Ottawa lance une stratégie pour attirer les «nomades numériques» sans rien changer

2023/08/18 Leave a comment

Of note, will see how situation evolves:

Le ministre fédéral de l’Immigration a lancé cet été — et en grande pompe — « une stratégie pour attirer les nomades numériques » au pays. Deux mois plus tard, rien n’a changé. Des centaines, voire des milliers d’entre eux, continuent de vivre au Canada dans la « zone grise » qui prévaut depuis des années.

Singapour, Inde, États-Unis, Philippines, Brésil… Diverses origines se croisent dans la résidence Nomad Coliving. Le bâtiment au centre-ville de Montréal loge quelques dizaines de ces nomades des temps modernes. Tous télétravaillent, à leur compte ou pour un employeur, et changent de pays au gré des saisons ou des échéances de visa.

Maria Kinoshita, gestionnaire de l’endroit, a organisé une fête avec tout ce beau monde lorsque l’ancien ministre de l’Immigration Sean Fraser a laissé supposer qu’un visa pour eux allait voir le jour.

« Nous allons lancer une stratégie pour les nomades numériques pour permettre aux personnes qui ont un employeur étranger de venir travailler au Canada jusqu’à 6 mois », avait-il lancé en juin dernier sur une grande scène d’un événement techno de Toronto. « Et si elles reçoivent une offre d’emploi pendant qu’elles sont là, nous allons autoriser qu’ils continuent de rester et de travailler au Canada. »

« Plusieurs ont eu l’espoir d’avoir un statut, raconte Maria Kinoshita. Ils ont reporté leur demande de visa en se disant qu’ils pourraient appliquer pour un visa de nomade. » Deux mois plus tard, rien n’a changé. Le fameux visa se fait attendre.

Ottawa prévoyait aussi consulter « des partenaires des secteurs privé et public afin de déterminer s’il serait souhaitable d’adopter d’autres politiques pour attirer les nomades numériques au Canada ».

Maria Kinoshita n’a pas été contactée. Même silence autour d’elle, elle qui connaît un peu tout le monde dans cet univers parallèle des travailleurs sans bureau fixe. Puisqu’elle a des origines japonaises, elle a cependant été appelée par le gouvernement du pays du Soleil levant, qui, au même moment, a lancé une stratégie similaire.

Le Devoir n’a pas pu trouver d’entreprises ou d’organismes québécois qui ont été consultés à ce sujet. Le gouvernement du Québec affirme aussi n’avoir pas été interrogé avant le lancement de cette stratégie.

Un nouveau ministre de l’Immigration, Marc Miller, a été nommé cet été. Ce dernier est « en retraite » deux semaines avec le nouveau cabinet, et n’a pas pu répondre aux questions du Devoir.

Les communications du ministère ont toutefois précisé les intentions d’Ottawa, en disant vouloir s’« assurer s’il serait utile qu’un nomade numérique ait un processus clair pour demander un permis de travail au Canada, s’il décidait par la suite de chercher un poste auprès d’un employeur canadien ».

Entrer pour ne plus repartir

Pour Claire Estagnasié, doctorante à l’UQAM en communication et spécialiste du nomadisme numérique, une telle annonce « pourrait clarifier une zone grise, mais, dans la pratique, ça ne change absolument rien ». Ces nomades vont et viennent toujours sous un visa de visiteur, travaillant hors du cadre des lois canadiennes.

« Pas un mot sur l’assurance maladie » de ces voyageurs longue durée, fait-elle remarquer. Ni sur la taxation de ces travailleurs. Pour l’instant, les nomades numériques ne paient des impôts que dans leur pays d’origine. Un Américain qui réside au Canada paie ses taxes uniquement aux États-Unis, s’il ne reste pas plus de 6 mois de ce côté-ci de la frontière. Et il peut toujours retourner très brièvement chez lui pour ne pas dépasser cette limite de six mois, faire le tour de la frontière, pour ensuite demander un second visa de touriste en rentrant au Canada.

