It's about national origin quotas which favour immigrants from less populated countries. Not discrimination against immigrants once they get to the US...
The article doesn't mention, but I can tell companies definitely use the visa as a way to keep your salary low and work you to the bone. It is extremely hard to change jobs if you are on a visa and the employers know it
I am a tech immigrant to Sweden and even though the work-visa here is not as bad as the US (if we lose our jobs we got 3 months before we have to leave the country!) it is still quite atrocious
The DOL has salary brackets based on job title, experience, and location but I'm sure there's a way for employers to stick H1B workers into experience brackets below where they should be, locate their H1B workers in offices in cheaper locations, or just simply pay them less than their domestic coworkers while still meeting the salary requirements.
I don't know if discriminating against visa holders is illegal, but most visa holders are minorities so this would be a violation of the civil rights act
Contrary to the popular myth, immigration hasn't led to salaries in the tech sector (which has the most immigrants) to go down. In fact, in the last decade they have increased due to an increased competition and high demand.
Immigrants also lead to increased demand and job growth:
"Contrary to popular belief, immigrants do not take away jobs from American workers. Instead, they create new jobs by forming new businesses, spending their incomes on American goods and services, paying taxes and raising the productivity of U.S. businesses. Immigrants are good for the economy, not the other way around." [1]
"However, although immigrants increase the supply of labor, they also spend their wages on homes, food, TVs and other goods and services and expand domestic economic demand. This increased demand, in turn, generates more jobs to build those homes, make and sell food, and transport TVs." [2]
"Most empirical studies indicate long-term benefits for natives’ employment and wages from immigration, although some studies suggest that these gains come at the cost of short-term losses from lower wages and higher unemployment. Standard economic theory implies that while higher labor supply from immigration may initially depress wages, over time firms increase investment to restore the amount of capital per worker, which then restores wages." [2]
Yeah, because a 180 year wait for someone who already has an approved green card makes complete sense.
And god forbid they have kids that they brought along with them completely legally because once those kids turn 18 they have absolutely no standing in the US and have to leave the country.
That sounds absolutely reasonable. What makes this even more fascinating is that those kids would have been ok if their parents had come to the US as undocumented immigrants, as opposed to being documented immigrants with approved green cards.
> "We all have applied for a green card and it has been approved. Only thing is, we need to wait 150 years to get a green card," said Akhilesh Malavalli. "A hundred fifty years! I'll be dead. I'll be dead by the time we see a green card."
> There is a cap on the number of skills-based green cards that can be issued to any one country of origin and there are so many workers from India, getting one has become practically impossible.
So the problem seems to be that Indians are more affected by the quotas, because there are many Indians, but of course this puts them at a disadvantage against other nationalities. There is probably also a good reason to have country of origin quotas, but to me it seems a terrible idea to apply that quota after residency applications have already been approved.
It sucks, but every country has the right to set their own immigration laws. If Indians don't like US laws, maybe they should emigrate to countries that don't put so many onerous restrictions on them. Lots of countries would be happy to have them.
The fact is usa gives one more opportunity and after permanent residency they can start something of their own. That is why people from india emigrate to usa so much.
It gives opportunity to make money in the tech field, but as the article points out, they cannot get permanent residency in the US unless they wait 180 years. Maybe it was different in the past or something, I'm not sure, but obviously the situation right now doesn't look good unless you just want to go to the US for a little while to save up a bunch of money and then go home or to a different country.
Countries are bound by international agreements. There is no such thing as full unrestricted Westphalian-style sovereignty anymore for more than a century already.
Those are nothing more than "agreements". They are not even legally binding unless said countries make them legally binding, and they can make them not binding any time. And there is no enforcement either. International law is a joke.
I think countries should then be at least straight-forward about it.
If they don't want immigrants to settle, they shouldn't allow migrant workers to stay for more than a year or so and make that clear, instead of leaving them in legal limbo for cheap labor, which is close to what Qatar was criticized for.
It would be nice if everyone were totally honest, but that's not realistic I think. It's pretty well-known these days how lousy Qatar is with immigrant labor, and among the well-educated Indian populace that would be interested in high-paid tech jobs in the US, it should be well-known by now how bad the system there is for them and how there's no real path to PR for them. They should, therefore, act accordingly. If they keep coming to the US with the current bad policies, the US won't have much incentive to change those policies.
Of course. And in a Democracy you have the right to petition to change it.
