Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Photo: Mark Sommerfeld for Bloomberg Businessweek
For Deepa Chaudhary and Vikram Rangnekar, seen here with their younger son,  it is now Canada that is the Land of Opportunity, not the USA.

Should we be worried that skilled foreigners are now hesitating to stay in the USA? I think so. But our loss is Canada’s gain.

At Bloomberg Businessweek, Karen Weise and Saritha Rai report, “Vikram Rangnekar grew up in Mumbai, studied computer science at the University of Delaware, and by the waning days of the Obama administration had been working in Silicon Valley for almost six years. …

“Rangnekar received his H-1B in 2010, but his history with employment visas dates to 2005, when he graduated from the University of Delaware and wanted to start a company with two of his former classmates. The U.S. didn’t have an entrepreneur visa, so they moved to Singapore, returning four years later to present their product — Socialwok, a pre-Slack social platform for professional collaboration — to investors at the TechCrunch50 startup conference in San Francisco. They didn’t attract new cash, but all three walked away with the next best thing: a promising job offer. …

“As a young man with a global sensibility and an in-demand set of skills, Rangnekar had no reason to let the uncertainty of a green card application define his family’s life. In the early fall of 2016, he, his wife, and their two young boys made the move north, to Canada.

“Their first few months in Toronto were mostly spent settling in and scouting out decent tacos. [Then in mid-November 2016], Rangnekar’s inbox blew up with messages from friends and colleagues in the U.S. on H-1Bs asking for advice on how to migrate, Rather than deal with each one individually, he registered a website, MOVNorth.com. … In its first two days online last July, MOVNorth.com got 20,000 views. …

“When he and Chaudhary [his wife] decided to move, Rangnekar had an idea for a startup aimed at helping developers use advanced programming interfaces, or APIs, to build apps, but neither of them had a job offer. Still, for Canada at least, they were desirable applicants. …

“At first, after Rangnekar started MOV North, ‘People’s questions were like, “Tell us about Canada,” ‘ he says. ‘That was really it.’ They wanted to know the basics—jobs, schools, snow. Over time, as people began seriously considering a move, they asked detailed questions about the immigration process. ‘I was like one of them on the other side,’ he says. Topics of interest now range from how to get fingerprinted for the FBI background check Canada requires to tips for getting letters from former employers detailing work experience. …

“In MOV North’s early days, Rangnekar tended to the site at night after working on his startup all day. But as the volume of questions coming in increased, so did the amount of time the site demanded. People would email to thank him — then ask for more help. ‘That motivated me because it tells you you’re kinda doing something right,’ he says. ‘Very few people wrote to me about my APIs.’ He began wondering if MOV North could became his primary business.” Now people pay $99 a month to participate in the site’s valuable forum.

Read more at Bloomberg, here.