Canadian immigration appears less evil to me but also a heck lot more incompetent and confusing to deal with
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@skinnylatte Addendum: privilege, means, and *entitlement.*
@cwicseolfor I think there’s also been a longer history of communities responding to an overtly racist immigration system and building some political power in that sense. Because so much of early U.S. immigration law was built to keep out the Chinese, there is a long history and practice of the AAPI community providing translation, legal services, pooling together resources to fight back. I feel there is a more expansive definition of what it means to be American compared to elsewhere. Asian American for example includes all Asians including undocumented people, who don’t have citizenship and won’t.
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@skinnylatte Canada is more than likely to try UK tactics with a USA public sector budget, so it most probably *is* Excel (possibly with VBA, or worse a whole load of VLOOKUP/INDEX functions all nested) being used to make the decisions..
@vfrmedia USA public sector budgets are huge and software projects massive and convoluted.. other types problems
(I used to say working in SF that we had more money than most countries)
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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@vfrmedia USA public sector budgets are huge and software projects massive and convoluted.. other types problems
(I used to say working in SF that we had more money than most countries)
@skinnylatte bizzarely every time I've been to a USA public service website to try and help friends there with adulting stuff (assuming that I'm not outright blocked for trying to access from a foreign country, which is very common nowadays), it looks like they've used the cheapest commercial service possible to deliver the actual service (maybe the budgets are swallowed by multiple layers of management and outsourcing contracts) and UI is different across every service/state or even local region (although maybe in UK we are used to having a *very* good govt web UI, although behind the scenes the services are run on string and gaffer tape and everything feeds into Azure databases and MS365)
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@skinnylatte bizzarely every time I've been to a USA public service website to try and help friends there with adulting stuff (assuming that I'm not outright blocked for trying to access from a foreign country, which is very common nowadays), it looks like they've used the cheapest commercial service possible to deliver the actual service (maybe the budgets are swallowed by multiple layers of management and outsourcing contracts) and UI is different across every service/state or even local region (although maybe in UK we are used to having a *very* good govt web UI, although behind the scenes the services are run on string and gaffer tape and everything feeds into Azure databases and MS365)
@vfrmedia that’s because of the complete decentralization of govt here. Every agency, across federal, state, local, does its own thing. Some do it better than others. And yes the rest of the world doesn’t exist.
I like to explain Singapore / UK style govtech work to colleagues and, they don’t understand it because even here in SF the mayor couldn’t possibly say ‘everybody use the same website’, it just.. isn’t a thing. It wouldn’t even be possible. During Covid I had to work with public health depts at federal, state, local city, and other local city / county (multiple) to do simple public health things.
I think that’s both good and bad (unequal distribution of things, but also I’ve come around to believing that decentralization is the only reason this country hasn’t imploded many times over)
The worst agencies just give Deloitte the same contracts over and over
But the practice of digital services has evolved and some states and cities do a better or comparable job now
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Canadian immigration appears less evil to me but also a heck lot more incompetent and confusing to deal with
(I’ve actually never figured out how to get a work visa to Canada and I’ve figured it out for most countries. Like even the How to Apply page is.. vague. And I’m a native English speaker with international immigration experience. I think you’re supposed to use an agent, most of the time, but I refuse. Anyway, that’s not on the cards anymore and I would die in the cold)
https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2026/03/21/bc-uk-midwife-work-permit-denied-english-test/
@skinnylatte I’m _british_ and when I looked at it couldn’t figure out if i would even be eligible even when I figured out what I’d be applying for
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@skinnylatte I’m _british_ and when I looked at it couldn’t figure out if i would even be eligible even when I figured out what I’d be applying for
@skinnylatte the rules are also sometimes different depending on the province… which is nonsensical
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This article talks about them using a spreadsheet-based decision-making tool that doesn’t look much different from Excel. It looks extremely basic and not very good and I’m willing to bet it’s responsible for a lot of pain in the system. Most immigration agencies have much more advanced software for their specialized use case or workflows.
I’m not willing to claim things are more humane for US immigrants (it’s not), but there are many more avenues for legal action against USCIS through other U.S. govt branches (yes this costs money but there is also pro bono support sometimes). In many countries it mostly feels like you just take the decision that you’ve been handed down arbitrarily.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/immigration-canada-ircc-technology-1.7632130
@skinnylatte Budget cuts are about to wreck Canada’s immigration system
It’s going to get worse our somewhat newly elected “Liberal” government is doing the typically conservative practice of cutting back social programs, leaves wealth favouring tax, funds military…
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R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
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@xgebi @GreenSkyOverMe could be different if you’re already a PR. It seems very difficult to enter from the outside now even as a tourist
@skinnylatte Is a PR a work permit?
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@skinnylatte Is a PR a work permit?
@GreenSkyOverMe @skinnylatte sort of, it's permanent residency.
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Canadian immigration appears less evil to me but also a heck lot more incompetent and confusing to deal with
(I’ve actually never figured out how to get a work visa to Canada and I’ve figured it out for most countries. Like even the How to Apply page is.. vague. And I’m a native English speaker with international immigration experience. I think you’re supposed to use an agent, most of the time, but I refuse. Anyway, that’s not on the cards anymore and I would die in the cold)
https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2026/03/21/bc-uk-midwife-work-permit-denied-english-test/
@skinnylatte Okay so I had to apply for a work visa in Canada when I'd just been diagnosed with bipolar and suddenly a whole bunch of grants I'd applied for came through. BAD TIMES. Holy *shit* that process is confusing. It took me literal weeks, maybe even months of working through it step by step every day 9-5. Obviously the cognitive issues didn't help but neither did my legal training which refuses to sign or agree to anything unless I understand it 100%. The good news, though, if you understand their logic — 'we are going to scrutinise your application to make sure you're not filling an actual job from which an actual Canadian has recently been sacked' — it eventually makes sense.
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Canadian immigration appears less evil to me but also a heck lot more incompetent and confusing to deal with
(I’ve actually never figured out how to get a work visa to Canada and I’ve figured it out for most countries. Like even the How to Apply page is.. vague. And I’m a native English speaker with international immigration experience. I think you’re supposed to use an agent, most of the time, but I refuse. Anyway, that’s not on the cards anymore and I would die in the cold)
https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2026/03/21/bc-uk-midwife-work-permit-denied-english-test/
@skinnylatte @dyckron I always thought the immigration agencies were scams tbh. I've heard it's a long, annoying process to try to work here as a foreigner.