The fact that the only argument commenters here have against what these people are asking for is that “well, it was a law set 30 years ago…” in itself shows that there’s little defense for the current law and very clearly should be changed.
You don't need a democracy to petition for change. Non-democratic countries usually have some kind of mechanism to petition for change too. In a democracy, the difference is that you get to vote for the political leaders if you're a citizen. If you're not, then you don't have a say in governance, aside from just protesting or petitioning.
Sure, the current law sucks, but the same can be said for many laws in America. The law is the law, and if you don't like it, maybe you shouldn't go there, and should pick a more welcoming country.
Sure, and immigrants have the right to ask for better laws. Do you think its wrong for immigrants to provide constructive feedback for better laws, to a country that allowed them to immigrate?
Of course, anyone can complain and provide feedback all they want. But given the US's utterly broken political system, I wouldn't expect much to come of it, and I should think this is obvious to anyone who's paying attention to the world around them.
As far as I can tell, the current situation is not a surprise: someone immigrating from India today should know the situation, and know that there's probably not a good likelihood of it being fixed anytime soon. Given that, why bother going to the US? As I said, there's other countries that are much more welcoming. It seems to me the only reason to go to the US is $$$. Tech workers are overpaid there relative to other countries, so this is attractive to people who want to take advantage of this.
Basically, I see this like going to a casino and then complaining about the odds being stacked against you there. America is a very high-risk place: sure, you can make a lot of money there, if you're skilled and lucky, but all it takes is one big medical problem and you're bankrupt.
>So it’s a discussion about permanent residency, not visas.
This is false, by definition. Permanent residency IS a visa. It's just a more permanent one than a normal work visa. It's still a visa affixed in your passport. And like any other visa, it expires as soon as you leave the country, unless you get a re-entry permit before you leave.
Try living outside the US for a couple of years and see what happens to your permanent residency.
And how exactly do you get into the US when you return, without a visa? They won't let you in with a foreign passport unless you have a visa. No country will, unless you have visa-free travel because your country's passport is granted that.
Relinquishing your residency isn’t the same as a visa expiring. Visas are always time limited, PR is literally permanent unless you commit a crime or live overseas long enough to let it expire.
You get into the US without a visa by having a green card instead.
Well, 150 years waiting list time for a green card (with a deportation looming if any of the long list of administrative conditions is violated) definitely looks like discrimination to me.
Can this really be termed as immigration discrimination? If everyone who applied magically got their green cards today, would it be a fair distribution?
The issues they and their families face are totally valid, but surely they apply to a larger body of immigrants of other nationalities too?
I think they are talking about the "group by country_of_origin limit 7%" clause of the green card system. So tiny Monaco and China have the same cap of immigrants per year
nit: its "group by country_of_birth". A person's family could be Monaco citizens living in India, where the person was born, and that person too would have to wait decades.
No they don’t. If you’re born in India and you get approved for your green card (note, this situation arises at the end of the process, after you’ve been approved for the green card), you have to wait 180 years to get it. About 50 years if you were born in China. And immediately if you were born anywhere else.
It's a bit of a stretch to claim "discrimination" based on the current volume of approved applicants and country-of-birth queues. A policy would have to take into consideration past approvals as well.
If you go by past approvals, people born in countries ex India, China may very well make the case that approvals have been discriminatory against them.
The ridiculously longer wait period is absurd though. It's equivalent to a rejection, but having it so probably allows a policy change in the future to fast-track them in queue order.
US immigration law limits immigrant visa (i.e. green cards) to no more than 5% of the annual total per year.
It's an effort to add diversity to the immigrant population. Similar to how the green card lottery "discriminates" against immigrants from countries that already have a high immigrant population in the US.
I mean it sucks if you're one of the people who are stuck waiting for a green card, and I agree it's dumb to allow people to start a process they can't reasonably finish, but I don't think the goal of the law is unjust.
In Germany we had a lot of migrant workers from Turkey after the war. The lack of diversity in immigrant populations is still causing problems today. Because there were so many immigrants from the same place, a lot didn't learn German properly because they have enough of their own people to talk to. A parallel society formed. In the big cities you have 3rd and 4th generation children that still don't speak German properly, but probably also don't speak Turkish properly. Of course these youths don't feel at home here, don't get good jobs, and are overrepresented in crime statistics.
This causes problems even for skilled immigrants from Turkey today, since the stereotypes that manifested from this are applied to them as well.