« Pour les nomades numériques américains, ça leur ferait moins de paperasse. Pour les autres, ça ne change rien du tout », résume la chercheuse. « C’est un effet d’annonce, d’image. »

Le Canada cherche à sédentariser prochainement ces nomades, précise par ailleurs le ministère. « Ils peuvent très facilement demander à prolonger leur séjour en tant que résidents temporaires, ou demander un permis de travail au Canada s’ils trouvent un emploi sur le marché du travail canadien. »

Un besoin de logements

Maria Kinoshita, bien qu’enthousiaste à ce que Montréal devienne une plaque tournante pour ces nomades modernes, prévient qu’il faudrait inclure dans cette stratégie une politique de logements. Sa résidence, à mi-chemin entre l’auberge de jeunesse et la maison de chambres, est déjà pleine. Elle projette d’ouvrir d’autres résidences à Montréal et à Québec. Et déjà, les listes d’attente pour ses chambres sont toutes aussi pleines.

Les prêts, le zonage, les assurances : tout est compliqué pour transformer un multiplex de six logements en résidence de seize chambres. « Il y a beaucoup de monde partant pour partir des places comme ça, mais ils ont été découragés quand ils ont vu ce que j’ai traversé », assure la femme d’affaires, elle-même nomade à ses heures.

« Je densifie la bâtisse », précise-t-elle, soucieuse de ne pas retirer de logements d’un marché locatif très à l’étroit. « Et j’accepte les locaux qui ont besoin de cet espace-là. »

Ailleurs dans le monde, ce ne sont pas les exemples de « stratégies pour attirer les nomades numériques » qui manquent. Le nombre de pays avec des visas spécialement pour ces travailleurs a explosé ces dernières années. On en comptait un peu plus d’une dizaine il y a tout juste deux ans, selon une estimation des spécialistes du nomadisme Partout chez nous. Ces derniers recensent à l’heure actuelle 42 pays avec un tel type de visa.

Source: Ottawa lance une stratégie pour attirer les «nomades numériques» sans rien changer

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Canada gets ‘more aggressive,’ launches bid to attract high-tech nomad workers from U.S., abroad

2023/06/29 Leave a comment

Good initiative. One that has a clear productivity/per capita GDP objective, unlike many other recent initiatives. Getting extensive coverage in Indian press as well as in USA:

Ottawa is trying to attract more high-skilled workers by launching a program in mid-July to allow about 10,000 H-1B visa holders in the United States to work in Canada.

The H-1B visa allows companies in the U.S. to employ foreign workers in specialized job categories, such as in the technology sector, which has laid off at least 150,000 workers in 2023 so far, according to data from Crunchbase.

“We have been watching very closely what’s been going on in the United States. Where we have seen a public narrative around layoffs, we have been having private conversations about opportunities,” Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Sean Fraser said at the Collision conference, a tech event in Toronto on June 27.

Approved applicants will receive an open work permit of up to three years.

The minister also said Canada would launch its “digital nomad strategy” to allow people who work for a foreign employer to live in Canada for up to six months.

“(They can) live in this country and should they receive a job offer while they are here, we are going to allow them to continue to stay in Canada,” he said.

Canada has recently taken several steps to tackle its labour shortage, from increasing immigration targets to changing the existing system to bring in more newcomers.

The number of job vacancies in Canada in 2022 averaged 942,000, two-and-a-half times the average of 377,000 in 2016, according to Statistics Canada.

The substantial growth in the number of job vacancies recorded during this period suggests the economy is battling a labour crunch. But Statistics Canada in a report on May 24 said “employers’ difficulties to fill job vacancies requiring high levels of education cannot, in general, be attributed to a national shortage” or local shortage of highly educated job seekers.

The agency said vacancies may arise because of a mismatch between the skills required by employers and the skills possessed by highly educated job seekers. A labour crunch, however, has been observed for jobs requiring a high school diploma or less education since 2021.

Fraser said the country will launch a new pathway for permanent residency for workers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and make it easier for people to immigrate to Canada under the Start-up Visa program, which allows newcomers to become permanent residents by starting a business that creates jobs for Canadians.

The announcements are part of Canada’s first-ever “Tech Talent Strategy,” the immigration ministry said in a statement.

