What would induce a software developer to quit a good job in Silicon Valley and trade California’s sunshine for Toronto’s wintry skies? For Vikram Rangnekar, born in India and educated in America, the triggers were the restrictions placed on immigrant tech workers holding an h-1b visa (starting companies or taking long holidays is discouraged) and what looked like a 20-year wait to get the green card he needed in order to settle down. Rising anti-immigrant sentiment under President Donald Trump’s administration did not help. Two years later he thinks he made the right choice. “I didn’t want to spend the best years of my life on a restrictive visa.”