On the other hand I do understand the individual issue here though. It is a bit unfair to never have a proper foothold in the country that asked you to be there. I think it would be better to limit the H1Bs more by the same country of origin metric, so that people aren't given hope only to crush it later on. And there should be a way to get a green card for those that are already here for 5+ years. It's inhumane to never allow them in properly after they spent so much time building a life in the US.
The quota system was set up because of racial and eugenic concerns rather than some progressive notion of diversity. Though it should be noted that eugenics was considered progressive policy at that time. So it would be a very peculiar accident that it happens to resemble sane and forward thinking policy
As to why countries instead of races,
>The question will probably at once arise, why, if this legislation was a response to a demand for racial discrimination, was it expressed in terms of nationality? The answer is simple. As has already been shown, our actual knowledge of the racial composition of the American people, to say nothing of the various foreign groups, is so utterly inadequate that the attempt to use it as a basis of legislation would have led to endless confusion and intolerable litigation. So Congress substituted the term nationality, and defined nationality as country of birth. It is clear, then, that “nationality,” as used in this connection, does not conform exactly to the correct definition of either nationality or race. But in effect it affords a rough approximation to the racial character of the different immigrant stream
Effectively penalizes countries with a larger population (India and China) systemically, India is similar to the EU in terms of ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural diversity yet each EU country is treated as a seperate entity. Indian States are not.
Sure it's penalizing India and China. There is no other option if your goal is diversity of country of origin.
And the US immigration system penalizes people all the time. Don't have a formal degree? Sorry, high skilled visa aren't an option. Want to come on an H1-B? Sorry, ran out of visas and now it's a lottery.
Immigration systems need to make choices about who they want to bring in. The outcome of that is some people can't come.
It is actually based country of birth rather than origin / citizenship.
Sure every immigration system as to make choices, but ideally you want to make intelligent choices.
The current system makes no sense unless your goal is to specifically limit Indian / Chinese born from people getting green cards while also letting in large numbers of them to work on H1B indefinitely.
It’s not penalizing India and China. It’s penalizing people born in India and China, who were misled and lied to.
It’s particularly ridiculous because the government will tax those people SS and Medicare, which they don’t have access to, based entirely on the fact that an H1B visa is a path to permanent residency.
They weren’t lied to. Green cards for those countries have been backlogged for decades. Presumably anyone who has filed for a green card since the early 2000’s knew the situation they were getting into? The government is quite transparent about it.
And check out the backlog for extended family green cards for the Philippines. It’s similar.
> It's an effort to add diversity to the immigrant population.
There are many categories of green card applications: family, employment based, diversity, etc. It might make sense to consider "diversity" in family based immigration, but doesn't really make sense in the context of "employment based".
Historically, when US just wanted more people, the diversity might have made sense. But today, if a country wants better skilled immigrants, who are a net positive to the economy and don't put a strain on benefits, then it needs to select for such immigrants.
Main reason I've heard from mostly Latin/south American people on visa who consider staying past the expiration is that you can then never leave to visit family or visit any other country.
It's definitely common to just 'stay' but you better be prepared to stay the rest of your life.
Note this is from talking to people who enter legally but then consider staying illegally, not those who enter illegally.
Marching for the right to citizenship in a country you weren’t born in is a funny 2022 development. I’m Canadian working and living in the US on TN, but I don’t think I’d be taken very seriously if I walked around holding a sign about how I’m discriminated against as an immigrant to have only residency and not citizenship.
To be fair, your Canadian citizenship and passport offers you far more privileges in the US and around the world than people with Indian passports, so of course you don't understand their struggle, when you can just walz in anywhere with your Canadian passport, but I doubt you'd feel the same if you had the same restrictions of Indian nationals.
What concrete, legislative privileges do I get as a Canadian immigrant living in the USA that an Indian immigrant living in the USA would not? That's unquestionably what's under discussion here, so please be as specific as possible, Chuck.
If you were to get an H1B visa you would have become a permanent resident within a few years, as opposed to 180 years for Indian born people.
Also, this is a misconception. This has nothing to do with your passport. The separation is based on your country of birth.
So if you were a Canadian citizen born in Canada, got an H1B visa, applied for and were approved for a permanent residency which is your right as per the H1B visa, you would get your permanent residency immediately.
If you were a Canadian citizen born in India, got an H1B visa, applied for and were approved for a permanent residency which is your right as per the H1B visa, you would get your permanent residency approximately 180 years from now.