The information and communications technology sector employed nearly 720,000 workers and accounted for more than 44 per cent of all private research and development spending in Canada in 2021, the ministry said. The sector was also responsible for more than 15 per cent of Canada’s overall gross domestic product growth between 2016 and 2021.

The Business Council of Canada, an association of about 150 companies, including Microsoft Canada Inc. and Google Canada, said the federal government’s new announcements were a step in the right direction.

“Specialized talent is needed not just in the tech sector but across the Canadian economy,” Trevor Neiman, the association’s director of digital economy, said. “The move shows that the government is changing its attitude a bit around retention. They have been more aggressive on the international stage to attract talent.”

In a separate announcement, the Ontario government said it would invest $1.3 million to train 54 women, newcomers and others from underrepresented groups for in-demand careers in the trucking sector. The province said it needs about 6,100 truck drivers to fill job vacancies.

Source: Canada gets ‘more aggressive,’ launches bid to attract high-tech nomad workers from U.S., abroad

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The Line Is Blurring Between Remote Workers and Tourists

2023/05/03 Leave a comment

Interesting implications for governments:

For years, cities, states and regions have been competing to lure corporate headquarters and offices, an arms race of ever-higher tax breaks and infrastructure projects cobbled together to benefit corporate executives and their shareholders. The spectacle of hundreds of American communities bidding against each other for Amazon’s now-paused HQ2 was both the pinnacle and nadir of this genre. But the remote revolution is upending this traditional model of economic development. The last two years of pandemic have accelerated previous trends, shining a spotlight on an alternative to the corporate sweepstakes, one in which cities chase the workers themselves. 

With many Americans newly willing to relocate and remote work vastly expanding the playing field of potential locations, smaller cities and regions need to be ready to capture their share of this windfall of migratory talent. While some of tomorrow’s destinations patiently wait for their turn in the sun, others have resorted to gimmicks — such as a $10,000 bonus, or $10,000 and a mountain bicycle, or $10,000 in Bitcoin — with less-than-stellar results.More fromBloomberg Citylab

Even the original and most successful of these programs, Tulsa Remote, has settled only 2,000 new arrivals since 2018, or roughly 0.2% of metro Tulsa’s population. That shouldn’t be surprising; these are relatively small-budget affairs. Many of these pandemic-era programs launched by cities ranging from Savannah to Helsinki used little more than mothballed travel budgets to seed their fledgling efforts. And even more mature efforts such as those in Tulsa or Northwest Arkansas (Bentonville and Fayetteville) still rely on philanthropic rather than public funding. Approaches such as these are forward-thinking but not scalable. 

Simultaneously, and in parallel, tourism departments are struggling to respond to a changing world of tourism. While tourism agencies’ historic target audience has been three-day weekend visitors, remote work and the rise of digital nomadsmeans that stays are increasingly in the 30-day range. According to Deloitte’s 2023 Travel Outlook, travelers willing to bring work with them take twice as many trips and, of those “laptop luggers,” more than a third are adding three or more days to their vacation to accommodate working remotely while traveling. Airbnb reported in May 2022 that long-term stays of more than 28 days were their fastest-growing category by trip length compared to 2019, more than doubling in size from Q1 2019. And United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby has declared a “permanent structural change” in the industry as business and leisure travel have become indistinguishable.

These two developments — a growing, restless class of remote workers, and a tourism market of people who spend more of their time traveling — are more than related; they’re different facets of the same phenomenon. The line between remote workers and tourists is blurring, and communities big and small need to think strategically about how to position themselves to take advantage of this changing landscape.

The New Talent Attraction Landscape

When cities try to lure or retain companies, they play a B2B game. When they adjust their strategy to try and court a highly mobile class of talented workers, the model shifts to B2C. And that transformation requires a change both in how city agencies are structured and in their culture. 

The simplest transformation would be combining economic development and tourism offices into something customer- and resident-focused. Call it the Department of Hospitality. Ohio is already inching in this direction, with a proposal to rename TourismOhio as  the State Marketing Office and expand its mission to attract residents, students and workers — in addition to tourists. 

