… extrovert on twitter.
Dear @JustinTrudeau @VectorInst @MILAMontreal @CIFAR_News,
How can Canada lead in AI if we cannot even process visas for top AI researchers gives MONTHS of advance warning?
Please RT.
the crazy thing is, I've heard, despite trump's hateful rhetoric, it's harder for academics to get visas to Canada than to the US
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Well... I'll wait for statistics. :)
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yeah, I'm not claiming it's firm, but organizers of large conferences in Canada complain a lot... targeted countries include some well represented in tech, eg, my Indian student couldn't get into Montreal
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When NeurIPS was in LA, I suspect many people did not even bother to try. Now it's in Canada and so they give it a shot. Anyway, I'm not really sure what's causing the slow down. Is it extra scrutiny or what. Requires some focused attention by the government, hence my tweet.
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I'll confirm that we only had 3 visa denials out of ~60 when NeurIPS was in LA. And the process was a lot faster. Just recently my uncle came for a wedding in the US and his daughter who lives in Canada came to see him in the US rather than him getting a visitor's visa to Canada
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Good to know.
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as has been pointed out elsewhere, i imagine the specific countries targeted are different. puts us organizers in the weird position of deciding implicitly which members of the community can't come to the conference each year :(
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I dunno about visas, but afaik it's much easier to get permanent residency
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I looked up the figure a while ago, and Canada takes in twice as many immigrants per capita
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OK, that's a different thing... Im not saying I'm right, only that folks who have run events in Canada complain more
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Yeah that's fair. It could def be both ways (like visas one, PR the other). Borders are weird
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I want to believe this because Canada is hot garbage with some real fashy problems but people only talk about Canada to point out how messed up its downstairs neighbor is.
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Anyone remember that time Harper officially ordered Muslim asylum applicants to be deprioritized?
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I'm here every day just shouting this to the skieshttps://twitter.com/coollady42/status/1065305190859980802?s=20 …
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Canada is a mess and people give it special points for just not being the US. I will die on this hill.
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Canada is a mess? You mean the visa process?
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I think she's joking
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I'm genuinely not joking. Everyone in the world is just really focused right now on their dreamboat PM, but before DBPM, Harper was busy incorporating actual religious tests into the asylum process. Or like:https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-francois-legault-crucifix-religious-symbols-1.4858757 …
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If you actually pay attention to Canadian politics, it's pretty bad most of the time. US politics is obviously terrible, but people around the world KNOW that, while they only pay attention to Canada as part of the narrative "can't you be more like Canada?"
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I think this is just correlation. AFAIK both countries give ~10 years visa so once you go through the process, you are fine for a while. There are much more events/conferences in US so people either already have visa for US or already have been denied. So, they do not try again.
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Visa length (and whether it's multi-entry) varies tremendously in the US, also largely by country. Iranians notably can get multi-entry visas to Canada pretty consistently but NOT AT ALL to the US.
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