The ability to get a green card in 1-3 years (instead of 20 years) because you’re not part of the India/China quota (if your country of birth is neither). The ability to get NAFTA statuses like the TN at the border if you’re in a NAFTA profession. The relative ease of switching jobs and reapplying for a new TN adjudicated at the border. Visa free entry to the US without having to do visa runs to restamp. The ability to repatriate retirement funds due to joint agreements. There are so many privileges afforded to Canadians in the US that most other nationalities do not enjoy. It’s good to have empathy for folks who may not have what you have. Source: am Canadian.
Canadians kind of get the best of both worlds (at least for dualies) living in the US. You can max out your 401k on a pre-tax level; IIRC, you pay taxes both ways when investing in an RRSP.
If you have a Nexus card and live close to the border, travel between the two countries becomes a non-issue.
When you hit retirement age, you can move back to Canada and get provincial health care.
As of today, $1.00 USD == $1.36 CAD.
I will probably be depositing a lot more money back into my Canadian savings account over the next few years, just because I'll probably move back at some point in my life.
So yeah, Canadians in the US definitely get a lot of advantages over other immigrants. The only trade off is filling a 1040 every year, but even that is reduced to one additional form when residing in Canada.
Are you approved for permanent residence already but being told to wait 180 years?
Are you paying additional taxes, the benefits of which you cannot receive, entirely on the basis of the fact that you are eligible to get a permanent residency (small text: 180 years later).
The entire intention of the H1B visa, set at its outset, is to allow people to become permanent residents. The same isn’t the case for the TN visa, which is explicitly a short term work visa.
But this isn’t even talking about people applying to get the visas. This is about people who were on those visas, and have applied for a green card and have been approved for a green card.
It’s an administrative sleight of hand. “Yes, you’re approved for the green card as we’re promised, but unfortunately, since you were born in China, we just don’t have the paper to print it out on for right now…Why don’t you come back 50 years later…ok now get out, I need to hand the paper I don’t have for you to the guy born in Greece behind you who has been waiting all of 2 days”.
Finally, if you’re a Canadian with an intention of moving to the US as a permanent resident you can absolutely apply as an H1B. Just make sure you meet all
The skill requirements, none of which exist for the TN visa, convince a company to hire you, with the condition that it will take them at least a few months to know whether you can actually work for them as the govt approves the visa, convince them to pay for the legal costs and processing fees because you legally cannot, and then convince them to renew that process every 1-3 years. Then you need to convince them to apply for your permanent residency, in a 3 stage process that involves proving that no one else born in the U.S. can do the job as wel as you, after having spent at least 6 months advertising, then spending another stage of applications proving you will contribute to the US’s benefit, and then finally getting approval for you to be a green card holder.
Now, congratulations. As a Canadian citizen were you born in Canada, because then you will be shipped your green card tomorrow. But as a Canadian citizen were you born in China? Well, I guess 50+ years later we might ship you your green card. India? 180+ years.
Oh, as an aside if you were in the latter 2 categories, do keep in mind that the 2 and 4 year old kids will have no path to remaining in the US once they turn 21.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 66.1 ms ] threadIt's about national origin quotas which favour immigrants from less populated countries. Not discrimination against immigrants once they get to the US...
I am a tech immigrant to Sweden and even though the work-visa here is not as bad as the US (if we lose our jobs we got 3 months before we have to leave the country!) it is still quite atrocious
Isn't this illegal? Aren't H1B required to be paid at least the same as domestic counterparts?
Immigrants also lead to increased demand and job growth:
"Contrary to popular belief, immigrants do not take away jobs from American workers. Instead, they create new jobs by forming new businesses, spending their incomes on American goods and services, paying taxes and raising the productivity of U.S. businesses. Immigrants are good for the economy, not the other way around." [1]
"However, although immigrants increase the supply of labor, they also spend their wages on homes, food, TVs and other goods and services and expand domestic economic demand. This increased demand, in turn, generates more jobs to build those homes, make and sell food, and transport TVs." [2]
"Most empirical studies indicate long-term benefits for natives’ employment and wages from immigration, although some studies suggest that these gains come at the cost of short-term losses from lower wages and higher unemployment. Standard economic theory implies that while higher labor supply from immigration may initially depress wages, over time firms increase investment to restore the amount of capital per worker, which then restores wages." [2]
[1] https://www.aclu.org/other/immigrants-and-economy [2] https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2016/1/27/the-e...