Whether it’s renaming agencies or merging them, the transformation entails a new way of doing business. Any new department would shift from the high-upside, low-volume business of luring corporate headquarters to the low-margin, high-volume approach of direct sales. This may entail shifts to the make-up of staff, messaging and strategy. And it will mean broadening the customer-facing programs to transform first-time buyers (visitors) into loyal customers (residents). 

Whether this entails connecting newcomers with reliable Wi-Fi and work spaces, familiarizing short-term tourists with housing options and family amenities, or merely keeping track of and welcoming new transplants to help them assimilate and feel supported over time, the work is critical. In a world where there are now hundreds of competing cities chasing the same residents/customers, the cities that figure out how to make their visitors’ and residents’ lives easier are going to have a massive competitive advantage.

To achieve this, cities will have to train their employees for a new era of increasingly important customer service. This would be a sea change for the vast majority of cities, and culture change at municipal agencies is notoriously difficult.

Whether these new offerings are gathered under the umbrella of merged economic development and tourism agencies or, less effectively but more feasibly, a well-choreographed coordination between the two as standalone agencies, this culture change will have to infuse their programs, combining economic development agencies’ ability to expedite city processes and tourism departments’ expertise in marketing. 

This effort will require employees of a sort not normally associated with the public sector: people who act as point-of-contact assistance for new and recent arrivals. Imagine one part hotel concierge, one part HR onboarding expert, and one part university student life expert who has experience welcoming and orienting a constant wave of new residents. 

A smattering of examples exist in the field.

Evan Hock launched MakeMyMove as a one-stop shop for Indiana communities, but today his site boasts more than 150 destinations across the US. One is Greater Lafayette, Indiana, which offers arrivals a $10,000 incentives package, including relocation costs and work space on campus at Purdue University — the first partnership of its kind. “A lot of what we’re doing now is helping communities set up this kind of infrastructure and then obtain funding to keep it going,” Hock says. To that end, Indiana’s legislature amended the state’s tax credit toolkit last year authorizing municipalities to use government funds on these kinds of programs.

A few states away, the Greater Topeka Partnership has lured 99 workers from over 25 states to date with its own $10,000 incentives program. But the small program has contended with the challenges of connecting participants to the right amenities, according to Bob Ross, the partnership’s senior vice president of marketing and communications. One participant dropped out due to a lack of coworking spaces; another ended up in a broadband dead zone and had to relocate — unforced errors that might have been avoided by a more comprehensive citywide strategy. “We’ve ended up doing a lot of that lift ourselves, which is probably a little beyond our bandwidth,” Ross says. “Cities are going to have to find ways to answer those questions more efficiently.”

Incremental Change

For most city agencies, change will come slowly. A more practical question may then be, what do incremental steps look like and how can they be achieved?

Cassandra Costello, executive vice president and chief policy and external affairs officer at the San Francisco Travel Association, has operated in this interstitial space for years. Her position was designed specifically to liaise between economic development and tourism — a rarity in the industry — but it provides her a wide-angle view on how the changing landscape affects the day-to-day operation of government.

Pre-pandemic, tourism was solidly San Francisco’s number one industry, growing for ten straight years and drawing nearly 26 million visitors who spent over $10 billion annually. After Covid brought this growth to an immediate halt, “tourism was no longer taken for granted, but instead, proved to be an industry that you had to work for to be able to compete on a global scale for visitation,” says Costello. 

This challenging environment puts it on par with other corporate attraction efforts. And with Costello’s perch on committees within the planning, parks, and economic development agencies, she is increasingly able to give a voice to tourists within the city’s economic development machinery. Having someone from SF Travel add their voice to land use and economic development issues gives more context to complex political decisions, often bringing a broader, even global perspective to issues that can feel hyper-local. 

Costello’s work shows that, as the line between short-stay tourists and residents blurs, improved resident amenities are going to be even more important to economic development than they were in the past — to the benefit of both new residents and old. “What is good for the visitor is great for the employee, resident and for business attraction,” she says. “Tourism can also help to bring people to downtown core areas seeing less foot traffic due to work from home policies.” 

