immigrants. May be because its for immigrants and temporary workers, so no one cares.

It's not because Canada is accepting a lot of professionals relative to the lesser number of jobs.

Canada's institutions do not accept the immigrant professional's academic credentials, training or their work experience.

A general nurse with 15 years of work experience from India cannot practice the same job duties in Canada due to this restrictions. So they resort to other jobs like home care.

A lot of immigrant nurses in Québec who are from India and Philippines are working in factories now because Québec nurse's association do not recognize their nursing degrees.

The doctors who immigrate drive taxis in Toronto because their credentials are not recognized.

Unlike in the US, for some reason Canadian regulatory bodies have a hard time recognizing credentials of immigrant professionals there by forcing them to take up another job.

A colleague tells me there is this Canadian doctor's and nurses lobby which "protects" the Canadian professional order from immigrant professionals who have come to take up their jobs.

Right now, only IT professionals are accepted as they are. Every other professionals immigrating to Canada should be prepared to re certify their professions or take up additional courses.

This news has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Not everyone moves to Canada after they get a residency thru the Express Entry system. The majority of them do something called "soft landing" to activate their permanent resident card and go back to US the same day. They use Canada as a plan B if something happens with their greencard process in future. This is actually detrimental for other eligible people who have applied for express entry because H1Bs fill the top layers of the express entry system and thus the permanent residence permits go wasted because H1Bs don't come to stay in Canada.

Québec is an exception here and do not follow merit based system. So the immigrants coming in Québec are not skilled or employable and is a burden to Canadians. On the other hand, skilled applicants in Québec are waiting 4-5 years for a permit from Québec because Quebec do not follow merit system. The new CAQ leader is also against immigration and has vowed to cut down immigration. So any startups planning to have an office should be aware of this. Québec IT employers are struggling to find talents because of the dysfunctional immigration department of Québec.

Now the highly regarded global talent stream is only applicable to large employers.

Startups still have to go the hard way. Getting an LMIA work permit will take 3-6 months and renewing it will also take the same amount of time.

Overall, Canada's Express Entry system is a merit based system. But the candidates do not need to prove their technical skills. Anyone with a Bachleor's degree, a good command of English and 3 years of work experience can get a residency in Canada. This doesn't necessarily mean there is talent. Moreover, a talented international worker might travel to many countries, so if you are an applicant who have travelled to many countries, 6 months express entry time do not apply, Canada will put you thru something called Security Screening which can last 1 to 2 years.

So the 6 months timeline are for people who haven't travelled a lot or worked at many countries. It's just for a less experienced Bachelor degree holder with a good command of English. Do not come to Canada for the money, salaries are not that great. Toronto and Vancouver housing prices are pumped up thanks to Quebec's money for citizenship scheme. Québec immigration is dysfunctional, so good luck finding talents in Montreal for your startup.

I made 'lesshn' to filter out the feeds containing certain words that I am not interested in. You can create your own filters(via REST API) and bookmark it. https://lesshn.microapps.xyz

You will have a hard time balancing the spice levels. You can't satisfy both Indian and non-Indian demographic or you will have to have a spicy, less spicy type of each item. As an Indian, I cant stand the westernized non spicy versions of the supposedly authentic Indian foods. So I wouldn't buy them nor eat in those type of Indian restaurants. Its the same case vice versa. Non Indians may not like the spicy versions.

Another thing to note that though its called "Indian food", there is no thing as an "Indian food", just like not everyone from India knows Hindi.

Indian food varies drastically as you travel from North to South, East to West. But for westerners, its mainly butter chicken/daal/Vindaloo/Paratha/Chapathi. For someone from South India, it will be Dosa/Appam/Idly/Idiappam/Pongal/Avial/Sambhar/Rasam or Fish curry. One of your challenges lies in catering to the Indian & Non Indians palettes alike. Greetings from Canada.

There will be many "unauthorized to work" highly educated Indian H4 spouses in the US delivering Indian food around your area. Please buy from them to support them.

Nowadays skilled ones stay back in India working in startups. Those who were not able to get campus recruited from the colleges in India go for Masters in the US for a second chance.

Anecdotally, majority of them are not high skilled. Masters/PhD should not be used as a valuable metric for green card consideration.

The recruiter said 'I will get back soon' after when I told 'Tomcat is not a programming language'. I never heard from that recruiter again.