And god forbid they have kids that they brought along with them completely legally because once those kids turn 18 they have absolutely no standing in the US and have to leave the country.
That sounds absolutely reasonable. What makes this even more fascinating is that those kids would have been ok if their parents had come to the US as undocumented immigrants, as opposed to being documented immigrants with approved green cards.
What we’re talking about here are people who have completed their permanent residency applications and have it approved.
So it’s a discussion about permanent residency, not visas.
> "We all have applied for a green card and it has been approved. Only thing is, we need to wait 150 years to get a green card," said Akhilesh Malavalli. "A hundred fifty years! I'll be dead. I'll be dead by the time we see a green card."
> There is a cap on the number of skills-based green cards that can be issued to any one country of origin and there are so many workers from India, getting one has become practically impossible.
So the problem seems to be that Indians are more affected by the quotas, because there are many Indians, but of course this puts them at a disadvantage against other nationalities. There is probably also a good reason to have country of origin quotas, but to me it seems a terrible idea to apply that quota after residency applications have already been approved.
If they don't want immigrants to settle, they shouldn't allow migrant workers to stay for more than a year or so and make that clear, instead of leaving them in legal limbo for cheap labor, which is close to what Qatar was criticized for.
The fact that the only argument commenters here have against what these people are asking for is that “well, it was a law set 30 years ago…” in itself shows that there’s little defense for the current law and very clearly should be changed.
Sure, the current law sucks, but the same can be said for many laws in America. The law is the law, and if you don't like it, maybe you shouldn't go there, and should pick a more welcoming country.
As far as I can tell, the current situation is not a surprise: someone immigrating from India today should know the situation, and know that there's probably not a good likelihood of it being fixed anytime soon. Given that, why bother going to the US? As I said, there's other countries that are much more welcoming. It seems to me the only reason to go to the US is $$$. Tech workers are overpaid there relative to other countries, so this is attractive to people who want to take advantage of this.
Basically, I see this like going to a casino and then complaining about the odds being stacked against you there. America is a very high-risk place: sure, you can make a lot of money there, if you're skilled and lucky, but all it takes is one big medical problem and you're bankrupt.
This is false, by definition. Permanent residency IS a visa. It's just a more permanent one than a normal work visa. It's still a visa affixed in your passport. And like any other visa, it expires as soon as you leave the country, unless you get a re-entry permit before you leave.
The only thing that's not a visa is citizenship.
Source: am a US permanent resident.
And how exactly do you get into the US when you return, without a visa? They won't let you in with a foreign passport unless you have a visa. No country will, unless you have visa-free travel because your country's passport is granted that.
You get into the US without a visa by having a green card instead.
The issues they and their families face are totally valid, but surely they apply to a larger body of immigrants of other nationalities too?
Your citizenship doesn’t even matter.
If you go by past approvals, people born in countries ex India, China may very well make the case that approvals have been discriminatory against them.
The ridiculously longer wait period is absurd though. It's equivalent to a rejection, but having it so probably allows a policy change in the future to fast-track them in queue order.
Otherwise I don't see an issue, this is the case for all work visas in any country.
Trying to change the immigration laws because you don't like them is one thing but this isn't a nationality issue.
It's an effort to add diversity to the immigrant population. Similar to how the green card lottery "discriminates" against immigrants from countries that already have a high immigrant population in the US.
I mean it sucks if you're one of the people who are stuck waiting for a green card, and I agree it's dumb to allow people to start a process they can't reasonably finish, but I don't think the goal of the law is unjust.
This causes problems even for skilled immigrants from Turkey today, since the stereotypes that manifested from this are applied to them as well.
On the other hand I do understand the individual issue here though. It is a bit unfair to never have a proper foothold in the country that asked you to be there. I think it would be better to limit the H1Bs more by the same country of origin metric, so that people aren't given hope only to crush it later on. And there should be a way to get a green card for those that are already here for 5+ years. It's inhumane to never allow them in properly after they spent so much time building a life in the US.
As to why countries instead of races,
>The question will probably at once arise, why, if this legislation was a response to a demand for racial discrimination, was it expressed in terms of nationality? The answer is simple. As has already been shown, our actual knowledge of the racial composition of the American people, to say nothing of the various foreign groups, is so utterly inadequate that the attempt to use it as a basis of legislation would have led to endless confusion and intolerable litigation. So Congress substituted the term nationality, and defined nationality as country of birth. It is clear, then, that “nationality,” as used in this connection, does not conform exactly to the correct definition of either nationality or race. But in effect it affords a rough approximation to the racial character of the different immigrant stream
https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/brief-history-us-immigr...