As an economic development strategy, talent attraction is not going away. And neither, clearly, is remote work. Small and midsize American cities, traditionally muscled out of the business attraction game, have been quick to seize on this transformation. Larger cities, even the heavyweights with legacy business clusters and resilient brands, are slowly pivoting their attention to this new way of doing business. A more consumer-oriented approach will improve the quality of service for all residents, regardless of how often they move, by making them feel more taken care of and more welcome. What’s good for the guest is good for the host, especially when the guest might never leave.

Lev Kushner is the founder of Department of Here, a strategic communications and economic development consultancy.

Greg Lindsay is an urban tech fellow at the Jacobs Urban Tech Hub at Cornell Tech.

Source: The Line Is Blurring Between Remote Workers and Tourists

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MPI: Rise in Remote Work, Including by Digital Nomads, Requires Adjustments to Immigration Systems

2022/06/24 Leave a comment

Canadian examples include not requiring a work visa when working remotely in another country and stopping the clock on residency tests:

The COVID-19 pandemic has vastly accelerated a shift toward remote work that has been ongoing for decades. As countless workers worldwide stopped coming into the office, many began working from home, with some “digital nomads” moving to work remotely in another country. But most immigration systems are poorly equipped to deal with remote work arrangements, whether admitting foreign workers who may end up working partly or fully remotely for a local employer or permitting digital nomads to visit and work remotely for an employer in another country. Similarly, unclear rules around taxation, benefits and employment law pose hurdles for digital nomads and employers alike.

Failing to address remote work in immigration policies is a missed opportunity, a new Migration Policy Institute report finds. Repositioning immigration systems to introduce greater flexibility for non-traditional working arrangements could bring sizable benefits, including economic development, permitting employers to tap new pools of talent and even allowing people displaced by conflict or environmental disaster to earn incomes.

There have been some policy innovations already. More than 25 countries and territories have launched digital nomad visas that admit foreign nationals who work for an employer outside the country, or in some cases are self-employed. These digital nomad visas differ from most work visas, which assume a person will be working in-person, full-time for an employer in the same country. Digital nomad visas have seen considerable appeal among countries whose economies are heavily reliant on tourism and that are looking to make up for the pandemic-induced loss of tourism revenue, with some encouraging international remote workers to stay in smaller towns and rural communities to contribute to their economic development.

The creation of a new standalone visa is not the only way countries are adapting their immigration systems to remote work trends. Some have adjusted existing employer-sponsored visa pathways, including by expanding flexibility on residency tests. Others allow a degree of remote work while holding a visitor visa, which can benefit business travelers and tourists alike.

The report examines the implications of remote work for immigration systems, workers and employers alike, and explores how governments can develop robust remote work strategies. The analysis benefitted from information on digital nomad visas and remote work trends shared by Fragomen, a firm that provides immigration services worldwide.

“Remote work, at scale, could change the terms of the global race for talent, which would require governments to develop a more expansive understanding of labor migration policy—one that looks beyond addressing domestic skills and labor shortages to think about how best to capture the benefits of cross-border movement,” write MPI analysts Kate Hooper and Meghan Benton. “To truly reap the benefits of remote work, governments need to understand that this is about more than generating revenue from digital nomad visa programs, but also making a country an attractive environment for temporary visitors, business activity and job creation (even for jobs overseas).”

As workplaces reopen, with many retaining more flexible remote work policies, the question of how to adapt is one with which countries must reckon. As policymakers rethink immigration systems for this new era of work, the analysis suggests they should consider:

• Creating flexible immigration policies that can allow a greater degree of remote work and/or attract digital nomads, in line with national economic priorities.
• Coordinating across portfolios to develop a remote work strategy that integrates immigration priorities with economic development and inclusive growth objectives.
• Working with other countries to streamline immigration, employment, social security and tax requirements so that it is easier for workers and employers to understand the rules and their obligations.
• Exploring how regions outside of major metro areas can capture the benefits of remote work.
• Creating temporary-to-permanent pathways so that some remote workers on visitor and nomad visas can transition to permanent residence.

You can read the report, The Future of Remote Work: Digital Nomads and the Implications for Immigration Systems, here: www.migrationpolicy.org/research/remote-work-immigration.

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