- And don't ask me if I know "Tomcat programming language"

There is one for twitter which is https://autotweeter.in which claims to tweet and upload fotos incessantly by reading it from an excel sheet.

In that case here are official links. Please note that Canadian permanent residency thru Quebec is a long two stage process. First obtain a CSQ document from Quebec and then apply to Federal (in paper format) which will grant you permanent residency.

* Processing delays as per MIDI's site for obtaining a CSQ:

Official Source: https://www.immigration-quebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/immigrate-settl...

* MIDI currently follows FCFS to issue CSQ, not point based merit system, which they are planning to implement soon.

" With the introduction of the new immigration system based on the declaration of interest, only candidates that meet the needs of Québec will be invited to submit an application for a selection certificate. This new system will make it possible to put an end to the principle of first come first serve, currently in effect for processing applications, and to considerably reduced average processing times. "

Official Source: https://www.immigration-quebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/informations/ne...

* Federal processing time delays(after obtaining a CSQ) for residency from Quebec: 15 months & counting.

Official Source: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/times/index.asp

( Select Economic Class > Skilled workers Quebec ,the processing times shows as 15 months.)

* For the year 2017, the processing time for applications for a selection certificate under the Regular Skilled Worker Program was 32 months.

Official Source: https://www.immigration-quebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/informations/ne...

* To summarize, an immigration application thru Regular Skilled worker stream will take 15 + 32 months to complete if it goes without any glitches, but MIDI is plagued with operational issues such as loss of applicant documents, huge technical problems with Mon Projet and the recent refugee situation.

Official Source: https://www.immigration-quebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/informations/ne...

Now if anyone applies in PEQ category, you will still be delayed by 15 months in Federal stage.

So which graduate or skilled worker worth their salt will try to immigrate or stay in Quebec after graduation ? They can easily get their permanent residency within months if they move to any other province other than Quebec through the Express Entry system and other provincial nomination programs.

Why do I say all this ? Because Quebec's immigration system is so obsolete that it doesn't give importance for merit. I was a victim of the broken H1B visa system and I immigrated to Canada thru Express Entry which gave importance to my skills. How I did it might be interesting too -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15452647

I have no further interest in taking this conversation forward. I immigrated to Canada on Express Entry in which I got points based on my skills and that too within 3 months.

I feel for my colleagues in Quebec whose applications are on hold in Quebec with no explanation from MIDI for the past one year. If you start asking cites for all these from official source which is MIDI, I can't give you because MIDI don't have it either.

If MIDI publishes those numbers, it will reveal their discriminatory practices. Don't bother about replying. Have a great weekend.

The Global Skills Strategy is only for a certain category of employers, mainly large ones. A startup cannot use that to hire a worker. [1]

more points for an applicant with a bachelor's degree in computer science from anywhere in the world

Quebec's immigration system is not point based as of now. Its FCFS. Though they say its points based, there is no indication from statistics that MIDI selects workers based on points. In fact, MIDI is a blackbox when it comes to revealing the strategy that they use to select workers while Federal Express Entry is fully transparent. Bachelor's degree holders in Comp. Sc are waiting for more than 5 years for a CSQ from Quebec, while they can immigrate to other provinces within months !

There are reports of systematic discrimination by MIDI regarding the selection of applicants based on their citizenship. As a US citizen, its no wonder you are given priority than applicants from third world countries. There are two class action suites against MIDI currently regarding systematic discrimination in selecting applicants. [2] [5] [7]

Ombudsman's Annual Report About MIDI says there are 31,378 applications pending as of March 31, 2017. [3]

Quebec will still give them a leg up based on that experience if they later apply for permanent residence

That has been on hold with no explanation from MIDI since 2017. [4]

MIDI systematically discriminates applicants even in French priority category (PEQ) if they are from China or India [5]

A forum where applicants discuss about delays from MIDI [6]

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

[2] https://imk.ca/en/rahim-and-rhia-basnet-v-midi/

[3] http://publications.virtualpaper.com/protecteur-du-citoyen/e...

[4] http://www.journaldemontreal.com/2018/02/27/des-travailleurs...

[5] http://chalkimmigration.com/2018/04/29/update-peq-group-judi...

[6] https://www.canadavisa.com/canada-immigration-discussion-boa...

[7] http://oreopoulos.faculty.economics.utoronto.ca/wp-content/u...

I dont want to repeat myself. Montreal being AI hub is a media creation. My below comment is the reality in Quebec.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16998058