And the US immigration system penalizes people all the time. Don't have a formal degree? Sorry, high skilled visa aren't an option. Want to come on an H1-B? Sorry, ran out of visas and now it's a lottery.
Immigration systems need to make choices about who they want to bring in. The outcome of that is some people can't come.
Every job posting comes with a federally mandated anti-discrimination statement, and with a federally mandated discrimination immigration system.
Sure every immigration system as to make choices, but ideally you want to make intelligent choices.
The current system makes no sense unless your goal is to specifically limit Indian / Chinese born from people getting green cards while also letting in large numbers of them to work on H1B indefinitely.
It’s particularly ridiculous because the government will tax those people SS and Medicare, which they don’t have access to, based entirely on the fact that an H1B visa is a path to permanent residency.
And check out the backlog for extended family green cards for the Philippines. It’s similar.
There are many categories of green card applications: family, employment based, diversity, etc. It might make sense to consider "diversity" in family based immigration, but doesn't really make sense in the context of "employment based".
Historically, when US just wanted more people, the diversity might have made sense. But today, if a country wants better skilled immigrants, who are a net positive to the economy and don't put a strain on benefits, then it needs to select for such immigrants.
There are an estimated 10 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, mostly from Central America.
It's definitely common to just 'stay' but you better be prepared to stay the rest of your life.
Note this is from talking to people who enter legally but then consider staying illegally, not those who enter illegally.
Also, this is a misconception. This has nothing to do with your passport. The separation is based on your country of birth.
So if you were a Canadian citizen born in Canada, got an H1B visa, applied for and were approved for a permanent residency which is your right as per the H1B visa, you would get your permanent residency immediately.
If you were a Canadian citizen born in India, got an H1B visa, applied for and were approved for a permanent residency which is your right as per the H1B visa, you would get your permanent residency approximately 180 years from now.
If you have a Nexus card and live close to the border, travel between the two countries becomes a non-issue.
When you hit retirement age, you can move back to Canada and get provincial health care.
As of today, $1.00 USD == $1.36 CAD.
I will probably be depositing a lot more money back into my Canadian savings account over the next few years, just because I'll probably move back at some point in my life.
So yeah, Canadians in the US definitely get a lot of advantages over other immigrants. The only trade off is filling a 1040 every year, but even that is reduced to one additional form when residing in Canada.
Are you paying additional taxes, the benefits of which you cannot receive, entirely on the basis of the fact that you are eligible to get a permanent residency (small text: 180 years later).
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-are-dual-intent...
The entire intention of the H1B visa, set at its outset, is to allow people to become permanent residents. The same isn’t the case for the TN visa, which is explicitly a short term work visa.
But this isn’t even talking about people applying to get the visas. This is about people who were on those visas, and have applied for a green card and have been approved for a green card.
It’s an administrative sleight of hand. “Yes, you’re approved for the green card as we’re promised, but unfortunately, since you were born in China, we just don’t have the paper to print it out on for right now…Why don’t you come back 50 years later…ok now get out, I need to hand the paper I don’t have for you to the guy born in Greece behind you who has been waiting all of 2 days”.
Finally, if you’re a Canadian with an intention of moving to the US as a permanent resident you can absolutely apply as an H1B. Just make sure you meet all The skill requirements, none of which exist for the TN visa, convince a company to hire you, with the condition that it will take them at least a few months to know whether you can actually work for them as the govt approves the visa, convince them to pay for the legal costs and processing fees because you legally cannot, and then convince them to renew that process every 1-3 years. Then you need to convince them to apply for your permanent residency, in a 3 stage process that involves proving that no one else born in the U.S. can do the job as wel as you, after having spent at least 6 months advertising, then spending another stage of applications proving you will contribute to the US’s benefit, and then finally getting approval for you to be a green card holder.
Now, congratulations. As a Canadian citizen were you born in Canada, because then you will be shipped your green card tomorrow. But as a Canadian citizen were you born in China? Well, I guess 50+ years later we might ship you your green card. India? 180+ years.
Oh, as an aside if you were in the latter 2 categories, do keep in mind that the 2 and 4 year old kids will have no path to remaining in the US once they turn 21.